While we have focused on the sexual aspects in these tantra lessons, we have also focused on the full scope of tantra in the main lessons. This broad coverage of tantric methods is analogous with the eight limbs of yoga. The objective has been to provide access to all practical aspects of spiritual practice, which anyone can apply with good results in modern times.

If we have done our job as self-directed practitioners, we will find both aspects of human spiritual transformation occurring and merging in us, and in daily life. This leads to a state of freedom and great loving effectiveness while fully engaged in the world. We have called it an outpouring of divine love, and also "stillness in action."

It doesn’t matter where we begin this journey. We may begin with meditation, or postures and breathing exercises, or in devotional service to another.

For a many, it begins with sex. This is why the sexual aspects of tantra have received what some may consider a disproportionate amount of attention in the AYP writings. It is because so many are drawn to spirituality via the sexual experience. Without any training or organized routine of practices, many will still find a taste of spiritual ecstasy in sexual release. Harnessing and integrating this ecstatic quality into a full-scope system of spiritual practices serves to greatly deepen and expand the experience. With rising experience, we are spurred to go deeper into our own process of human spiritual transformation.

Yes, It begins with sex for many. There is a doorway in us leading from sensuality to spirituality. When we know how to expand sensuality into our higher inner realms, we will see it dissolve into full time ecstatic bliss, and then gradually transcended to something even greater than that. We have to keep going until we find out what That is. We can only do this by becoming It. That is the journey.

While we may find a great adventure and a lot of excitement while traveling the spiritual path, ultimately, we will move beyond fixations on sensory experiences, and on the myriad inner experiences that may accompany the purification and opening that occurs in us as we advance on the path of practices. This is a "moving beyond," not a pushing away, or an artificial renunciation. It may not even represent significant changes in our daily activities. But something changes, and that is what brings the enlightenment and the freedom. It is the gradual fading of identification of our awareness with the inner and outer objects of perception.

The permanent uncaused joy that arises within us exceeds the temporary joy we may have with objects in our physical, mental and emotional environments. In fact, our perception of all objects will fluctuate, seeming "good" at times and "bad" at other times. Meanwhile, the inner joy continues all the while, once we have cultivated it in practices. Eventually, our labeling and attachment to "good and bad" melts in the permanent inner silence and radiant joy that never change, no matter what may be going on in our life.

This is not a cold dispassion that occurs, but a radiant loving dispassion that is able to give much. It certainly enriches our relationships, and our lovemaking, whenever we happen to be engaged in that way. The further we move along in our spiritual evolution, the more effective the techniques of tantric sex become. It is like that with all spiritual practices. Less becomes more. A smile or a hug can set the cosmos in motion in waves of ecstatic bliss. At least from our perspective, it comes to be experienced that way. For what is existence anyway, except what we see it to be? The methods of tantra and yoga are about elevating our seeing to the infinite, and beyond.

We come to know existence as divine polarity in constant ecstatic union. Continuous divine lovemaking occurring within us everywhere. It is the paradox of the infinite unmoving divine, forever moving in creative expression. We find we are everything and nothing at the same time, expressing and transcending everything in the endless dance of stillness. We are That.

The guru is in you.

Note: For detailed instructions on the methods of tantra in relation to the broad scope of yoga practices and the enlightenment process, see the AYP Tantra book.

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