Shakti rising into the heart centre
The heart centre, the Anahata, translated from Sanskrit as `the spontaneous sound’, expresses its own particular quality when activated by kundalini and consciousness, which is the emotional feeling of love and all the diverse reactive emotions having to do with its fulfillment or non-fulfillment, its joys and pains. Also, through this centre of our being we recognize with certainty the truth when presented and we understand others and ourself as one in essence of being. The emotion of love is the enjoyed feeling or sensation of our essential energy shared with others. When we recognize the spiritual or love essence in another person, our heart centre vibrates with enjoyment in the realization of our unity with the other, the unity of our love being. The love essence of the other resounds through us by its sympathetic vibration, that is, the vibration of love in the other resonates sympathetically in our own love centre, expanding the resonance and feelings of love through us.
Love centres have this quality of resonating with each other, as well as sympathetically recognizing and feeling each other. The love centre is also the source centre of emotional healing, whereby the feeling of being loved and the spontaneous expression of love feelings for others is probably the most primary healing there is in our human world.
The heart centre has an even deeper significance in being the true centre of our spiritual being, the centre of our living divinity. It is the bridge to the Being of Love Itself, the Love-Being Essence of the universe. It is said that from Love all life came and to Love all life will return. Many have said that love is the source and the purpose of all existence. We especially find in the tantra that love, as expressed through the heart centre, is our way of feeling union or unity within the body. Pure consciousness is the realization of unity, but the feeling of being at one or interconnected with all life, the very feeling of unity, is felt and known with certainty through the love heart centre. Thus we say that hearts connect and love prevails.
First of all, a yogi cannot open the heart centre of another person. And there is no magical chant nor tantric technique that will necessarily open one's heart centre. No partner cannot open the heart centre of the other. The opening of each person's heart centre must come from that person's own willingness to open to love. The opening of heart has to be made by the person, because it is an act of willingness and volition. No other centre so necessarily involves the volition or freedom of will. Somebody could send us visions or give us thoughts about anything under the sun. Somebody could make us feel so sexually or sensually good that our sacral centre is bound to open. But nobody can make us love, nor feel real love. It is true that a person can help another person feel loved, but nobody can really open our heart to love or allow love to enter, unless we are open to this and allow our self actually feel loved, or feel as love itself. And to feel love for another or actively love another, this too is all up to that person. Nobody can really make us love them; though it is of course possible to seduce or attract another's love.
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Two ways to raise shakti energy from the sacral centre into the heart centre.
If there is already a magnetism between the lovers at the level of emotional love, then this magnetism of the heart can draw up the shakti to bring greater pleasure and expansion of the emotional love. This is known as the way of drawing up the tiger, the tiger being one of the ways shakti is perceived. It is accomplished by connecting through consciousness and feeling the sexual energies circulating through the sacral centre, the Svadhisthana, with the magnetism of the heart centre, the Anahata, and consciously breathing the shakti magnetism up into the Anahata.
This done by a slow drawing breath, feeling some of the sexual energy rise up and be received in love. One can either feel the magnetism of shakti rise or feel the sexual energy in general rise. It rises with the breath and through the consciousness connecting the two centres. Not all the sexual energy rises on any one breath; only a mild portion is drawn up and savored, much like taking in one savory mouthful of delicious wine or nectar. As the in-breath gains fullness it can pause for a moment to especially savor this added portion of love enjoyment, as one feels the emotional joy of being in love with the partner. This savoring joy continues to be tasted and felt as one allows the breath to release and radiate into the whole of the partner's body, circulating and felt through her or him and bringing their magnetism closer together on each breath. So the energy, through the breath, is brought up into the love and released outward through the love. It may even feel like a purification or healing of the centre of our emotional body.
