10/29/2008

New Trends in Infidelity

New York Times
Oct 28, 2008

.....New studies suggest surprising changes in the marital landscape. Infidelity appears to be on the rise, particularly among older men and young couples. Notably, women appear to be closing the adultery gap: younger women appear to be cheating on their spouses nearly as often as men.

The most consistent data on infidelity come from the General Social Survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Chicago, which has used a national representative sample to track the opinions and social behaviors of Americans since 1972. The survey data show that in any given year, about 10 percent of married people — 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women — say they have had sex outside their marriage.

“Is it that men are bragging about it and women are lying to everybody including themselves?” Dr. Helen Fisher asked. “Men want to think women don’t cheat, and women want men to think they don’t cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.”

Dr. Fisher notes that infidelity is common across cultures, and that in hunting and gathering societies, there is no evidence that women are any less adulterous than men. The fidelity gap may be explained more by cultural pressures than any real difference in sex drives between men and women. Men with multiple partners typically are viewed as virile, while women are considered promiscuous. And historically, women have been isolated on farms or at home with children, giving them fewer opportunities to be unfaithful.

The General Social Survey data also show some encouraging trends, said John P. Robinson, professor of sociology and director of the Americans’ Use of Time project at the University of Maryland. One notable shift is that couples appear to be spending slightly more time together. And married men and women also appear to have the most active sex lives, reporting sex with their spouse 58 times a year, a little more than once a week.

*******************

Infidelity news and views blog

Infidelity expert Ruth Houston:
Research done by the late Dr. Shirley Glass, often referred to as the “Godmother of infidelity research”, revealed that when a husband cheats, it doesn't mean he has problems in his marriage. Over half the cheating husbands in Dr. Glass’s landmark infidelity study, said they were happy with their wives.

Houston says, “You can see from the research, that happy husbands cheat too. Unlike female infidelity, most male infidelity is unrelated to unhappiness or dissatisfaction with the cheating husband’s marriage or his mate. But despite all the research, people continue to perpetuate the myth that good marriages are immune to infidelity and happy husbands don’t have affairs.”

Houston continues, “Perpetuating this myth gives women with happy husbands or problem-free marriages a false sense of security. This almost guarantees that if their husbands have an affair, they’ll be the last to know. Approximately 50% to 70% of men cheat on their mates. At least 2/3 of the women being cheated on have no idea their husbands are having an affair. That’s 26 million unsuspecting wives -- many of whom consider themselves to be immune from infidelity – which makes them oblivious to the signs of an impending affair.
"

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David Lynch, Consciousness, Creativity & the Brain

Award-winning writer, director, and producer David Lynch discusses his films and his 30-year relationship with Transcendental Meditation, and its role in his creative process. He is joined by physicist John Hagelin, who was featured in the documentary 'What The Bleep Do We Know?' and neuroscientist Dr. Fred Travis, Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management. The program is sponsored in joint partnership by the College of Arts and Sciences and the University of Washington Alumni Association.

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9/13/2008

8/11/2008

Bettie Page Bio

Excellent documentary including uncut versions of some of Bettie’s best films from the 1950’s.

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8/10/2008

Hugs Campaign

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7/22/2008

Martha Graham and Kundalini



"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. .....

... No artist is pleased.   There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others"
                                                                                              -Martha Graham



Martha Graham was a  passionate and ecstatic dancer and choreographer, high priestess of modern dance and a perfect example of kundalini in action

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7/18/2008

Yummy Yogi Baron Babtiste



Baron is a 2nd generation Vinyasa Yoga teacher, author and inspiration in the yoga world. He has developed a highly transformative style, 'Power Yoga', intense and energizing, but not for the light weights.

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The Virtualy Perfect Lover?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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7/16/2008

Men in Their 50's Have Better Sex Lives Than Men In Their 30's

ScienceDaily — Men in their fifties are more satisfied with their sex lives than men in their thirties and forties, recording similar levels to 20-29 year-olds, according to a survey published in BJU International....
A team of experts from Norway and the USA surveyed 1,185 (87%married) men aged between 20 and 79, asking them about various aspects of their sex life, including drive, erections and ejaculation.
he men who responded to the Norwegian postal questionnaire were asked to rate their satisfaction with various aspects of their sex life on a scale of zero to four, with four representing good sexual function and no problems. Men in their twenties recorded an average overall satisfaction level of 2.79 and the second highest level was among fifty-somethings who recorded an average of 2.77. Men in their 30s only reached 2.55 and men in their forties averaged 2.72.
After the age of 59, overall satisfaction fell significantly to 2.46 for men in their sixties and 2.14 for men in their seventies....
"Our results show that although men experience more problems and less sexual function as they get older, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are less satisfied with their sex lives as a result." more

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7/12/2008

The Myth of Monogamy

Bio Medicine.org
Monogamy appears to be unnatural in the natural world

In "The Myth of Monogamy," a husband-wife scientific team contends that monogamy among animals, and humans in particular, may be the exception rather than the rule.

