Sacred Sexuality and Neo-Tantric Shadow
Art by Larissa Morais
There is a massive movement happening worldwide, revealing the predatory abuse and misuse of power that have run rampant among some of the most influential companies and organizations.
We’re in the midst of the #MeToo movement and the Harvey Weinstein scandal that’s exposed Hollywood's dark underbelly.
Meanwhile, there’s the sexual abuse scandal involving former Olympic doctor Larry Nassar, and the debunking of companies engaged in sexual abuse cover-ups like Amazon and Lululemon among others.
This awakening is so important, as we become ready to see and feel what was once too confronting or taboo.
While this painful truth about our collective sexual wound comes to the surface, it’s equally important for us to understand how the same energies operate in spiritual circles.
Our Collective Grail Wound
Our sexual energy is our life force. It’s entwined with soul essence, inseparable from who we are.
Art by Christian Schloe
Our sexual energy is also directly connected to our creative power — our power to magnetize, birth, commune, and co-create with life.
Somewhere along our collective evolution, a great trauma occurred that resulted in an inner split from our sexual essence.
We became separated from the power and innocence of our sexuality, and much of our sexual power was relegated to our unconscious.
Our sexuality became controlled by other forces, becoming a source of shame, a target of abuse and persecution of thousands of years.
This is the Grail wound on our beautiful planet: the abuse of our life force and sexual essence.
Whether we’re examining our collective disempowerment in the face of worldly powers, or our challenging relationship patterns, oftentimes, the root is in this loss of our soulful and sexual power.
New Age Spirituality and Neo-Tantra
In recent decades, we’ve entered a spiritual “New Age.” It’s been a powerful movement that's offered us tools, modalities, and approaches to shed our conditioning and transform our limiting beliefs.
Yet, in my personal journey, I found it fascinating to realize that many New Age spiritual teachings were actually enforcing a different form of programming. Was it that far from major world religions and their shadows? Maybe not.
Most New Age teachings I found early on in my journey were still instructing a “right” way to be. Often, it entailed some version of being mindful, accepting, forgiving, conscious, meditative, open-hearted, and ultimately, enlightened.
Many spiritual streams still contain the exact same seed of patriarchal conditioning, simply under a different disguise than what we might see in our social, cultural, and political systems.
We can recognize a patriarchal spiritual system, because it wants us to “ascend” our energy, and reveres a spirituality that disconnects us from our bodies, and from the feminine dimension of our beings — our raw feelings, our wild sexuality, our deep human nature.
Ascending into a false light encourages a form of disassociation, taking us farther away from the ower, love, and truth that live in our womb and hara.
On the flip side, there’s also been a resurgence of Tantra — a Neo-Tantra that has, for the most part, fragmented from the true essence of the Tantric path.
Today, we see a form of Neo-Tantra that’s created an alluring, glamorous form of spirituality where sexual energy is used as a tool.
Sexual Charge and Trauma in Spiritual Circles
I've run into this kind of energy over and over again in spiritual communities, workshops, events, and gatherings around the world.
Art by Ray Donley
On the outside, everything looks right — from the beautifully curated temple space to the charismatic, attractive spiritual teacher and wide-open spiritual students.
But there is a sense of a disturbing presence in the room.
In these circles, whether consciously or not, sexual energy has become a tool, a form of power that can be used to create an illusion, an appearance, a trick.
A hidden erotic charge forms a chemical attraction.
Here, sexuality is used to manipulate, entice, magnetize, and ultimately, to have power over another.
These environments are rich with intricate spiritual masks and charged sexuality that can create a sense of confusion, excitement, and intrigue.
Sexuality is powerful. Behind their veil of glamour, shadow tantrikas, tricksters, and fallen teachers utilize their sexual and spiritual power to activate their students by touching the unconscious wounds that lie in their psyches and sexual pathways.
Many of our core wounds and primal fears live within our sexual pathways, and are easily ignited when we are aroused.
When these core wounds and old traumas are activated, we can feel under the spell of a powerful energy, something overwhelming and electric that we can’t quite understand. This electric energy can sometimes be claimed as kundalini, love, or consciousness — yet it’s often the activation of trauma in the body and psyche.
The frequency of Love, true love, is unmistakable. It feels pure, true, and deeply safe. Our instinctual body can naturally pick up on the presence of a truly safe, truly sacred container.
Art by Jassy Watson
A Collective Rebirth
We’re in a collective time of menstruation and reclamation — rebirthing the wounds of the past and claiming our true birthright of freedom, love, and soulful power.
This reclaiming asks us to journey into our personal and collective Underworld, where we meet our forgotten grief and the buried memories of a visceral separation — an ancient soul loss we still remember in our bodies.
This ancestral grief can be so scary and overwhelming that it can unconsciously cause us to remain on the surface of our soul and of our lives.
Coming home to the loving power within our bodies and within our own soul instinct is the only thing that can help us to navigate these sometimes paradoxical, testing, and revealing initiations in love and power.
Coming Home to Love
Cultivating a relationship with our womb or hara allows us to be loving yet discerning, to hold healthy boundaries, to be in relationship with others while being in our power, and to establish a solid and wise container that paves the way for true union.
True power is loving, and true love is embodied wisdom — intelligent, clear-seeing, and protective when needed.
If we open our hearts without also being in our power, we can easily be fooled, misled, and disillusioned. When we’re not embodying the sacred, potent space of our womb or hara, it becomes open to other energies.
Yet, if we awaken our womb-hara and sexual power without also choosing to deeply heal our heartbreaks and soul wounds, we can end up on a path that isn’t in service to love, but instead, to another form of self-protection and power over others
Eventually, on the initiatory path of the Hero or Heroine’s Journey, we’re asked to make the choice:
Do I choose Love above all else, come what may?
Am I willing to journey through my grief and shadows, through my deepest pain, losses, and longings?
Am I ready to see the truth of who I really am?
Art by Ruysen Flores
There is a realm of pure love awaiting us with open arms — benevolent, tender, and truth-giving, ready to help us reconnect with the lost parts of our being, and to guide us home to union.
This primordial love is like a wise mother who tends to us with care and compassion, gently bringing us back into the holiness and safety of our bodies, into the simple and nourishing bounty of human relationship, and into the liberating, living flow of Nature.
From within our bodies, we can begin to access a dimension where our sexuality is returned to its original innocence, opening the magic doorway to true communion.