The other way is when the shakti begins to spontaneously leap into the Anahata heart centre from the Svadhisthana sacral centre. Some of the electricism of shakti will excitedly leap from the Svadhisthana into the Anahata to excite that centre into opening. This way is called the way of the leaping tiger. This can happen when consciousness and shakti are fully circulating in the sacral centre. Then, as the shakti builds and accumulates in the sacral, it may spontaneously rise or leap into the heart centre, feeling like a sudden charge of emotional or heart love. The shakti actually stimulates the opening of the love heart centre and proceeds to vitalize and open it more and more. Now, a bit of the electricism of shakti may spontaneously make this leap, if the sacral is fully charged to its limit with shakti, thereby awakening some of the potential emotional love consciousness, but this opening will not maintain itself nor open much further without at least some conscious allowing of this joy to expand. The love of this joy, or the love of this love, produces a building magnetism in the Anahata to which the tiger can be drawn as already described. In the way of the leaping tiger shakti's electricism is the spontaneous catalyst for the awakening of Anahata and this causes a magnetic connection between the two centres, but the connection and magnetism is not strong from this and can only build powerful through the conscious allowing of more magnetism to rise from the sacral. The spontaneous leaping of the tiger may, though, keep occurring at certain times in the ritual, as the shakti builds up in the sacral, and this will keep on awakening the heart.
This leaping of shakti energy is a way for the shakti to increase while not exploding the Svadhisthana into spontaneous orgasm or release. The Svadhisthana can only accumulate so much excitement and pleasure before it must release some or all of it. The centre has a limited capacity for shakti, though this capacity can increase during the ritual and as it develops from sexual experience.
The leaping tiger can be spontaneous, especially when the shakti builds to a high pitch but is intentionally not allowed to release there; yet the yogi can consciously allow the tiger to move upward as a kind of escape. The man or woman can allow some of the sexual energy to release upward and be transformed in love, not only for the experience of that great joy but also to avoid orgasmic release at the sacral. Some of the excessive sexual excitement and pleasure is allowed to rise up or be released upward. One actually feels some energy and a portion of consciousness rise upward on the in-breath, and one feels the energy being released or transformed into love. A portion of the yogi's consciousness actually rises on the breath with this energy floating up from the sacral to the heart and magnetizes in the heart, giving the Anahata a greater feeling of joy and expansion.
It's not really a spontaneous leap of the tiger, and its not a drawing up from above. Instead, we call this the way of the climbing tiger, whereby one allows some of the tiger energy to escape from the intensity of the sacral and climb on the breath to the heart, where it can relax in the expansive joy of the Anahata and breathed out in love to the partner. During this climbing of the tiger the intensity of sexual excitement and movement involving the sacral centre can be maintained at its highest pitch, but now some of that excess energy releases itself upward and some of consciousness is magnetized in the heart though most is still magnetized in the sacral. Thus, the consciousness and magnetism is now connected and flowing between the centres. One begins to feel more and more this connection and flow, where upon more of the shakti can be drawn upward or more of it can be allowed upward, depending on where consciousness is more focused.
You might see how the ways of leaping and climbing the tiger, depend on where consciousness is or from what perspective is the rising of shakti. The ways of leaping and of climbing are really both ways for the shakti energy and consciousness to rise and awaken the sleeping love centre, one being spontaneous and the other being more of an intentional allowing. Whereas the way of drawing the tiger proceeds from an already established magnetism in the heart.
As the sacral and the heart become more and more connected and flowing, all the ways will become active at times and compliment each other. Each can be distinguished and affective at certain times in the ritual, as shakti accumulates in the sacral and as emotional love more opens, and as the ritual evolves the ways of the tiger may merge more together in one exciting and joyous flow.
Electricism and Magnetism
In the Tantric loving, both lovers build their enjoyment of the other by exploring the sensuous and erotic nature of their bodies. This loving adoration and sensual exploration of each other’s bodies will build up the excitement and deepen the lover’s connection in both heart and body essences. The lover’s beauty and sensuality will feel as though coming into one’s own essence, as one opens one’s heart and body to feel this sensual nature of the lover. In this the heart centres of each may open up to one another.
You want to feel and touch and kiss your lover everywhere, enjoying how they feel to the hands and lips, as your lover’s body gives off an electrical charge of sensuous pleasure exciting your hands and your body all over. As you touch and feel your lover, a pleasurable and exciting electrical charge streaks through you, exciting and stimulating erotic places in and around your body. This is the electrical nature of erotic lovemaking.