David Barash, a University of Washington zoologist and professor of psychology, and Judith Lipton, a Seattle psychiatrist, said the book, published by W.H. Freeman and Co. , is intended to empower people, not to condone infidelity.......

Obtaining accurate data about human infidelity is difficult because people lie about it, according to Lipton. But she said various studies indicate it is quite common, with 50 percent of men confessing to at least one affair and 30 percent to 50 percent of women admitting that behavior....

"Being monogamous is rare. If people want to do it they have to work at it," Lipton said. "It's similar to wanting to play the violin. People can love good music and aspire to play the violin. But most find it difficult and won't practice. Monogamy, like the violin, takes practice and diligence because there are so many temptations."

The authors contend that the sexes engage in infidelity for different reasons and that evidence for monogamy in human history is sketchy. Males tend to be opportunistic and have sex out of marriage because it is available and pleasurable. For women it is a way of obtaining something better than their mate, someone who may be richer, more handsome or more powerful, they said. While there is no historic record showing how prehistoric humans behaved - at least, not when it comes to their sex lives - Barash and Lipton point to numerous 20th Century anthropological and sociological studies of hunter-gatherer societies where monogamy is the overwhelming exception, not the rule. In the western world, they said, monogamy only ascended in the late Middle Ages and the Industrial Age. The rich and powerful gained the cooperation of the masses by trading some of their wealth to low class men, enabling them to have wives and a stake in society.............more

Joel Schwarz joels@u.washington.edu
University of Washington


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6/27/2008

No Thought, Best Thought, and Science Agrees


All that thinking, mental wrestling and teeth gnashing is pointless?
Zen teaches wu-nien/no-thought, this does not mean do not think, but rather, understand the futility of thinking. When you see thinking as a habit of the mind, attachment to the thought disappears, and with it all the anxiety. Thoughts are allowed to come and go, but you have no desire to grasp, analyze or judge them. Zen* practice cultivates a calm mind, and with this comes stronger intuition and 'knowing'.
And now science is offering some support to this concept....


Wall Street Journal
Get Out of Your Own Way
Studies Show the Value of Not Overthinking a Decision Fishing in the stream of consciousness, researchers now can detect our intentions and predict our choices before we are aware of them ourselves.
The brain, they have found, appears to make up its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision -- an eternity at the speed of thought.

Their findings challenge conventional notions of choice. "We think our decisions are conscious," said neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, who is pioneering this research. "But these data show that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. This doesn't rule out free will, but it does make it implausible." In ways we are only beginning to understand, the synapses and neurons in the human nervous system work in concert to perceive the world around them, to learn from their perceptions, to remember important experiences, to plan ahead, and to decide and act on incomplete information. In a rudimentary way, they predetermine our choices....

Is your freedom of choice an illusion? Your brain knows what you're going to do 10 seconds before you are aware of it, neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes and his colleagues reported recently in Nature Neuroscience. Last year In the journal Current Biology, the scientists reported they could use brain wave patterns to identify your intentions before you revealed them. Their work builds on a landmark 1983 paper in the journal Brain by the late Benjamin Libet and his colleagues at the University of California in San Francisco, who found out that the brain initiates free choices about a third of a second before we are aware of them.

Together, these findings support the importance of the unconscious in shaping decisions. Psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis and his co-workers at the University of Amsterdam reported in the journal Science that it is not always best to deliberate too much before making a choice. Nobel laureate Francis Crick -- co-discoverer of the structure of DNA -- tackled the implications of such cognitive science in his 1993 book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. With co-author Giulio Tononi, Nobel laureate Gerald Edleman explores his biology-based theory of consciousness in A Universe Of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination...more from
Wall Street Journal


"The idea that conscious deliberation before making a decision is always good is simply one of those illusions consciousness creates for us," Dr. Dijksterhuis


Wall Street Journal
Science Journal
Robert Lee Hotz
June 27, 2008


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6/26/2008

History of the Girl/Girl Thing and Are all Women Bi?

Are all women Bisexual?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2008)
— Bisexuality in women appears to be a distinctive sexual orientation and not an experimental or transitional stage that some women adopt "on their way" to lesbianism, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.....

The study of 79 non-heterosexual women over 10 years found that bisexual women maintained a stable pattern of attraction to both sexes. In addition, the research appears to have debunked the stereotype that bisexual women are uninterested in or unable to commit to long-term monogamous relationships.

"This provides further support for the notion that female sexuality is relatively fluid and that the distinction between lesbian and bisexual women is not a rigid one," Diamond wrote.

Journal article: "Female Bisexuality From Adolescence to Adulthood: Results From a 10-Year Longitudinal Study," Lisa M. Diamond, PhD, University of Utah, Developmental Psychology, Vol. 44, No. 1.

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6/25/2008

Take A Little Trip...



Awesome 7minute meditation of visual bliss....c'mon everyone has 7 minutes to spare
http://thenow.co.uk

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Bhagwan on Boundaries


Mind can accept any boundary anywhere. But the reality is that, by its very nature, existence cannot have any boundary, because what will be beyond the boundary - again another sky. That's why I'm saying skies upon skies are available for your flight. Don't be content easily. Those who remain content easily remain small: small are their joys, small are their ecstasies, small are their silences, small is their being. But there is no need! This smallness is your own imposition upon your freedom, upon your unlimited possibilities, upon your unlimited potential.

