Tantra: Women’s Work and Men’s Work with contributions also from Durga and Anahata

What a serendipitous journey it is to embark on the path of Tantra and to discover the secrets of women’s initiation or men’s initiation! Even though it is a fashion nowadays to claim that men and women are simply variations of the same basic design, this is a simplification of the intricate artistry of nature. Throughout my life I have tried in every way to figure out the sexual, physical, emotional and psychological workings of both male and female. My body/mind or the body/mind of my lovers has been the lab, offering the alchemy of union as a ground for experience, study and understanding.

I have found, through Tantra practice, the opposite polarities of male and female are brought together in a way that is most fulfilling for both.

The fruits of my research are brought into the design of the 7 levels couples training, the Master Lover course and the Goddess Essence Women’s Training. 

The Alchemy of Opposites

“The Yin absorbs the Yang; the Yang absorbs the Yin – this secret is so simple it goes unnoticed and undetected. Like all of nature it must fuse and intermingle with its opposite to achieve growth and potential. As a tree cannot exist without both sun and water, humans cannot exist without sexual energy. Immortality can only be achieved through the disciplined use of sexual energy.” (The White Tigress Manual; Secrets of the female Taoist Masters)

I have found out that just as is said in ancient Tantra scriptures, men and women are opposite and yet complementary to each other. We need to absorb the essence of the opposite gender in order to find fulfilment within ourselves. This absorption of the opposite is a delicate art. First, we have to become fully our own gender and through that totality, we will then be able to begin absorbing the elixir of the opposite gender. 

Our perception of both genders has become very confused during the ages of Patriarchy. Men have been led astray by elite powers who have cultivated their sensitive brain chemistry to be in service of war. This is a perversion of their original blueprint.

Men and Women; The Great Tree of Life

In actuality, men and women together are like a great Tree of Life. The feminine is the heart of the tree while the masculine is the protective bark. Together, we reach for the sun through our entwined branches. Our roots, deep into the earth of our sexuality, bring nourishment to the whole tree.

“I would like the woman to become as feminine as possible. 

And the man needs to be as masculine as possible. Only then can they flower. 

When they are polar opposites, a great attraction, a great magnetism arises between them. And when they come close, when they meet in intimacy, they bring two different worlds, two different dimensions, two different richnesses and the meeting is a tremendous blessing, a benediction.” (Osho)

Male Orientation

Nature has made the man’s psychological orientation to be that of the provider and protector. He is designed to offer security to the feminine. Through chemical and testosterone fuelled impulses, his body and brain develop with more muscle mass, high levels of libido, qualities of competition and territoriality. He is also designed with the need to be alone on a regular basis, resting and recharging in the cave of his soul.

The centres of power in his body are: the pelvis, solar plexus and throat.

The lessons he is here to learn are: 

1. Pelvis: Positive sexual expression (opening into Tantra).

2. Solar plexus: The merging of power and vulnerability (leading to refined intelligence).

3. Throat: Transcendence of the egoic mind (by becoming a co-creator with the divine). 

The easiest way for him to attain to inner mastery and wisdom is through meditation and witnessing. If a man can reconnect with his inner nature he will discover that his testosterone fuelled energy is meant to be in service of providing security and protection for our mother earth, for women, and for being in service of Love itself. If all his creative talents, muscular strength and libido were to be oriented in this direction, our world will very soon become a paradise. 

“If Shiva is united with his Shakti he is able to exert his powers as a Lord; if not, the God has not even the strength to move. She is the potency that dwells in each of the male Gods and the spark that arouses them to action.” (Saundarya Lahiri Scripture)

Initiations and Activations

In order for a man to awaken into the fullness of his potential, he needs activations from his tribe:

4. Rites of Passage: Ages 7/ 14 / 21/ 28 / 35/ 42 / 49.

5. Positive Male Role Models: A man’s path is shaped by those male role models that he meets in his formative years (ages 7 – 14).

6. Honouring nature and consciousness: A path through life that is wise, creative and celebrative. 

7. Initiation into Tantra: Bringing fulfilment to his sexuality, relationships, mind, emotions and soul.

I look forward to the day when millions of men will discover the joy of Tantra as a blueprint for a positive renewal of human life on this Earth. 

Female Orientation

Nature has made the female psychological orientation to be in devotion. She is designed to bond with her mate and in that role, to love and nurture those persons in her immediate surroundings. Through chemical and hormonal fuelled impulses, her body and brain develop through intuition. Her brain defies logic, jumping to intuitive inner knowing, in service of love and empathy. She is designed with the need to be emotionally connected and intimate with her Beloved, her children and friends.  

The centres of power in her body are: the lower belly, heart and third eye.

The lessons she is here to learn are: 

1. Lower belly: Emotional fluidity opening into full body orgasmic states. 

2. Heart: Love and devotion as a spiritual path.

3. Third eye: Clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaudience: nature-based healing and alignment. 

The easiest way for her to attain to her divine feminine nature is through Tantra. If a woman discovers the art of Tantra she will understand that her longing to merge with a lover is at the same time her potential to create a world devoted to love, joy and beauty. If all her emotional intelligence were to be oriented in this direction, our world will very soon become a paradise! 