Yet there is also a magnetic nature possible as well. This is the magnetism of the lover, which attracts and draws the other near. This magnetic nature is closer to what we feel as emotional love, while the electrical nature is more of a physically erotic stimulation. We often just feel one of these at a time, but both can be be experienced together.
Your lover’s eroticism draws you closer like a magnet. This combination, of love magnetism towards your lover and the electrical stimulation from their body, enables the alchemical merging of the two body energies and auric fields. You become more and more charged up with your lover’s erotic electricism, while also more and more drawn into your lover’s magnetic field. Within the magnetism you feel sensually warm and close, and through the electricism you feel charged and excited. You feel like melting in the magnetism, yet stimulated by the electricism.
Thus, two opposite effects are produced which blend to produce a vortex of rising and deepening enjoyment. The lovers become evermore stimulated by the play of erotic electricism and evermore merging from the magnetic attraction to each other. This is the dual quality of rising excitement combined with deepening mergence. As this intensity of excitement builds in both bodies, and as the energies merge and blend together, the lovers come closer and closer to an ecstatic union with plenty of exiting pleasure as well. This electricism and magnetism are the dual qualities of shakti, exciting and merging our bodies.
These qualities within the loving and erotic exploration are carried through the rhythms of breathing in and out. This is both symbolic and literal. One breathes in the electrical charge, allowing in the erotic stimulation from the other. Your lover is scintillating with and emanating this erotic electricism, and you breathe it in through the very pores of your skin, you breathe it right into your body. You allow the erotic energy of your lover to excite and stimulate all of your body, and you can actually breathe this in like taking a breath of erotically stimulating air or perfume. It charges you up, similar to how a deep breath of prana charges you vitally. This is known as consciously breathing the electrical shakti. One doesn’t need to consciously do this on every breath, but once in a while during the loving you can get some more erotic charge running through your body by this breathing in your lover’s electricism, or allowing their electricism to excite through your body via the breath. This is one of the secrets of getting completely charged up and getting the energies flowing more intensely.
Yet, the man must cautiously not overdo this electrical charge to the point of blasting out his juice. If he finds himself at this point of over stimulus, then he can momentarily hold the breath steady on the in-breath or very slowly breathe in while allowing his body to relax and the electricism to settle down some. It’s important to not be breathing out, in this method, until sufficient relaxation and composure of the electricism. A momentary stillness during the in breath and a change in the rhythm of movement at the next out breath is also advised.
The build-up of electrical charge is most often more centered at the genitals but can also be extremely intense in the whole pelvic area and buttox, and in some degree throughout the whole body. It can build up gradually or it can sometimes streak through the body or genitals like flashes of lightening. The man may sometimes feel these surges or flashes like a mild electrical shock, though one of delightful pleasure. These occur as the electrical nature of the sexual force intensifies and pulsates through the vajra, the phallus. A man may feel this sexual electricism jolt through his vajra and right up to his prostrate and into sacral centre. We call these streaks of electrical excitement, 'shakti flashes', or 'shakti surges', and the man must be capable of handling these power surges from the female, else he is likely to ejaculate. In fact, these electrical surges are the most common cause of unintentional male ejaculation. This power surge is especially strong when the woman orgasms, even if mildly, but they also come at any unexpected moment.
The man must be able to take these surges with his in-breath through the sacral and up into a higher centre. He needs to have some channel already open from the sacral to the higher, so that this sexual surge can spread into the third or fourth chakra centre, or allowed upward by the conscious in-breath, in order that the sacral centre will not be over-charged and explode from this electrical surge. This is one of the male keys to mastery. The woman may also feel these surges, and she too can allow them up into higher centres, or they may cause her to spontaneously orgasm, but a woman can be allowed many orgasms while a man cannot. The woman can keep this electricism building within her, and even allow herself orgasm, but she should maintain as much consciousness through this as possible.