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Here Comes the Sun With George Harrison


George Harrison wrote 'Here Comes the Sun' after meeting Prabhupada in 1969, dedicating it to Prabhupada expressing his impression of this Personality.

Swami Prabhupada
(September 1, 1896–November 14, 1977) was the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (popularly known as the "Hare Krishna's"

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6/18/2008

Rumi on Love



The Meaning of Love

Both light and shadow
are the dance of Love.
Love has no cause;
it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets.
Lover and Loving are inseparable
and timeless.

Although I may try to describe Love
when I experience it I am speechless.
Although I may try to write about Love
I am rendered helpless;
my pen breaks and the paper slips away
at the ineffable place
where Lover, Loving and Loved are one.

Every moment is made glorious
by the light of Love.

Rumi

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6/16/2008

Yogini, Lilias Folan on Fear

Welcome all that comes to you this day, and feel welcomed by it

Lilias Folan, known as the "First Lady of Yoga" since her groundbreaking 1972 PBS series, Lilias, Yoga and You, is steeped in many different yoga traditions. She relies strongly on her own personal experience and intuition to influence her teaching.
She began her yoga practice in 1964 and has studied with some of the finest teachers from India, Europe, and the United States. Her practice and teaching has been influenced by T.K.V. Desikachar, Angela Farmer, and B.K.S. Iyengar. She is author of Lilias, Yoga and You; Lilias, Yoga, and Your Life, and the recently published Lilias! Yoga Gets Better with Age.
liliasyoga.com

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6/12/2008

Kriya of Liberation with Gurmukh


Nine minute, 40 day practice of renewal and happiness.....

This is a Kundalini, White Tantra practice.

Sat Nam, a sacred mantra for sikhs, meaning,"There is only one god"

Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa is co-founder and director of Golden Bridge Yoga, the premier Kundalini Yoga center and spiritual village in Los Angeles, red line Hollywood & Vine, and New York City.

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6/02/2008

Teachers, Troublemakers and the Spiritual Friend

"The job of the spiritual friend is to insult you"
Chogyam Rinpoche



Pema Chodron is an exceptional Buddhist teacher and nun of the Vajrayana tradition, her root guru is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She is the author of, "The Wisdom of No Escape", "Start Where You Are", "When Things Fall Apart", "The Places that Scare You", "No Time to Lose" and "Practicing Peace in Times of War"

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6/01/2008

Tantric Philosophy, with Mae West

•Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly

•Love isn't an emotion or an instinct--it's an art

•I like restraint, if it doesn't go too far

•I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure

• When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before



Mae West

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5/27/2008

E-Z Bliss



Since things are perfect just as they are, far beyond good and bad, adopting and rejecting, one might as well burst out laughing.

-Longchenpa

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4/27/2008

Tesla Singing Coil and Mantra



This is a solid-state Tesla coil. The primary runs at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range, and is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones you hear.

So just to explain a little further, yes, it is the actual high voltage sparks that are making the noise. Every cycle of the music is a burst of sparks at 41 KHz, triggered by digital circuitry at the end of a "long" piece of fiber optics.

What's not immediately obvious in this video is how loud this is. Many people were covering their ears, dogs were barking. In the sections where the crowd is cheering and the coils is starting and stopping, you can hear the the crowd is drowned out by the coil when it's firing.

This Tesla coil was built and is owned by Steve Ward. Steve is a EE student at U of I Urbana-Champaign. He and Jeff have been going to Teslathons, which is where they met.

It's been suggested that a good name for this coil would be the "Zeusaphone". "Thoremin" has also been mentioned, though personally I think we need Theramin type inputs for that.

-From the General Technics guys at Duckon 2007

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4/25/2008

What is Western Tantra?

Painting: Susan Sedon Boulet/ Triple Goddess

Modern Tantra* has at its core, the same practices and techniques that began thousands of years ago in ancient India during the reign of the great mother goddess. Around 1700 B.C.E. the deity based Brahmanical civilization, and the Vedic religion of hereditary priesthoods emerged, the Aryans and their self-appointed priests outnumbered the remaining indigenous, goddess devotees, and gave them the title and new class of 'Shudras' or laborers (some say, slaves).

These Shudras often remained goddess devotees and continued their erotic and sacred practices, often in secret, as controversial non-Vedic, Cults of Ecstasy. These early shamanistic, tantric practitioners used sex as a sacrament and a magical act available to all. The early ecstatic tantrics did not bother with paid priests and fancy rituals; they used what was handy, the body, this was the sacred temple and the earth their mother. They embraced everything and denied nothing, rather than denial and abstinence they practiced acceptance and balance.
While the new Vedic religion developed it's elaborate, expensive and shocking horse sacrifice, the ecstatic tantrics used sex as sacrifice, discovering or knowing, all aspects of the 'sacrifice' could be achieved using the physical body. Tantrics developed mind altering/clearing meditation, magical mantra, mastery of the breath, internal 'locks' to channel kundalini through subtle energy centers in the body, and the art of cultivating sexual energy as ritual, sacred offering and a tool of transformation, transcendence and expanded consciousness. These sensually sophisticated practices of the Goddess were absorbed a millennium later into the esoteric and often secret paths, of various branches of patriarchal Hinduism and Buddhism as well as other Eastern spiritual systems, and reserved for their select, advanced practitioners.

