“Tantra is radical positive insanity; the commitment, based on the experience of emptiness, to disappear without a trace into every moment.
—Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche, Wearing the Body of Visions

Is it just me, or have spiritual communities just gone and dried up (pun intended) when it comes to sexy sexy time? That is to say…

Whatever happened to all that sexual tension you used to feel at spiritual retreat centers?

Back when I was part of a Sufi Order in Boulder, CO, I would sometimes hear from spiritually-inclined people visiting about how sexually charged everything seemed to be out there. Like, apparently, you couldn’t go to a Reiki convention without someone trying to pick you up and get all tantric on your vagina. Of course, because I was living there, immersed in its ways and means, this all just seemed par for the course.

But, really…. I mean, I’m not the hardest person to look at, but ever since leaving that humble Bouldertown of cougars, these days staying at retreat centers seems to be all about the work, and the practice. WTF? Whatever happened to retreat centers being about the makeout in the single-person meditation cabin, or the heavy petting behind the zen garden?

Thanks a lot, this…

…for causing all that backlash and people feeling like they needed to find out what “real” tantra was—a serious method that incorporates the entire “fabric” of existence into one’s practice—as opposed to being simply a way of getting into yoga mom’s Prana shorts.

Discuss…