Be the Change You Want to See in the World: It’s an Inside Job

World change is a tricky thing. Every person on the planet has their own idea of what world change ought to look like. There are as many opinions as there are people. How do we honor and respect our individual and cultural diversity and still come to agreement on what is best for the earth and for humankind? How does each of us as an individual have a healthy relationship with the world outside ourselves?  Gandhi already told us when he said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Peace in the world means peace in me, in my mind and body, in my awareness. Tantric Healing involves whatever we must do in order be the peace, love, and abundance within ourselves that we want to see in the world. It’s an inside job.

180 Degrees

When each of us does our own work, finds the way home to our own self, we come to realize that we are many voices with one Source and, instead of discord, we hear harmony in our diversity. This is a major change in perception, radical, like doing a 180. It’s a complete turnaround in our self concept. Our current paradigm urges us to pour our energy and attention into other people, knowledge, possessions, prestige, and so on, maintaining that these things will make us feel happy and complete. We invest our energy into these things and become identified with them, attached to the point of fearing that we’re incomplete without them. We could call this focus on outer things, living from the outside in. Doing a 180 degree turnaround would mean that we live from the inside out.

Living From the Inside Out

Living from the inside out does not mean to withdraw and become hermit-like. On the contrary, living from the inside out involves full participation in worldly matters, but with a key difference. When we draw our identification with the outer world away from those outer things and bring our attention back in to our self, we begin to notice and deal with all the obstacles we’ve constructed in order to avoid sitting comfortably with our own self. We begin to realize that in various ways, we’ve been using our attachment, and possibly obsession, with outer things to cover up our own discomforts with being in our own bodies and minds, our own lack of peace. We can’t expect to create peace in our world when we’re ignoring the conflict that’s going on in our own bodies, minds, and hearts.

If we’re serious about being conscious co-creators and changing the world for the better, then we must find out for ourselves what it means to be the change we want to see in the world. Our work is to heal ourselves of the perception that we are incomplete, and realize that love and peace and wholeness (health) come from within. This is the natural state of things; the Source of life, the energy that informs a fetus how to grow and that holds solar systems together moves within all things, including us. When we truly change our perception and start living from the inside out, we can’t help but recognize that love is within us and all around us. Our actions in the world will have a completely different effect when we have done this healing work in ourselves.

We Fear Change

As we heal ourselves from the inside out, we become aware of and have the opportunity to clear our subconscious belief systems. This is important because it is our subconscious beliefs and resulting thoughts and actions that we create with, and no matter how much we want peace and love in the world, if we have a subconscious belief system that says it’s not possible, our efforts will be frustrated. Even though we want to see things change for the better, we fear change at a deep level and much of our unconscious machinery is geared toward and has some big kinetic energy devoted to maintaining the status quo.

No matter how positive we may be, at least some of our subconscious beliefs are negative. Of course we’re afraid of death, but even worse, we’re afraid to die alone and destitute with broken bodies and broken minds. War, suffering, starvation, and poverty only seem to verify that our fears are grounded in reality. If it’s not negativity then maybe it’s arrogance. For example, in our enthusiasm to change the world into a better place, we may become overzealous, attempting to convert others and coerce them into taking on world views, beliefs, and methods that are not their own. Turning around belief systems that influence us to behave in ways such as these often requires a leap of faith.

The Source (of-Everything) created the double helix of our DNA and the Orion nebula. Do we really think humans can do better? Our responsibility is to know ourselves and heal ourselves well enough to recognize and allow the Source to move through us without obstruction. We allow it to create through us. Let’s take the leap of faith; we can do it.

For starters, go easy with yourself and have a plan when things aren’t going smoothly. Here are some guidelines when you find yourself with some inner turmoil. Stop, sit back, and breathe. Feel your body. Accept what you feel inside you and stay with it. Take care of yourself and be open to examining your doubts and fears, your losses and regrets. Notice if you want to blame someone, pretend it’s not there, or minimize it. Feel your inner state as much as you can handle, get to know how you feel in this intimate way, and then, when you’re ready, allow the feeling to dissipate. As it releases, you may gradually notice that you feel different, better. Some space has opened up within you. You know yourself better and the situation seems brighter. Breathe in this light and let it fill you. Know that your deepening intimacy with yourself allows you to deepen your intimacy with everything and everyone else. Your hopefulness has been restored and you have faith in yourself and the greater consciousness that is within you and all around you.

Be Safe for Yourself

There’s only one place in the world where you can be sure of having safety, non-judgment, and complete acceptance and that’s within yourself. Your first responsibility is to yourself and to do your part, to take care of what needs to be healed in you so that you know and experience true self acceptance and self love. It’s an inside job. It may seem selfish, but if everyone did this much, we would know we’re okay. It’s that simple.

Peace and Love,
Amelia
Tantric Healer
www.TantricHealing.net

Totally Tantric

David Abram gave a reading here in town last night on his latest book, Becoming Animal. I was struck by the Totally Tantric point of view he describes.


In his first book he shares a revolutionary observation about perception. Though we know because of science that the earth rotates on its axis and orbits around the sun with the rest of the planets, the immediate experience of our bodies is that the earth is a stable, unmoving ground and the sun moves across the sky from east to west and stars create pictures in the night sky. This perception rises out of the immediate experience of the sensual body, the evidence of which we can find in our language when, for example, we continue to say that the sun rises and sets. He points out that our intellectual insistence that scientific knowledge is more valid than immediate sensory knowledge serves to separate us from the earth and all that lives with us in her.


