Heart of Tantric Sex (8 page)

How the Love Keys will help you change your relationship for the better

To help us shed the tough layer of our insensitive uneducated past, Tantra suggests three ways that we can explore our sexuality to effectively cleanse or de-condition ourselves of unconscious sexual patterns which affect the quality of love in our lives. The Love Keys will assist you in this. The first is to challenge the habit of going for orgasms. Also notice that we are basically absent and ahead, and therefore relatively unconscious, when we do go for it. The second is to make a shift from doing to being in sex. Notice too that even if we are not interested in orgasm per se, we feel nonetheless driven to do something in order to have a sexual experience. The third is to restore our original genital sensitivity (magnetic intelligence) through relaxation and consciousness of the present moment.

This is an interdependent process. The more you challenge your patterns, the more easily the genital sensitivity is reestablished. The more awareness you place on your intrinsic genital intelligence, the easier it is to change your patterns. Some days you might focus on one aspect, some days on another, and some days focus on all at once. It is a complete re-education in sex that happens through making love and not simply by mental understanding. With the practice of relaxing into the sexual energy, and learning to "be," many old emotional patterns, habits, reactions, and problems cease to be motivated. The thrust toward unconsciousness and the energy it consumes is gradually retraced into the silver thread of consciousness weaving in the body.

 T 
HE EYES ARE ENORMOUSLY SEXY. Often when they meet another's eyes, you will find the surge of sex within you. If you have ever had the opportunity to lie beside your lover simply meeting each other through the eyes, it can be an enormous turn-on and an important part of foreplay. This is because the eyes are powerful channels for sexual energy. They reveal our nakedness and our innocence and expose us to the reality of the present moment. This helps us to be authentic. With eyes open we know where we are and who we are with.

When this channel through the eyes is opened, sexual exchange with your partner becomes more dynamic and vital. It is understood that 80 percent of our energy is projected out of the eyes in normal vision, thrown out and released in looking out through them. This tension is easy to see in people as a lack of structural alignment, where the head and ears lie unnaturally well forward of the shoulders. The eyes, however, are designed to receive an image and we can see without making any effort to see. It happens anyway. The eye absorbs the picture. This implies that we lose, or leak, a great deal of energy out of the eyes in looking. It happens in our daily lives, as we continually search around the environment, keeping an eye on what is happening, interesting distractions, some novelty somewhere, one step ahead of ourselves. Our eyes are more related to the mind and its restlessness, while there is no relationship whatsoever between our vision and the inner dimensions of the body.

Making and keeping eye contact

So, too, in lovemaking. At first when I started to keep my eyes open, meeting the eyes of my lover, I felt awkward and shy, so exposed that I recall laughing in my nervousness and embarrassment. I felt so completely artificial. I could as easily have cried, with the painful revelation that I had never truly been "here" before, been genuine before. I had been accustomed to making love either with my eyes closed or in the dark, and not really available to my lover here and now. But after a short while of experimenting I got used to it, and open eyes soon became an essential energetic connection to myself and my lover. Without it, I felt curiously absent.

In our society we are often reluctant to look someone straight in the eye. We speak to each other while we look around and away, at the mouth, at their shoes, their hair, the baby. Seldom do we hold each other's eyes for a few seconds or longer. We sometimes even interpret eye contact as an intrusion, an invasion of our privacy, or a challenge and exertion of power or authority.

Even if maintaining eye contact while making love feels uncomfortable at first, I encourage you to stay with it because there is so much to be gained. It is the most wonderful sharing of energy and you will often feel an immediate sexual response within you. Eye contact has also helped me to create presence in my lovemaking by recognizing the masks of my personality. After I had laughed and wept my way through them, I felt a freshness and it seemed there was less haze covering the picture around me. A natural intimacy arose, a feeling of closeness, and the sense of isolation dissolved. Then I began to try and receive my partner through my eyes, taking him within my body as I deepened my relaxation. Whenever I reached a point where I felt that open eyes were hindering the consciousness in my vagina, I closed them in order to look deep down into by body with my inner eye.

Seeing and being seen

Making eye contact is an art in itself. I found it useful to begin by allowing my eyes to have what can be called "soft vision." This means that I allowed everything in through my eyes, a receptive quality. In normal vision we are looking from in to out, but you can consciously switch this phenomenon and try looking from out to in as though the world is looking at you through your own eyes. Like windows, they are simply here and open, receiving. The rays of sunlight shine through the window and into the room. The world penetrates you through your eyes and into your body. You allow everything in your vision to come into you through your eyes, and they become receptive, soft and inviting. When your eyes meet those of your lover, when you look at each other softly and lovingly, you are allowing yourself to be seen. This contact, the awareness of the immediate, brings you quickly into the present moment, and you are here, making love with your partner, rooted in the experience.