The original tantric cults of Ecstasy, however, with her roots in the pre-Vedic, pre-Hindu, mother goddess culture, continues even today, in the East and the West, without permission and few rules.
In the East, She exists in hundreds of matriarchal tribes mostly in eastern India. The Muria women of Orissa (home of the original great goddess herself) have a liberating, natural and relaxed attitude about sex, happily leaving their breasts exposed and viewing sex as fun. Sexual experimentation is encouraged, and guilt seems to be nonexistent.
In the West, we will find mirror Tantric Cults of Ecstasy at Burning Man,

She is right at home with the intellectual and sacred anarchy, and culture free of boundaries, clothes and in need of yoni art.
Burning Man

How did the Tantric/goddess get to Burning Man?

The branches of the Tantric Cults of Ecstasy we are most familiar with in the West come from India and Tibet beginning more than a hundred years ago with Sir John Woodroffe, a scholar of Sanskrit, Hindu and Bengali philosophy, won many western

minds with a clear and graspable definition of tantra: "Tantra is the science as well as the art of realization", he was also the author of one of the classic texts on Kundalini Yoga, "The Serpent Power". Woodroffe, aka, Arthur Avalon are some of the fathers of Western tantra.**along with the Dr. Pierre Bernard, founder of the Tantric Order of America(1906), attracting prominent Europeans and Americans. Pierre's nephew was the remarkable lama Theos Bernard,
Swami Vivekananda(a closet tantric), and the largest influence in the West, Bhawan Shee Rajneesh, he arrived in the US in 1980 with an established following, in India he was known as the Sex Guru. Bhagwan later changed his name to Osho, he has numerous detractors but even more devotees. 
Pictured: Osho


The majority. of Modern Tantra teachers are from the Osho lineage. Another Tantra teacher from India in the early 1960's, the Beatles beloved Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with Transcendental Meditation, Indian SikhYogi Bhajan brought Kundalini Yoga, and many others.
My Dakini's personal favorites and earliest exposures to tantric thought and training,
Alan Watts with an esoteric Tantric Buddhism from his much beloved Japan, Zen, and my beloved, but controversial, crazy wisdom teacher himself, Chogyam Trungpa and Lama Yeshe with Vajrayana and , TM, and more recently, Bodhi Avinasha ~ Ipsalu Tantra .

Chogyam Trungpa (1939-1989), a reincarnate high Lama, passionate and wild teacher of tantra and an example of an authentic, tantric life. He taught, inspired and forever changed the West from the 1960's (US 1970's)until his death in 1987. He brought many of the Tibetan Buddhist/Vajrayana, esoteric and erotic practices now known to the West, making these highly developed and powerful techniques readily available to those awake and courageous enough to handle them. Openly promoting Tantric sex as a Buddhist sacramental rite and making tantric initiations and empowerments available without the traditional lengthy preparation. His undeniable, mind altering brilliance as a teacher and mystic was only rivaled by the controversy that constantly swirled around him. The edgier, Tibetan Tantric practices being taught in the West today, come from Chogyam, and a few other bad boys from Tibet.......and yes, his radical use of the tantric erotic continues to raise eyebrows among orthodox Buddhists even 20yrs after his death

Thanks to Sir John Woodroffe/Arthur Avalon and Theo Bernard, Tantra had become comfortable in the West in the 1920's and 1930's with the intellectual elite. She had many lovers and twice as many flirtations. Including a few wild boys in Western psychology and philosophy...In the 1930's she inspired Carl Jung, whose texts from his tantric seminars remain secret to this very day, She seduced Alan Watts, and the Human Potential Movement, and exposed herself to the Trans-personalists.
Tantra's newest teachers/publicists would arrive in the West in the form of Chogyam Trungpa in 1960 and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1980.
During this time she also dabbled in psychedelics(just like everyone else), partying with Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and later Terence Mckenna-tantric practice often involved plant 'deities' and what is the point of the plant without music?... Seeking the audio erotic of India, She gave Jimi Hendrix her yantras and clearly enchanted and enraptured Jim Morrison. She learned and shared tantric mysteries with her goddess sisters the pagans(Lillith's daughters?) and found herself the subject of study at top Universities***.........
In the late 1980's Western or Modern Tantric systems began to emerge.

The fathers of Modern Tantra are Western philosophy, psychology, psychedelics, and pagan systems and an erotic, free of rules, foreign born, Indian and Tibetan mystic wild child, is its mother.

Most recently Modern Tantra has been rumored to be in pretty tight with Sting and Trudi Styler and even cozied up to Oprah,
The high priestess of Modern Tantra and one of the first daughters, the prolific Margo Anand and her Sky Dancing Institutes sprinkle the Western world, and way too many others to mention in this post.


