Here, Tantra (तन्त्र) refers to a category of texts.

The format in which this Tantras are set, is a dialogue between two beings, God and the Goddess. (Other meanings of Tantra is a ritual worship practice.)

I am the Queen, the gatherer-up of treasures, most thoughtful, first of those who merit worship.

Thus gods have established me in many places with many homes to enter and abide in.

Through me alone all eat the food that feeds them, – each man who sees, breathes, hears the word outspoken.

They know it not, yet I reside in the essence of the Universe. Hear, one and all, the truth as I declare it.

I, verily, myself announce and utter the word that gods and men alike shall welcome.

I make the man I love exceeding mighty, make him nourished, a sage, and one who knows Brahman.

I bend the bow for Rudra [Shiva], that his arrow may strike, and slay the hater of devotion.

I rouse and order battle for the people, I created Earth and Heaven and reside as their Inner Controller.

On the world’s summit, I bring forth sky the Father: my home is in the waters, in the ocean as Mother.

Thence I pervade all existing creatures, as their Inner Supreme Self, and manifest them with my body.

I created all worlds at my will, without any higher being, and permeate and dwell within them.

The eternal and infinite consciousness is I, it is my greatness dwelling in everything.

– Devi Sukta, Rigveda 10.125.3 – 10.125.8

“The soul to know itself must gaze into another soul.”

Sexuality is the most repressed, violated, judged and hidden of all the awakening sources in the human collective, at least in the west. It has been so for a long time.

With a repressed and denied sexual center there can be no awakening. The heart has its own intelligence, its own awakening experience, and so does the third eye and the crown chakra. The sexual/creative chakra is the same, it has its own intelligence.

This intense fiery passionate awakening center has been denied its rightful existence, and in this repression caused disconnect between the humans cognitive mind and our intuitive soul connection to our Godself. This disconnect looks like premature ejaculation or performance anxiety, frigidity, sex addiction and substance abuse and also precatory violent sexual behaviors and its opposing force, the victim.

Any time we view the world from the outside and looking in we gone off course, clarity because awaking can only happen from the inside.

Violently taking sexual experiences keeps awaking away because the only way there is through surrender, it is the final step and it is unavoidable, and the same is true for fearful repression, there will be no awakening. Addiction is a false belief in the outer, and the chasing and grasping of what we believe we need keeps just out of reach that which we truly desire but can’t see yet. Unaware and in the dark we keep fumbling for the small bit of happiness we believe ourselves deserving of.

A disconnect between the heart-Shen(mind) center and the kidney – Zhi or liver Hun clouds the cognitive mind and the divine connection cannot be accessed even though it is always there. The connection itself is never lost but our ability to experience it through our vessel is lost.

I am Manifest Divinity, Unmanifest Divinity, and Transcendent Divinity. I am Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, as well as Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Parvati. I am the Sun and I am the Stars, and I am also the Moon. I am all animals and birds, and I am the outcast as well, and the thief. I am the low person of dreadful deeds and the great person of excellent deeds. I am Female, I am Male in the form of Shiva.

– Devi-Bhagavata Purana

Oh I know, I know, she is dark

But so’s the coal before the spark

That makes it burn like roses

To know thyself, know thy power- the kundalini, Adi-shakti. Solicit her Energy for the salvation of thy soul.

“Let us be like

Two falling stars in the day sky.

Let no one know of our sublime beauty

As we hold hands with God

And burn

Into a sacred existence that defies –

That surpasses

Every description of ecstasy 

and love.”

~ Hafiz

“When the moment cracks open, 

ecstasy leaps out and devours space;

love goes mad with the blessings.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and future?

The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities

will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear… to our innocent follies.

Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.

You will come to see that all evolves us.”

Rumi

Adi Parashakti appeared as Divine Pure Eternal Consciousness, the divine zero feminine Energy, which expresses itself as Prakriti, Universal Nature.

 Prartho Sereno

Come,
sit a while
in the seat by the window
near the birds, who have shaken off
their dreams and opened themselves
to this never-to-be-again day.
Today we won’t be asked
to bumble along the beaten byways.
For Uncertainty has come;
she is our unexpected houseguest.
Put on the water, set out the homemade jam.
Uncertainty will listen with us
as our bagels pop
from the toaster’s dark mouth.
As the teakettle wobbles
on her deep blue flame
and the coffee grounds weep
their pungent bittersweet sobs.
The truth, of course, is
that although she’s Mystery’s Child
with no history and no proper name –
she has always been with us.
If you wake in the night,
you can hear her hum as she busily
prepares our day. She is the one
who wakes us each morning,
to drizzle new questions
into our imagination, new stories,
new colors and light.
The wind is her breath.
Her body is the water
we bathe in and drink.
Uncertainty, with the soul of a gypsy,
knows the unpaved roads
to gratitude by heart.
She is our barefoot dancer
come to show us a multitude
of ways to bless the ground.
But of certain things –
like tomorrow –
she knows nothing,
and because of this,
her love knows no bounds.
Come close now…
she waits, as she always has,
to give all she has –
a love for each of us,
silver as tomorrow.
To you & yours: love, light, health,

The Heart like the sun is always shining,
Ever present, everywhere
You can try but you can’t stop it rising
So, let our love
Fill the air
Come on! La la la la la
Come on!

Hakuin says:

All beings are from the very beginning Buddha.