The main way to develop the needed strength to handle these unexpected shocks of excitement is to develop more awareness during the loving and more vital strength through the conscious in-breath. Also, the man is advised to learn some control in the allowing of electricism to build-up in his body, especially in and around the genitals, so that the build-up is more slow and gradual. This kind of control is done with conscious breath, the in-breath regulating the gradual build-up and the out-breath regulating the ease of relaxing through the intensity. This complimenting rhythm of the gradual allowing of build-up and the continual allowing of tension to ease will develop in the man a greater capacity for the intensity and excitement of sexual electricism. He becomes more and more able to feel, accumulate, and withstand greater intensities of pleasure and ecstasy, without releasing an over-charge from his safety valve. He becomes master of himself and, thus, a master to the woman.
This sense of yogic control over the shakti force, though, is a regulating of its accumulation and build-up, but it is not an authoritarian control over the sexual power itself. The man is not demanding or controlling the energy to be in any particular way or to manifest in the experience in some way vs. another. shakti must be allowed freedom to be Herself and to flow through the love experience in Her spontaneous way. The experience cannot be regulated. The effects of shakti through the body and in the experience cannot be regulated. All that is regulated is the degree of opening to Her spontaneous and uncontrollable power. Her very nature is uncontrollable and spontaneous, so all that can be regulated is the degree of opening to Her or the degree of allowing Her to accumulate and intensify within one’s body.
So, to more powerfully receive and build up the electrical charge of shakti sex energy, we use conscious in-breathing. That is, use the in-breath to bring in more of the electrical erotic energy. Yet, on the other hand, the out-breath is used to increase the quality of magnetism. Thus, opposite but complimentary to the conscious breathing-in of the electrical is the act of breathing out to come closer to the lover’s magnetism and increase the magnetism of the love ritual.
You allow yourself to be drawn into your lover’s magnetism. In the act of consciously breathing out, let go to the other, allowing yourself to fall into the other’s field of magnetism. Again, such breathing-out is not needed to be conscious each time, for it happens anyway within the love flow of deepening mergence, as long as this magnetic mergence continues. Yet, to breathe-out with real consciousness and surrender will bring the magnetic mergence closer and the joy of this mergence more present in experience.
Both of these qualities of electricism and magnetism, and their properties of stimulation and mergence, are equally important in the love ritual. They should compliment and blend with each other throughout the ritual. There is no way to suggest their proper balance, and at times one of these qualities will feel more intense in the love experience. Yet, the possibility of a Full Loving experience will be incomplete if either electricism or magnetism is missing. If electricism becomes overly intense without the magnetism, however exciting this may be, then the lovers have physical excitement but without the ecstasy of feeling united, blended, and in union with the other. If magnetism becomes overly dominate without the electricism, however warm and comforting this may be, then the lovers find their bliss of union but without all the excited, stimulated intensity that their bodies can give to this union.
Overall though, the two qualities of potential experience will complement and and increase the enjoyment of the other. Greater magnetism increases the potential for greater electricism, and a greater electricism increases the potential for a greater magnetism. The intensely excited bodies, each full of intense electricism, gives a greater force of body ecstasy to the magnetic union, while the magnetic attraction and mergence of the energy fields gives a greater intensity of blending and flow to the excitement, making for a completely ecstatic fusion of excitement and love-mergence for each other. Such is the possible alchemy of ecstasy in the Tantra.
As the electricism and magnetism combine and blend together, the two are not always distinguishable in the experience. What is most important is getting fully involved with your lover’s sensual and sexual energies, getting into the experience with him or her, and getting into the love and enjoyment of their body. This becomes an emotional enjoyment, as well as a sensual or sexual enjoyment. One feels a greater emotional connection with the lover, which feels to be a magnetic love between oneself and the other. This an emotional love magnetism, distinguished from a magnetic attraction to just the lover’s body or sexual energy.
This can also be called a `higher magnetism’, in the dual sense that it’s source is from the heart centre `above’ the sexual centre and also that it encompasses the sexual energy. This higher magnetism feels to be a magnetism of emotional love, which builds between the lovers through their enjoyed involvement, their unconditional acceptance of each other, their unconditional giving to each other, and their experiences of shared union.
