 Perhaps the biggest threat to any relationship is our unmet needs. Somehow, many of us have an inbuilt habit of giving up our needs in favor of being loved and feeling secure.
The beauty of relating with others is fulfilling each others needs. We all have needs that take us out of being self-sufficient islands! We need connection, companionship, touch, empathy...a whole bunch of great things that we receive from our relationships (including relationships with friends). So we fall in love, and it seems we have found someone who fulfills all of our needs! We love, we touch, we listen, we make love, we care about each other...all of these wonderful things that make us feel truly MET. These are the kinds of reasons we chose to commit and build something together with another person. But over time, we are likely to discover some needs here and there that are not met in this relationship, and this is when the problems begin...  A big part of the female tantric path has always been about how to awaken your wild woman. In ancient stories of Tantrikas of the past, we often hear about men who followed a monastic and meditative path meeting with wild tantric women who had been living in jungles of forests or even graveyards! There are several stories from Tibet and India that follow this trajectory. These women became their gurus, initiatresses and lovers! Often the men would leave their books, their discipline and their structure and go have wild experiences with these women! The Dakinis of ancient Tantra were wild women indeed...
 You may want to learn some tantra with your partner, but have a fear of all of your most private issues being shared in front of everyone if you join.
And this is a perfectly valid fear. I remember one time my beloved and I joined a Couples' Tantra retreat. The format was set up so that as soon as the genders were split up, each was encouraged to spill the beans about what challenges them about the other. Then when the partners returned, the facilitator invited an open sharing about what was said.  So, you've been together a while, maybe a long while, and certain things have gone a bit flat in your relationship. You both want to give it a boost and so you thought you'd try this thing called "Tantra".
But wait. Before you dive in, you should know that whereas some Tantra can give a total boost to your relationship, there are other kinds of events that can be extremely challenging and not what you thought you were signing up for! You might need to know this before you sign up for a workshop... "Ownership destroys, guardianship nourishes."  He walked into the Shakti Temple. There was a priestess in there pouring tea. She looked up at him expectantly as he entered.
He sat down and took the tea cup she passed to him "What brings your here, dear soul?" she asks. With a deep sigh he said "I need some time with a tantric priestess. My wife and I...it is finished...we love each other but the spark has died...you know how it is..." "Dear one," she replied, "I can of course bring you a priestess trained in the arts who could massage you into bliss. But let me tell you, at heart your wife is no different from a priestess." He laughed and spluttered some tea. "Do you know how many years it has been since we had any passion?" rolling his eyes. "Do you want to know why?" she said, topping up his tea cup with the thick dark liquid.  We tend to take more time to make careful agreements to keep our money safe by way of business contracts than we take to consider the safety of our own heart. In relationship, many people stumble into relating without giving much conscious thought about how to make it work or make it safe. This means that often patterns are taken on from family conditioning or cultural ideals, and may not actually be what you want or need. Many of our habits in relating actually make it unsafe to keep our hearts open, both our and our partner's...and we start wondering where the love went.
By becoming conscious about how our actions affect one another, and also the hurts we have accumulated from the past, we can start to make a Relationship Agreement Field together. This is about co-creating a safe space to expand into love together. Read on to find out how... 
Love. One would think we all just want to be in love. But the aftermath of heartbreak and betrayal can actually make us wary to open our hearts again. From the first rejection during high-school dating to marriage break-ups, heart breaks can hit us hard. It is no wonder that many people try to find ways to get their intimacy needs met without venturing into the dangerous waters of love.
Yet...intimacy rarely fulfills without love, and love is at our very core as human beings. So how can we return to love after heartbreak or betrayal?  Written after a darkness retreat of 7 full days and nights in pitch darkness...
I have written several articles about how the experience is to be in pure darkness for a solid week. However, I have not yet written about how the experience is to come out into the light after such a week. It is, yet again, another opportunity to write about non-sexual orgasmic experiences!  Which comes first? Do we need to learn to love ourselves before we can love another? OR is being loved by someone else the best way to learn self-love? It becomes a but like the chicken and the egg conundrum...
We are all familiar with the phrase: “You must first love yourself before you can love another”. There seems to be a lot of sense in it. Yet, we also know that being loved by another helps you to love yourself. The feeling of being loved validates that we are indeed lovable. There is also an overwhelming amount of evidence that people who were well-loved as children tend to more easily move into loving relationships as adults. And likewise, those abused as children are more likely to attract abuse as adults.  One thing that is coming to the public awareness right now is abuse.
Abuse is when someone takes advantage of another person who is in a more vulnerable position. They abuse their power over someone else. There are many forms of misuse of power in our world. Sadly it appears to be endemic to humanity. Wherever you see people using a position of authority to their own benefit, this is a form of abuse. They may be gaining money, influence, power, sex or some other desire. But to take advantage of others to fulfill our own needs is an abuse of power, no matter what form it takes. |
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© 2014. Shashi Solluna. All rights reserved.
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