.



**Some would argue that Alexander the Great should be credited with bringing Tantra to the west.
*Modern Tantra is (mostly) not Tibetan Buddhist Tantra. Many of the Modern Tantra teachers have studied and explored Tibetan Buddhism, some extensively, receiving initiations and feeling a deep resonance with the crazy wisdom teachers of Vajrayana, but this does not mean they are necessarily 'Vajrayana' teachers, only that the Vajrayana influence will be felt. And even this varies with the teacher or coach, just as with any other subject. The true coaches and teachers will make available to the student what he or she is ready for, and no more.Authentic teachers and coaches will plead ignorance before revealing the teachings to someone not prepared or someone lacking the appropriate nature for the powerful and intense practices of high tantra.

Modern Tantra ranges from Red/sexual, Pink/erotic and White/non erotic, and is seasoned with many tantric systems, including Tibetan Vajrayana.
***Miranda Shaw is the one of the brilliant results of Shakti in the schools.

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LOL! Ancient and Modern Ritual

The Ashvamedha ritual/yajna did not exist in the the goddess based Indus River civilizations, much of Vedic practice does stem from, and is a blend of the ancient goddess practices, but this ritual seems to be purely Aryan, they loved their horses, just as todays guys, love their cars........

From Wikipedia:
The Vedic sacrifice
The Ashvamedha could only be conducted by a king (rājā). Its object was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over neighbouring provinces, and general prosperity of the kingdom.....
The horse is driven into water and bathed. After this, it is anointed with ghee by the chief queen and two other royal consorts. The chief queen anoints the fore-quarters, and the others the barrel and the hind-quarters. They also embellish the horse's head, neck, and tail with golden ornaments. The sacrificer offers the horse the remains of the night's oblation of grain...
Then the horse is slaughtered (YV VSM 23.15, tr. Griffith)
The chief queen ritually calls on the king's fellow wives for pity. The queens walk around the dead horse reciting mantras. The chief queen then has to mimic copulation with the dead horse, while the other queens ritually utter obscenities.......

...very trippy stuff
......

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4/22/2008

Cash, Christ, The Line and Bhakti

This is classic Bhakti/devotional Yoga.....devotion and love to a human being (ie:joe next door) or an divine being/energy/force/etc.......whatever it takes to get beyond your own all encompassing ego....
Jesus may not have practiced with bhakti yogis, but why would he? A fish has no need of swimming lessons.
Jesus embodied the Bhakti/Love and Devotion path. His message was love.....a message so simple it has little need for books, texts, walls and segregation.....




1989 Nirvana....behind all the freaking noise, you can sort of hear a few chords of 'I Walk The Line".....


Coldplay version of Ring of Fire......I think they confused it with a polka..

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4/21/2008

Tune Time. Rumi Inspired, Hanging by a Moment?

Feels like a Rumi Verse! or Hafiz or Lalla ....desperate for changing, starving for truth, i don't know what i am diving into......This could be sufi, bhakti or tantra* , and it is not necessarily about another person, ultimately, it is the holy longing, and surrender to the heart, often the result of a rapturous glimpse and taste, of our own union with the divine, an experience that defies description, but songs such as this, sometimes sing its secrets, longings and ecstasy.....the loss of self and joyous, uncontrollable abandon.
T
his is ignited kudalini.......

If we are lucky, a few times in our lifetime, we encounter a muse(they take many forms, a person, a passion, an art, etc) that triggers this same breath taking, stepping outside ourselves, ecstasy.
The secret, and sacred being of another has struck you, and you have struck them, a perfectly, life altering connection, like lightening in its intensity and power. This is your ishta devata, your personal deity, embodied. The world stops.
'I, Me,' is gone, we feel like we are falling, (this is one level of the 'gap' that many of the eastern meditative systems are pursuing.
find the 'gap', and extend it!)Joseph Campbell suggests that when falling we should dive, and the courageous will dive! In open surrender to a wild, unknown adventure...The muse that triggers and illuminates this is a sacred manifestation, a mirror of our own hidden selves and our own untouched potential....a reflection of the beauty, and in time, the not so pretty.
We cannot see something in someone else that does not exist, in some form, within ourselves. This applies to the really cool stuff and the dark, creepy stuff.....
.
Desperate for changing
Starving for truth
I'm closer to where I started
Chasing after you
I'm falling even more in love with you
Letting go of all I've held onto
I'm standing here until you make me move
I'm hanging by a moment here with you

Forgetting all I'm lacking
Completely incomplete
I'll take your invitation
You take all of me now...

I'm falling even more in love with you
Letting go of all I've held onto
I'm standing here until you make me move
I'm hanging by a moment here with you
I'm living for the only thing I know
I'm running and not quite sure where to go
And I don't know what I'm diving into
Just hanging by a moment here with you

There's nothing else to lose
There's nothing else to find
There's nothing in the world
That can change my mind
There is nothing else
There is nothing else
There is nothing else


"Hanging by a Moment' practice: close your eyes, and dance sky clad, surrender to the spirit of the whirling dervish....