This love is fully natural, in that it is not considered as a duty or obligation to the other, like something one feels they have to do. Within this love, each lover is open to how the other gives and to how the love experience will spontaneously unfold. Each lover is ready and open to new experiences of loving, ready and open to receiving and enjoying gifts of love from the other. And each lover is ready and wanting to give love and enjoyment to the other, without any conditions of reciprocation. The lover just wants to give to the other, without any conditional concern that the other give back in any certain manner. There is still hope for receiving gifts of love from the other, but this does not condition or effect the giving. There is no fixed agreement that one should receive this or that experience from the other; yet there is a complete trust, within this love, that one will receive all the love the other has to give.
So the activity of love is based on trust, trust in the spontaneous nature of love’s giving and enjoyment. The lovers in the tantra need to give of themselves to this higher feeling of love, which involves coming into the trust of love. It also involves the allowing of feeling love for the other, the allowing of this special feeling or emotion to flow through the experience of loving.
This blends with the sexual magnetism to produce a higher ecstasy of enjoyment involving one’s whole being. Blending the conscious emotion of love with the sexual magnetism and excitement is truly bringing all of oneself into the experience and opening oneself to a completely fulfilling ecstasy of coming to total union.
Without this opening of love and the allowing of its expansion within the love experience, the ritual experience of tantra is incomplete. Also, experiences of the higher spiritual powers or divine beings cannot unveil without this opening to love, this trusting in love, and finally, this being in love.
The allowing of love to enter can begin, either at the very beginning of the ritual or during the ritual. If there is already an experienced bond of love between the partners, then this can actually inspire immediate sexual magnetic attraction and electrical excitement, and the ritual can rocket forth inspired from the love centre, the sexual and love magnetism already blending and building. Yet, if the partners have not sufficiently developed their love connection or magnetism, or if they are new to each other, then the ritual may proceed from the sexual attraction and excitement, as spontaneously or intentionally produced. i
Emotional love can either develop further from its inspired beginning or it can open in the middle stages of the ritual. When emotional love is magnetically strong between the lovers the sexual magnetism will build a greater force and sexual excitement will naturally be inspired. The sexual energies will seem to build out of this emotional love. They will seem to draw forth from this higher magnetism. They will come alive and be enhanced by this love connection. The love magnetism actually brings forth the sexual energy by raising it upward, as though it were rising to meet the magnetic centre above. This love magnetism of the heart pulls the sexual energy up into itself for its greater enjoyment.
You see, the sexual energy increases the joy of the emotional love centre, it feeds the love, and makes the love more powerful and intense. As the sexual enters the emotional love, that love experiences its greatest enjoyment and ecstasy. It becomes not only a magnetic love but an excited love as well. So, the emotional love centre can bring the sexual energies to itself for enjoyment and expansion of the love experience. The sexual increases the love enjoyment and it nourishes the love expansion. We can thus say that the love centre brings forth the sexual energies and draws them to itself for its greater enjoyment and as energy food for its expansion. The sexual nourishes emotional love. The love draws the sexual to itself, then assimilates its energy and, in a sense, transforms it to love, though it feels, nonetheless, highly sexual, exciting and enjoyable.
In esoteric tantra the spiritual soul of our being can most simply be thought of as a pure consciousness or as an eternal body of light, which is distinguished from the body's sexual energy and activity. The light-consciousness of our soul is the power of Shiva within us. The vital/sexual energy of the body is Shakti within us. Both are meant to be in intimate relation with each other.
Shiva awakens Shakti with His intentional and penetrating power of Light, destroying the structures of belief, expectation, and the thinking mechanism, leaving Shakti naked in Her pure nature of sensuality and desire.
Shakti has both a fiery and watery quality. She is electrically exciting to Shiva and charges Him up with Her vital, primal sexual energy, which further feeds and enlivens the consciousness of Shiva. She is also watery in that She spreads a gentle, flowing quality throughout the bodies of the lovers, and absorbs Shiva consciousness into Her.
