When you start contemplating bringing Tantra into your life it can be hard to know where to start, but it can be as easy as starting with a mundane cup of tea. Yes, that’s right, you can start your Tantric Journey with a cup of tea! Because part of Tantric teachings and practice is finding beauty and desire in the mundane; tapping into your ability to feel pleasure and desire in everyday things.
Desire and Pleasure
Desire and pleasure are not to do with sex, but in our modern Western Culture desire is ultimately perceived as being lust and lust is seen as being sexual. Now it may well be that you feel desire when you look at a beautiful man or woman, but the sensations of impulsive, sudden and unconsidered desire; longing, excitement, anticipation, yearning, tenderness and the headiness of elation are all sensations which can be transposed onto the most mundane of objects or activities like eating a digestive biscuit. Something as simple as eating a plain biscuit can become something blissful and orgasmic when you begin the process of transformation of desire.
It’s about a way of life, about approaching the world with an open heart and a willingness to embrace desire as an essential component of existence. It is about enjoying life in a pure and blissful state and tapping into our innate ability to feel and experience pleasure. It is the energy that motivates us to reaching out and connect with life—it is a potent force when allowed to flow freely and readily through our bodies.
Lera Zujeva and Tea
I caught up with Lera Zujeva, someone who knows all about living blissfully. Lera practices the art of taking tea ceremoniously and when I asked her about taking tea she said, ‘’I love tea, tea can be a totally orgasmic experience’’. There was an overwhelming sense of calm emanating from Lera and as she talked about tea her whole face lit up enthusiastically. ‘It can be hard to fit meditation into our busy lives ‘, she said, ‘but we can usually find time to drink tea and tea gives us the perfect opportunity to calm down and focus and it is such a beautiful and peaceful way to bring meditation back into our daily lives. Many spiritual teachers, such as Osho, Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddha all talked about tea and how drinking it slowly and with awareness can lead you to enlightenment, or at the very least – to seeing who you really are and experiencing harmony in your life.’’
Lera offers Bespoke Tea Tours, Tea Workshops, Tea Ceremonies, Private Tea Events and Tea and Energy Healing Sessions. I have never before encountered anyone as enthusiastic about tea before, but she explained that the feelings of elements and desire and pleasure could be transferred to anything. As she sat with her hands wrapped around a cup of steaming tea, she appeared to shudder excitedly with anticipation, ‘’Tea is orgasmic!’’ she exclaimed, taking a sip. She gave me a satisfied grin and said, ‘’ Tea Ceremony is all about feeling, seeing, tasting, smelling. If we are in our heads we are not able to experience Tea Ceremony and enjoy Tea in its full potential. Hearing the sound of boiling water in a kettle, Tea leaves falling into the teapot, water pouring into the teapot from the kettle, feeling the clay bowl in our hands, its surface, it’s warmth, sensing aroma of the tea rising above the bowl, taking the first sip, tasting tea, feeling how it flows into us, into our bodies and how the Tea affects us. Tea creates focus, alertness, relaxation, and cultivates awareness’’.
Tapping into your feelings
What Lera describes about, feeling, seeing, tasting and smelling is such an important element in living a blissful life. We are all born with these senses, but so often we do not take time to consider an object or experience using all our senses. This is a fundamental lesson, because once you have started really tapping into your feelings of desire and pleasure you need to shift your focus away from the object of your desire and onto the feelings themselves. Really, take notice how positive, blissful, desiring makes you find in both mind and body; then consider the fact that these wonderful feelings are coming from inside yourself and not from an external source.
You have generated these blissful feelings, by focusing your attention on something you desire, and you always have the power to generate them, even without an external catalyst. This is an important lesson: deep fulfillment comes from simply aligning ourselves with an energetic frequency.
So harness your sexual energy and allow the energy of desire to flow; but shift the emphasis away from the object and back to the feeling itself.
Next time we’ll look at a four step plan towards tapping into bliss, until then enjoy contemplating your desire.
If you would like to find out more about Tantric Journey, then visit our website here or if you are considering Tantric treatments click here.