*Bhakti Yoga is in many ways an exoteric path of the esoteric tantra yoga...the yoga or union of love with the divine, and many a tantric throughout history has hidden behind the more acceptable 'Bhakti' Yoga label. In Bhakti, Tantra, Sufism and many of the esoteric, mystical paths a wild, heart wide open, daring surrender, a 'falling', is required....
**
tantra, vajrayana is for the more passionate natures, not everyone can handle it

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4/20/2008

Where Does Tantra Come From?


Tantric and yogic practices began in the Sarasvati-Indus river civilization. Like its commingled sister civilizations, the Sumerian's and the Egyptians, the Harappan of the Indus* River were a Mother goddess based culture. In Egypt the goddess was Hathor, in Sumer she was Inanna and in the Indus Valley she was the inspiration for the Hindu goddesses. Excavations and artifacts from several thousand sites, reflect an artistic, sex positive, peaceful people with a refined aesthetic sensibility. Goddess figurines are so numerous that it is now thought that each household would have had one. The goddess concept was universal at this time, this is reflected in the artifacts depicting phallus, yoni(vagina) and goddess worship and even in the languages. In Sumerian, buru means both vagina and river, The Egyptian word bi means vagina and gallery of a mine.The Indus River Valley was the home of an elaborate and highly developed civilization and Harappan culture spread over an area the size of western Europe.

During the second millennium BC, Indus-River cities were virtually destroyed by environmental collapse, making what remained of this culture vulnerable to an Indo-European/Aryan migration, invasion, or, if the Aryan were indigenous, rise in power, . Aryans as indigenous, migratory or conquering is a hot political issue, with compelling arguments on all sides.*** The culture of Indo-Europeans/Aryans was fiercely patriarchal and had excelled at weapons and chariots. With a cranky storm god at the top, what else can we expect

Blending of the native goddess based, Dravidian spiritual/cultural system and Indo-European /Aryan storm god, warrior system would in time produce Hinduism. Gradually the divine mother goddess was married off to the new 'god', and women, once considered the embodiment of the divine, were removed from sacred ritual as priestess and replaced with Priests.
The goddess did survive and traces of her can be found in every corner of the earth. But she found a home in India like no other, here she was allowed to manifest in a myriad of spectacular plays and fantastic guises. India has preserved the remains of the great goddess cultures, to this day, the mother goddess was and is loved and honored in India, but she was and is no longer equal in spiritual power to what she seems to have once been, and women the world over, reflect this. Hinduisms is a rich tapestry of beliefs and allows worship of Shiva, Vishnu, Rama or Krishna, the 'Supreme Spirit' or the 'Indestructible Soul' or any gods/goddesses and still be called a Hindu. And every god has his consort or female counterpart.
But the cornerstone, what is most fundamental to Hinduism, is the trinity of gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva - creator, preserver and destroyer respectively.

With the creation of the caste system, the Dravidian's held the lower classes and the Indo-Aryan's
became 'Priests'. This Priestly, ritual and law making class, would later be known as Brahmin,
after the new god on the block, 'Brahma",

Tantric practices continued and grew in secret, running parallel to the development the Vedas (The Vedas are the ancient, mystical source of Indian spiritual and cultural heritage). These powerful, at times erotic, tantric practices also were absorbed into branches of Hinduism some of these systems, including Buddhism and Hinduism itself, would adopt the tantric, nature practices, of seeing the body as a divine instrument, a living yantra, and sex as the ultimate yoga, but often reserved tantric practices for themselves and kept them hidden and not always available to the laymen. Elaborate rules and almost exclusively, 'father' like lineage's, sometimes celibate , came to dominate tantra, practicing tantra without the 'father' figure was frequently condemned by the earlier, self appointed 'Priests', just as today. And just as today, individual and small, but wild and daring groups of tantrics determined to practice with or without permission, can be found throughout the world.

A right hand path or white tantra, of 'sex' as symbol of the divine union, and the left hand or red tantra, of sex as sacrament, emerged. Some tantric systems admit both as part of a progression.

Authentic tantra teachers are available, and like all teachers they come in many flavors and levels of experience, wisdom and expertise.
Modern Tantra if it is authentic, may requires as much preparation, ritual, practice and devotion as tantra in its homeland, it just depends on the teacher.

Tantra is not for everyone

For all the troopers that have read this far, I send you a cosmic kiss ;)

*Alexander the great is credited with the label 'hindu', the name he gave the peoples living along the Indus River.

An oral/aural tradition, songs, known as the Vedas, carried the knowledge and ever expanding rituals and elaborate practices of sacrifice or yana, of this emerging culture.

**********************
***The Latest on the Indo-Aryan Issue from Wikipedia:
"....The spread of the Indo-European languages is associated with Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a1, which is identified with genetic marker M17. The Genographic Project conducted by the National Geographic Society states that M17 arose "in the region of present-day Ukraine or southern Russia.". Geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells states that "The Aryans came from outside India. We actually have genetic evidence for that. Very clear genetic evidence from a marker that arose on the southern steppes of Russia and the Ukraine around 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. And it subsequently spread to the east and south through Central Asia reaching India." M17 "shows that there was a massive genetic influx into India from the steppes within the past 10,000 years" and "Taken with the archaeological data, we can say that the old hypothesis of an invasion of people – not merely their language – from the steppe appears to be true...."