Shiva begins to melt or dissolve into Shakti’s pervading and absorbing essence. At the same time, Shakti begins to rise toward Shiva, in desire to dissolve in union with His light while giving Him all Her energy essence. She rises in love for Him, offering Her body of Love essence to His awaiting tongue to taste Her and mouth to eat Her. She gives Herself as sacrificial food to Him, and He takes Her with great vigorous passion, with great thirst and hunger. He draws Her up to Him with His magnetic intentional power, as She surrenders Herself to Him, which feeds and charges Him with ever greater passion to subsume Her in His Light Magnificence.
So, Shakti rises up to charge Shiva with Her vital electric and absorbing energy, and this empowers Shiva to awaken Shakti even more with His Conscious Light and draw her upward into His Transcendence. Finally, Shakti is assimilated into the spiritual Light of Shiva, as the body becomes lost in pure consciousness of Being, while Shiva is absorbed into the body of Shakti, as pure consciousness is immersed in the body ecstatic. Here, there is complete union of Shiva and Shakti. There is complete unity of body and pure consciousness, as both have infused with each other.
This is the complete orgasm of mind-body, which is experienced as both ecstasy and transcendence. It is both life and death, a living ecstasy and an annihilation of self. It is the return to Unity. The tantric couple remains in this blissful ecstatic Nirvana, which feels like an eternal moment of timeless experience, until consciousness begins to come down again to a more recognizable realm of experience. Here, the couple regains some distinctive awareness of their breath, their feelings, and their body sensations, while still knowing the depth of their Union. In this twilight state of Nirvana, the blissful energy is felt to pulsate between the couple and their bodies feel to be completely absorbed by the Nirvana essence, the sweet glowingness of Union.
This glowing stage of realized union is the sunset or autumn stage of the love ritual, when the energies that heightened to the peak of ecstatic bliss during the heat of the summer stage can now relax and settle into the body. In these moments the couple assimilates into their being the ecstatic experience of union, allowing its sweet essence to fill their whole bodies, hearts and mind.
So in this stage, the experience has come down just a bit from the fire of intensity and the completely mind-blowing Nirvana. It has settled down into a sweet, gentle, blissful, glow of union, which radiates throughout the body. Here, the couple remains in union, experiencing themselves as one mind, one heart, and one body, while the two breaths find a rhythmic harmony together. Consciousness becomes more gently focused on the feeling of union in the heart, the joyousness of the breath as life, and the sensation of blissful energy scintillating throughout the body. The breath is conscious, as though the breath were aware of itself. With each in-breath the lovers assimilate into their body more of the sweet union essence and joy of the experience, and with each out-breath this absorbed essence is allowed to radiate and spread itself through the heart and body of each other.
iendnote
In the initiatory tradition of tantra, the partners of the group ritual were often, sometimes intentionally, strangers, at least in love-making. The man would not be matched with his usual partner or wife, but with an unfamiliar woman, known as Parakiya. The reasons for this are many. One is because the ritual was supposed to have an aura of unfamiliarity, unexpectedness, and mystery to enhance its feeling of being unusually special, sacred, or para-normal. It was also because tantra emphasises the general attitude of opening to new experiences, transgressing the norms, and non-judgement as to who is better, more attractive, or of the right social group. The principle emphasis of the tantra is the embracing of all life and transforming our petty prejudices by allowing these into experience. More esoterically, it was because the ritual was supposed to enact the archetypal evolution of consciousness, such that it ought to begin with the purely primordial sexual stimulation and awakening of the lowest centres and allow this to rise naturally through the ritual toward the final aim of the sexual energy united fully with the higher centres and pure consciousness itself. These were the main reasons why many Tantric practices involved unmarried strangers and specifically disallowed married partners. These were rituals with certain purposes, which may have some value at rare times even in today’s world, but it is not the usual practical case for most yogis of the tantra.
Two people may meet one another and both wish to experience and practice the tantra, in which case their sexual experience will begin without the deeper emotional love that experienced partners have together. This can actually be a very positive beginning to the relationship and sex can begin as a sacred act. But sexual tantra is most fulfilling when the emotional love has well been developed, because it can begin at this higher stage and evolve ever further. We should note here, so that there is not misunderstanding, that the traditional yogi of tantra did, indeed, have a special love partner of deepening emotional connection, his own beloved Sati, and the ritual of strangers was only an occasional practice.