Shiva Sutra
Tantra is often referred to as ‘technology’, a technology that uses the body to raise consciousness. But what is too often forgotten is that if you focus simply on the body, that is biology. If you focus on opening up to the cosmos, that is yoga.
In the Shiva Sutra, Shiva says to Parvati,
“Do not be led by the instincts of your sex and biology – that only offers a limited possibility. There is another way to fulfilment.”
This reminds me of Patanjali’s Sutra 2 in the Yoga Sutra, Yogash Chitta Vritti Nirodha, where we work to manage the body, breath and mind to end the mental cycle of repetitive thoughts and our attachments. We are attached to our body. We are attached to our sex. But we are not our body and we are not our sex.
Seeing ourselves as having a body and a sex is a long way from thinking we are our body and our sex. This is a very limited form of identity that has, as I wrote in Imagination and Shiva-linga, resulted in the masculine / feminine principle becoming associated with male / female biological conditions, strengthening the very vritti (obstacle) we are aiming to transcend.
It is important we recognise that the mystical symbol of unity, or union, is not sex (or, indeed, becoming heterosexual) but becoming Ardhanareshwara (literally, half man / half woman, Shiva / Shakti, but metaphorically, beyond gender, enlightenment, liberation). For only us humans need liberation. Plants and animals already ‘are’. As humans we constantly struggle with our ignorance.
Sadhguru, in AdiYogi: The Source of Yoga, says;
Ignorance is boundless.
Knowledge has bounds.
If our knowledge is wide,
it usually means,
our prejudices are just as wide.
The Sage Bhringi is used to illustrate this point, where his devotion becomes completely exclusive as he attempted to circle Shiva without including Shakti. Shiva eventually merged with Shakti bringing Bhringi to his senses, realising how myopic his devotion had become; how literal.
Our role then in Yoga is to shift from this literalism to a more expansive and inclusive conception of who we are and how we live our lives. That is, were we end our mental cycle of repetitive thoughts and attachments, going beyond this compulsiveness to a higher state of consciousness. This is not, as some people imply, to get rid of the mind, but rather, to carry the mind with you, without becoming ensnared by it.
Bringing it all together
Seeing the body as the technology to raise consciousness; seeing the body as the temple, tells us it is more than biology. It is divine. And while we access that divinity through the senses, this can too easily become a repetitive compulsion, an attachment that fuels our ignorance. To counter this we need to align our senses to a higher vibration through our breath, movement and posture. Using the body to move beyond the mind-body.
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Message me direct if you are interested in yoga, therapeutic yoga, kundalini tantra yoga, tantra practices, trauma-informed coaching, spiritual coach, gay coach, mindfulness and behavioural coaching, Reiki or stress management robert.pinktantra@gmail.com
See my personal development / personality profiling book DISCover the Power of You published through John Hunt Publishing Ltd, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-78535-591-2
And for those who enjoy historical fiction, stories of underrepresented life’s, see my first novel Fermented Spirits published through Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022. ISBN-13: 978-1398437159