Mallory, J.P. (1989), In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth, London: Thames & Hudson
...."the culture represented in the earliest Vedic hymns bears little similarity to that of the urban society found at Harappa or Mohenjo-daro. It is illiterate, non-urban, non-maritime, basically uninterested in exchange other than that involving cattle, and lacking in any forms of political complexity beyond that of a king whose primary function seems to be concerned with warfare and ritual."

image: Indus River Seal depicting an advanced yogic pose.

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4/18/2008

What is Tantra?


Tantra has no quick easy definition, it is a Sanskrit* word with many meanings, these are a few:
web, extend, expand, weave, thread, a system, a theory, doctrine, any non vedic doctrine, a section in a book, treatise on a given subject, a scientific work, medical text, a mystic work or a mystic teaching such as the dialog between Parvati and Shiva, and a restaurant on Sunset Blvd.

The meanings we will be using are the non-vedic doctrines, mystic works and mystic teachings. This represents the many variations of tantric spiritual practice and belief, all of these fall within what came to be called the Cult of Ecstasy.
This ecstatic cult saw the world as a living, breathing manifestation and celebration of the divine. Tantrics felt and sanctified the magic of life in everything and everyone, seeing the entire universe in the smallest insect. They honored and experienced the body as sacred and divine, its desires and sensual pleasures being tools of transformation and liberation. Tantra was an ecstatic and joyous 'Yes' as opposed to the rule bounded brahmanical "No". Tantra's, 'it's all good', attitude and rejection of the slave like caste system, defied the patriarchal and orthodox Brahmin(Priests)caste who believed the world an illusion/maya, and the body and its desires something to be denied, repressed and conquered.

As large and potent as the universe outside,
Even so large and potent in the universe within our being.
Within each of us are heaven and earth,
the sun and moon, lightening and all the myriad of stars.
Everything in the macrocosm is in this our microcosm.

-Chandogya Upanishads

Tantra is the last living goddess religion, and even today, thousands of years later, tantra's life affirming, female honoring and sex positive, no priest needed,
practices and beliefs raise eyebrows, infuriate and incite colorful outrage with the more god/male based, philosophical and religious teachers.

Tantra is an open source system, or maybe we could say that 'open source, is a tantric system, it grows and expands with participation. And this is at the heart of tantric systems, they are maps to an open participation in life. The numerous, and very often outright contradictory paths of tantra, reflect the multi-faceted, all embracing, interconnected web and ever evolving nature of tantra and the tantric mindset. Tantric systems range from elaborate and ritualistic to sahaja-the spontaneous and zen like approach that has no prescribed system, and everything in between. The texts that describe these ancient body positive practices are known as tantras. Tantric systems and practice have their roots in the matriarchal Indus River civilization, and over time Tantra has extended, expanded and woven its way into Buddhism, Hinduism, Jains, Sufism and the Shingon sect of Japan.

Tantra is alive and well today in India, the West and other parts of the world. A few white Tantric systems are commonly practiced in the West under the names hatha yoga, 3HOkundalini yoga and transcendental meditation to name a few. The more esoteric branches are also available as well as the myriad of California's Osho inspired teachers. The very controversial Osho(Bhagvan Shree Rajneesh) of the 1960's and 70's, promoted a sahaja style tantra that people love or hate, and that is all I will say about Osho.

*Sanskrit and English are in the same family of languages

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Bhakti Verse. Message to Myself

Short, simple and sweet, Modern Tantric or Bhakti Philosophy with Mellisa
I'm sending out a message to myself
So that when I hear it on the radio
I will know that I am fine,
I will know that I am loved.

I warned myself of the blackness in my chest
The razors in my heart would never rest
It's funny how you find just what you seek
Love is what you get when love is what you speak

I'm sending out a message to myself
So that when I hear it on the radio
I will know that I am fine,
I will know that I am loved.

I made every choice along the way
Each day I spent in hell I chose to stay
It's funny what you fear can make you weak
Truth is what you get when truth is what you speak

I'm sending out a message to myself
So that when I hear it on the radio

I will know that I am fine,
I will know that I am loved.

So if you are listening I am just passing through
You can take some for yourself 'cause it works that way too

I will know that I am fine,
I will know that I am loved.

******************

This is also a message to a dragon.

my dakini has lived a life devoid of music for the last three
years and has suddenly rediscovered it.. finding forgotten ecstasy
in the music, power and wisdom in the lyrics and the energizing bliss of dancing skyclad.............

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Road to Shambala Minute

How does your light shine?


Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain
With the rain in Shambala
Wash away my sorrow, wash away my shame
With the rain in Shambala

Everyone is helpful, everyone is kind
On the road to Shambala
Everyone is lucky, everyone is so kind
On the road to Shambala

How does your light shine, in the halls of Shambala

I can tell my sister by the flowers in her eyes
On the road to Shambala
I can tell my brother by the flowers in his eyes
On the road to Shambala

...............
video by Lotus World New Zealand/

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4/16/2008

Mel Brooks, a Living Tantric Master?


Look, I really don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively.
mel brooks

Mel Brooks is a fine example of an awakened kundalini and his life is that of a tantric master.


art:
oil on canvas
my dakini

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4/14/2008

What Makes Oral Sex Great?

Kicesie's Sex Education at youtube is asking for input from women on what makes great oral sex....not just good, but great! She will be posting the collection of comments as an educational tool.

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4/12/2008

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche


When you live your life in accordance with basic goodness, then you develop natural elegance. Your life can be spacious and relaxed, without having to be scattered. You can actually let go of your depression and embarrassment about being a human being, and you can cheer up.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche


Controversial crazy wisdom teacher, scholar, poet, artist of Tibetan Buddhism, founding Vajradhatu and Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training method. In Chogyam's view individual enlightenment was not magical, and Shambhala Kingdom referred to an enlightened society that could actually be realized, now.
The practice of Shambhala is to use mindfulness/awareness meditation as a way to connect with one's basic goodness and confidence, as well as with that of others and the world. It is a path of the open heart and clear mind.

"He was a great Tibetan yogi, a friend, and a master. The more I deal with Western Dharma students, the more I appreciate how he presented the dharma and the activities that he taught. Whenever I meet with difficulties, I begin to understand - sometimes before solving the problem, sometimes afterward - why Trungpa Rinpoche did some unconventional things. I do consider him to be the father of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States. In my opinion, he left very early - too early. His death was a great loss. Everything he did is significant. "
Gehlek_Rinpoche

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4/06/2008

Vishnudeva Saraswati on Tantra


"Tantra helps you do instinctively what needs to be done," he says. How does he battle the misconception that tantra is only about sex? "But it is all about sex. Everything is about sex; the difference lies between sex and sexual intercourse."
He informs that all this while, you had been having sex with him. Pardon? "If I am talking and you are listening, the active principle is penetrating the dormant one. That is sex in tantra." - Vishnudeva Saraswati
Times of India

Vishnudeva Saraswati is a Tibetan-British Tantric, he is a swami in the style of the very controversial Osho/Bhagvan Shree Rajneesh.

image: Ganesha
Madya Pradesh, India
11th Century
Sandstone
NY Met/md
one of my dakini's favorite museums

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4/04/2008

Guru Pitka on Peace

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Deepak Chopra and Mike Myers on En-Lightenment



Deepak Chopra a longtime friend of Mike Myers and is the inspiration for the Love Guru.

"He is the basis of why I went down this path of a character like that, and it's because I am interested in higher states of consciousness and I am interested in comedy," Myers says. "The guru, he breaks down your barriers, gets you silly and gets you light so you're in a place to receive love."

the film is about three things, Myers says: "It's about fate versus choice ... it's about self love and the third part of it is that internal validation trumps external validation."

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Morning Sex For A Healthy Heart

London: A steamy sex session in the morning can keep you in good health, say researchers.
According to a research from Queen’s University in Belfast, a good morning session at least three times a week, decreases the risk of heart attack or stroke by half and a regular session improves circulation, thereby reducing blood pressure.
According to a study in New Scientist, a steamy session twice a week enhances IgA, an antibody that provides protection against microbes that multiply in body secretions, reports The Sun.
Morning sex also helps in alleviating arthritis and migraine. It burns around 300 calories an hour that simultaneously diminishes the risk of developing diabetes.
Moreover, an American study involving 300 sexually active women whose partners did not use condoms revealed that they were less prone to depression.
According to Yale School of Medicine researchers, it can aid in averting endometriosis, a condition where the tissue that normally lines the uterus, grows in other parts of the pelvis.
However, the researchers have also warned that having sex more than three times a week can have a negative impact on our immune system, thus lowering its resistance.

IBN Live

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4/02/2008

Baba Dez, Healing Male Sexuality

Exceptional Baba Dez interview on healing male sexuality, the emotional body and living in bliss.
Baba Dez has a beautiful temple and healing space in Sedona Arizona

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Aldous Huxley

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
Aldous Huxley




Aldous Huxley
English writer and humanist, one of the fathers of the human potential movement and an advocate of the mind expansion properties of psychedelics. Claimed los angeles as home even though he was denied citzinship for refusing to bear arms, inspired jim morrison /'the doors'*. Aldous passed away from cancer the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and C.S. Lewis died. Huxley's last request was an LSD journey during his last hours of life.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
William Blake

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4/01/2008

Shirley MacLain Explains Chakras To Johnny Carson

I luv Shirley, she reminds me of my mum.

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3/28/2008

Wanking At Work

Does wanking at work make you more productive? Should there be a special wanking room in your office?

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3/26/2008

Why We Swear, Steven Pinker

brain scan research reveals that cursing uses a completely different part of the brain than regular speech...the part connected to strong emotion

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