There is a simple way to practice this on your own. Go to a park and look at a tree. Don't just glance at it, really look. Appreciate the leaves, the green, the aliveness. Now close your eyes and relax for a while. When you open them again, imagine that you are no longer looking at the tree but the tree is
looking at you,
and invite it into you, through your eyes. See how deeply you can allow the green livingness to enter you. Absorb it into the cells of your body. Then try it with the open blue sky, a puffy cloud, a glorious sunset. Allow yourself to be seen and penetrated by nature. Notice how this practice intensifies your awareness, dissolves your boundaries, increases your sense of connectedness to the rest of the world.

Now, with enough light in the room to see, look at your lover's eyes softly. Choose the eye with which you feel the most natural and at ease. Allow yourself to "be" and be seen. Receive the energy through your eyes, taking it into your body. Invite your lover into yourself, through the eyes. In fact you are receiving the backflow of your own energy, and when this energy is inverted it falls back on the heart, filling and expanding it. It also resonates in the third eye. Now spend time with the other eye. Notice the different qualities in the right and left eyes, the varying colors and configurations. Which eye challenges you more? Which one is softer? Which one awakens the sexual response in you? Stay with each eye for a while and learn to feel comfortable with both of them. Don't flicker back and forth rapidly from one eye to the other. This can be disconcerting for your lover. It can happen if either of you is nervous, so help each other to relax, perhaps by stroking or caressing. To be unsure at this stage is very natural. Do what you can to release any feelings of pressure. Give each other a chance to close your eyes peacefully, and just breathe deeply for a while.

It is important not to stare at the other, since this creates a sense of strangeness, of separation, not one of closeness or contact. The idea is not to scrutinize someone, but rather to allow the other in, and let yourself to be seen. When you stare, you have no presence behind your eyes; you are merely using your will. Blink, be natural, be personal. Don't work too hard thinking you have to keep your eyes open at all times. You may even find it impractical to keep your eyes open when the body positions are such that your eyes are not in easy range of those of your lover.

Close your eyes if you need to

As a general guideline,
make eye contact when you can and when you can't, don't.
Sometimes it is necessary to realign with yourself, with your center, by closing your eyes and feeling exactly what is happening inside the body. The point is not about keeping the eyes open; it is about using the eyes as a way of being here, more available and present. Feel free to close them at any time when you feel discomforted or sleepy, or when you need to be with yourself for a few minutes. When you do choose to close your eyes in this way, it is important to communicate this to your partner, so he or she is not left in confusion, wondering where you have gone.

Remember that using the eyes is only a key to support you, not to undermine you. If opening your eyes makes you feel so awkward that your body seems miles away, it's better to close them and feel comfortable with yourself. When you feel rooted in your body again, then try opening your eyes again and see how it feels. If you find your eyes burning or weeping, this indicates a great deal of tension held in the eyes. Don't worry; it will pass as your eyes begin to relax with the sensation of being exposed. Always experiment and find the way that works best for you. Hold your faces apart at a distance that feels comfortable to both of you. Some people have difficulties with focus at close range. Expressing honestly what feels right and what doesn't can help you to relax, create the present and become aware of what is happening now.

Holding the space between you

I found that if I faced my partner, made love face to face, it helped me enormously to be present. This sounds obvious because with eye contact we
are
facing each other, but it is more subtle than this. By "facing" I mean allow your faces to be in ongoing proximity, inches apart, with an awareness of the closeness of your partner's face to your face. Use this when eye contact is not possible and also generally when you need a rest from direct eye contact. The eyes can hold the space between the faces, absorbing the skin, the chin, the cheeks, brows, forehead, profile. This brings incredible sensuality into love. I noticed in contrast, that when I nuzzled my face into the neck, shoulder, or chest of my partner I was dramatically less present. It felt familiar and comforting, but it was not a challenge, so easy for me to drift away. The instant I drew back into physical alignment, bringing my head and spine into one line, my face in close range of my lover's face, the effect of regaining consciousness was wonderful as presence entered the air. I found that when I crossed the mid-line of his body, leaned forward beyond his ear, moving my face away from his, or turning my face to the side, I lost contact to this moment. Because of the familiarity and associations of a certain way of embracing it is possible to lose presence, simply because we are accustomed to the embrace. Use the eyes to bridge the gap between you, bringing heightened sensuality as consciousness filters through the body.