In Becoming Animal, Abram writes about his contemplations on what is mind. He is exploring the nature of awareness/mind, and recognizing that what we think of as "reality" or "the world" is mind. We exist within, not only the body of the earth, but in the mind of the earth. Everything is awareness and is "alive": blades of grass, a rock, a bird, a chair, the wall of a building, and us. All things can be recognized as representing thought within mind; the quality of the environment on any given day can be seen as sharing with us the state of mind within which we perceive ourselves.


Abram makes the connection linguistically among the words air, atmosphere, breath, inspiration, and spirit, pointing out that the air is part of the earth, and concluding that earth itself is spirit. The spirit that animates us is not from somewhere far away, outside of us, or even above us. Spirit is the medium in which we swim. As we come into relation with all the various aspects of earth or spirit, we are kaleidoscopic aspects of Spirit coming into relation with Itself and our bodily senses provide us with rich, valuable, and immediate information about this experience.


There's no need to deny the knowledge of science but equally no need to deny the immediate sensual perception of our body/world. We can hold both perceptions in awareness and allow them to integrate and relate with one another. Totally Tantric! This is the intention that a Dakini or Tantrika holds, to live as one who walks two worlds, or holds the many truths in awareness simultaneously, and negotiates those worlds of awareness with agility.


The practices of Tantra and exercises in Tantric Healing lead us to a similar awareness of the self, the body, and the world. Tantra walks us through whatever we must do to become more engaged and aware of the sensory experience of our body/mind/world. This walk will take us through inspiring vistas and pleasing grottos, but it will also surprise us with ground-shaking states of mind that storm upon us unexpectedly, wreaking havoc on our individual earth.


As an individual soul is like a drop of water in the ocean of the great soul, an individual mind is in the great mind. An individual body is also like a drop of water in the ocean of the greater body in which it exists, the body of the earth.

Peace and Love,
Amelia
Tantric Healer
http://www.tantrichealing.net/

Tantric Healing Revealed

In order for you to make an informed decision about what type of Tantric Healing is right for you, it is important to be aware of the range of possibilities available. It is also crucial that you take responsibility for your healing by discussing with your prospective healer what type of work is in their repertoire and area of expertise.


The philosophy of A Course in Miracles suggests that before you can experience universal love, you must first remove the obstacles and judgments that keep it veiled, meaning that before you can perceive your universal body/self, you must first love every particle of your physical body/self. Tantric Healing provides the means to pierce the veil, offering techniques and experiences that move you through the obstacles to self love. After lovingly reclaiming your total self and receiving the gift of the universe, you will discover a whole new life awaits you.

Love is the power that heals and love is the highest priority for a Tantric healer. The real goal of Tantra is to cultivate love and reverence for the other with whom the Tantric experience is shared. (We tend to think of "other" as a person, but the other can also be a thing, such as a car, food, a home, the world, time, and ultimately the self.) This priority is the same whether the encounter is for Tantric healing purposes or for a sacred sexual interaction. For those seeking healing for the body/mind in general, or more specifically for sexual matters, Tantric Healing offers options that cannot be found in traditional therapies.

Initially, a Tantric healer will employ hands-on healing methods which involve techniques of physical body work and energy work such as, Reiki, Accupressure, Cranio-Sacral Release, emotional release, toning, breathwork, and others. For some people, all healing sessions may remain within this realm. No one type of Tantric Healing is more or less effective than another, and mutual decisions are made responsibly on an individual basis.

Another phase of Tantric healing specifically involves Tantric arts. The Tantric healer may choose, while maintaining a clinical approach, to work more sensually with his or her client, doing body work that is more specifically focused on the pelvic area. This can include techniques previously mentioned, as well as sensual massage, sacred spot massage, and other exercises in arousal.

If it is deemed appropriate, a Tantric healer may choose to be a sexual surrogate, sharing some form of sacred sexuality, growing the ability to experience and share love and intimacy. This choice is not common, in fact quite rare, and must be made with awareness and integrity. Maintaining the foundation of love and respect, the Tantric healer sets healthy boundaries and exemplifies and utilizes the essential principles of sacred sexuality: Safety, Responsibility, Communication, Trust and Surrender.

When I love myself, I am capable of loving you. Acceptance and release of what stands in the way of being intimately and unconditionally loving and present is the ultimate healing. We find our connection to ourselves, to others and, most importantly, to Spirit. We come to perceive all things as sacred, including sexuality.


Peace and Love,
Amelia
Tantric Healer
http://www.tantrichealing.net/

Tantra Is an Approach to Life

Tantra is an approach to life that essentially says there is one energy or force that pervades everything and that all of life is sacred. From a Tantric point of view, healing and personal growth are accomplished by seeking out and releasing that which blocks our awareness of this essential truth, deepening into our experience of this truth, and bringing it forth in all aspects of our lives. The fact that we have pain and struggle is due to the fact that we do not consistently remember the sacredness of life (our completely integrated place in the cosmos) and actually feel disconnected from it.

Tantric Healing offers a way to bring unity to all levels of our being. By opening up to deeper levels of self love, we are then able to encompass greater amounts of love and compassion for all that we believe we’re disconnected from and that seem to be outside of us, our partners, friends, family members, careers, possessions, pets, plants, the world, and so on. Self love deepens into unconditional love for all of life, which is the ultimate vehicle, the healing medicine that creates miracles within us. This fundamental shift resonates into all aspects of our lives, creating a deeper, richer sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, offering us the confidence to know we are capable of reaching our potential and accomplishing our dreams.

Peace and Love,
Amelia
Tantric Healer
http://www.tantrichealing.net/