It is like water and ice: apart from water, no ice, outside living beings, no Buddhas.
Not knowing it is near, they seek it afar.

What a pity! It is like one in the water who cries out for thirst; it is like the child of a rich house who has strayed away among the poor.
The cause of our circling through the six worlds is that we are on the dark path of ignorance, dark path upon dark path treading; when shall we escape from birth and death?
The Zen Meditation of the Mahayana is beyond all our praise.

Giving and morality and the other perfections, taking of the name, repentance, discipline and the many other right actions, all come back to the practice of meditation.
By the merit of a single sitting he destroys innumerable accumulated sins.

How should there be wrong paths for him?
The Pure Land Paradise is not far.

When in reverence this truth is heard even once, he who praises it and gladly embraces it has merit without end.
How much more, he who turns within and confirms directly with his own nature, that his own nature is no nature; such has transcended vain words.
The gate opens and cause and effect are one; straight runs the way—not two, not three, taking as form the form of no-form, going or returning, he is ever at home.

Taking as thought the thought of no-thought, singing and dancing, all is the voice of truth.
Wide is the heaven of boundless Samadhi, radiant the full moon of the fourfold wisdom.

What remains to be sought?

Nirvana is clear before him.

This very place the Lotus Paradise, this very body the Buddha.

The sky
Is a suspended blue ocean.

The stars are the fish
That swim.

The planets are the white whales
I sometimes hitch a ride on,

And the sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves

Into my heart and upon
my skin.

There is only one rule
On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,

“Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloveds Divine
Game

O, in the Beloved’s
Wonderful
Game

In many parts of this world water is
Scarce and precious.

People sometimes have to walk
A great distance
Then carry heavy jugs upon their
Heads.
Because of our wisdom, we will travel
Far for love.

All movement is a sign of
Thirst.
Most speaking really says
“I am hungry to know you.”

Every desire of your body is holy;
Every desire of your body is
Holy.

Dear one,
Why wait until you are dying
To discover that divine
Truth?”

-Hafiz

My beloved has stood beyond our wall

To peek into my window

And he peered through the lattice

And sang to me softly

“Rise my love, my beautiful one

The winter is past and the rains have gone

And flowers cover the world

And the time for our singing has come

You are my dove, high up among the stones

In the recesses of the cliff

I long to see your face, I long for your sweet voice

Your face so lovely, your song divine

 Listen for the voice of the turtledove

The fig bursts with new buds

And the Vineyards blossom sweetly

Rise up my love and come away with me”

 I am my love’s and my beloved is mine

We lie among Lilies until daybreak

Drives away the shadows

 “Turn to me my love

Like the gazelle of your dreams

Leaping through the mountain of spices”

My soul sought him out at night in my bed

Sought him out but could not find him

And I rose to search throughout the city

Through alleyways and avenues

I searched for the love of my life

 I searched, I sought, but could not find him

When the city watchman passed, I begged

“Have you seen him who is my soul’s delight?”

 And then I found him and held him fast

And clutched him to my heart and clung

Until he came to my mother’s house

Into the boudoir where I was conceived

O daughters of Zion, by all the gazelles of the field

I warn you, do not stir love until its time has come

-The song of songs, The book of Solomon -edited by Sam Hamill

PERFECT ONE

Only
That illumined
One

Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form

Had the charm to win my
Heart

Only a perfect One

Who is always
Laughing at the word
Two

Can make you know

Of

Love

-Hafiz

With every step,

Kali destroys the moment before

She cloaks the future in darkness

Remain in the eternal moment

From shadows to the light

From aggression to nonviolence

Be reborn

Now

The sky
Is a suspended blue ocean.

The stars are the fish
That swim.

The planets are the white whales
I sometimes hitch a ride on,

And the sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves

Into my heart and upon
my skin.

There is only one rule
On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,

“Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloveds Divine
Game

O, in the Beloved’s
Wonderful
Game

-Hafiz

From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it.

Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for.

Today I have found you
and those that laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did.

I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty
and wish to see you with a hundred eyes.

My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold.

I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God
to call it divine.

Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow.

My soul is screaming in ecstasy
Every fibre of my being
is in love with you.

Your radiance
has lit a fire in my heart
and you have made radiant
for me
the earth and sky.

My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer.

Rumi

When I think of you

Fireflies in the marsh rise

like the souls jewels

lost to eternal longing

abandoning my body

– Izumi Shikibu

My woman says that she’d rather marry no one than me

not if Jupiter himself asked her.

But what a woman says to her eager lover

you should write on the wind and running water.

The little sycamore she planted
prepares to speak- the sound of rustling leaves
sweeter than honey.

On its lovely green limbs
is new fruit and ripe fruit red as blood jasper,
and leaves of green jasper.

Her love awaits me on a distant shore.
The river flows between us,
crocodiles on the sandbars.

Yet I plunge into the river,
my heart slicing currents, steady
as if I were walking.

O my love, it is love
that gives me strength and courage,
love that fords the river.

– Anonymous, Egyptian 15th century poet

And the priestess spoke again and said: Speak to us of Reason and Passion.
     And he answered, saying:
     Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgement wage war against your passion and your appetite. 
     Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.
     But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

     Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
     If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
     For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
     Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
     And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

     I would have your consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.
     Surely you would not honor one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.

     Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields, and meadows—then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.”
     And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky,—then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion.”
     And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.
- Kahlil Gibran