Identifying the opposing values that underpin these two world-views can help us to become more aware of where our experience of tantra (pleasure, purpose, power) may be limited by our conditioning.

Colonisation is not just something that is done to land and places, it infiltrates our minds and bodies, too. Colonisation is a process of systematically appropriating a domain for one’s own use. In the case of the systematic colonisation we experience as people in the modern world, it’s the appropriation of our minds and bodies for the sake of economic gain.

The ideals of colonisation (productivity, sameness, emotional regulation/suppression (getting on with it) are our greatest barrier to tantra as a spontaneously arising experience.

disentangling from COLONISATION

When all our striving, analysis, judgment, labelling and comparing is set aside, and we’re no longer suppressing our emotions or denying our senses, we immediately have more intimacy with what is and therefore we begin to be in tantra as a lived experience.

You already know that from the way you suddenly become more attuned to pleasure and purpose when you are on holidays. When you step out of the confines of a life based on productivity and doing, and start to enter a state of just being, appreciating, curiosity, everything is suddenly richer, we form deeper connections, we see more beauty in the world, we feel like we know ourselves better and have more clarity.

Tantra is a primordial spirituality. It is a spirituality based on our innate experience as humans. It is knowledge that is accessible to all if we know where and how to look, and we can become quiet enough and reverent enough.

IN A DECOLONISED WORLD, TANTRA IS LIFE.

living a more tantric life

To live a more tantric life, our work is not only to LEARN and EMBODY the practices of tantra but also to DISMANTLE the colonial systems that keep us separate from the tantric experience: intimacy with all of life.

For me, on the micro-level of how I live, it looks like:

• deriving my worth from my presence (not my output)

• creating for fun and pleasure, honouring my subtle gifts and interests, not just the ones I can profit from

• continually engaging with diverse world-views, stories and knowledges with openness and curiosity.

• acknowledging my privilege

• allowing my full spectrum of emotions and thoughts without making them ‘wrong’

• rest and slowing down as the norm, not as a last resort.