“There is no jewel rarer than woman, no condition superior to that of a woman. No wonder even the most powerful Gods, like Shiva above, crave to enter the feminine form, hoping to acquire at least some of her glorious power.” (Sangama Tantra Scripture)

I look forward to the day when millions of women will discover the joy of Tantra as a blueprint for a positive renewal of human life on this Earth. 

A Vision for a New World

In 2006 I was in a silent meditation retreat in nature. A being of light appeared and informed me that celestial beings were very concerned about the suicidal direction humanity was taking. The light being told me that the only hope for humanity’s survival is through women everywhere awakening to our powerful Goddess nature. The being of light informed me that one of my roles is to inspire women in a ‘global awakening.’ 

I was overwhelmed to say the least. I couldn’t imagine taking on such a huge responsibility. However, the light being reassured me, saying that simultaneous to me receiving this instruction, the same instruction was going out to all women who have mediumistic abilities and are able to hear and see those luminous beings who exist on the non-material plane. 

After this message, and with no particular effort on my part, women began reaching out to me asking for women’s groups and trainings. And simultaneous to this steady development of women’s work, I began noticing a tidal wave of women throughout the world also offering Goddess activation work. I am very happy to know I am not alone in realizing it is up to women to birth a new world, based on love. 

Over time, I developed a 4-part Goddess Essence course and Goddess Essence Teacher Training. The valuable lessons I have learned and the many blessings I have received regarding the divine feminine, have gone into the vision and mission of the trainings. 

As women are so deeply connected, through the moon and through our yin, watery element, I envision that the truth of the divine feminine will awaken very quickly, bringing positive change and transformation in its wake. We are born to conceive in love, to give birth in love, to live in love and to be love. 

Tantra Alchemy

As we awaken from the ages of patriarchy, men and women both will suddenly reconnect to Tantra, the ecstatic lifestyle we are capable of when the masculine path of meditation and the feminine path of love meet in alchemical union. 

“The meeting of love and meditation is the greatest experience in life. And only in the meeting of love and meditation, the duality of man and woman, the inequality of man and woman, disappears.” (Osho)

My Path into Women’s Work by Monika Sičová (Durga)

When I was twelve years old, my mother, who I loved so much, got diagnosed with ovarian cancer. For two long years, I witnessed her dying, in agonizing pain. When she left her body, my childhood was over.

I moved to a bigger city for study. Suddenly I was alone, a teenager in a new city. I experienced huge grief and loneliness. I was thinking my mother’s illness was a mistake perpetuated by her gynaecologists and I decided that this mistake should never happen again. No other child should experience the pain of abandonment and no woman should die unnecessarily and too early.

I was thinking if I could study Western Medicine together with Alternative Medicine then this could be the solution. I put all my effort into this journey. I went through all kinds of natural therapies as well as Western allopathic medicine. While studying medicine, I was not satisfied, sensing something was missing.

 I thought perhaps I could find the answer in the East. Friends and I took the Trans-Siberian train to Mongolia, and spent two months in pure nature. We crossed the Gobi Desert on foot, then travelled the Altai mountains on horses. I felt deeply connected with mother earth; it was the ultimate meditation experience.

But then, after returning to Europe, I became very sick. I had a high fever for a few weeks and nobody knew why. During this time I only had one sentence in my mind: “ There should be something else, this is not yet the answer, there is something else!” This one sentence played like a mantra in my feverish, delirious mind.

 Immediately after my return to health, I went to an Osho Meditation Center in the countryside. I was sitting outside, watching the sunset and suddenly one woman, in pure joy and ecstasy, was making movements like a cat. Suddenly, I knew, “This is the answer! Meditation, especially Osho meditations, is the ultimate inner journey!”

Since then, I never looked back. Many Osho Sannyasins were coming and teaching in Czech Republic, so I spent most of my time assisting and helping them in groups. I also travelled a lot, especially in India and Asia, and continued searching what could be good for women’s health. 

But still, I was not yet fully on my path, I was hesitating between Western Medicine and Meditation.

Right before I graduated as a medical doctor, I spent one month in Sri Lanka. One day, I met a young man, who took me to his village in the jungle. His father was the most powerful shaman in Sri Lanka and there were many people coming to him for Shamanic ceremonies and healing. I was the only Western woman there. During one ceremony, he invited me into the ceremony and told me: “You are hesitating. There are two paths before you, you are losing a lot of energy with in-decision. Once you decide the right path, huge energy will come to you and through you.” 

And it was true! When I came back from Sri Lanka, I started to work as a doctor in a Sanatorium for young children to recover from spinal injury. But deep inside, I was not happy. Finally, I left western medicine forever.

I opened my own healing school for women based on women’s yoga and meditation. Huge energy came to me. I was working sixteen hours a day. I went to sleep with inspirations, had dreams what to do next, woke up with ideas. I was traveling, offering discourses and groups. And just within one year, the school became beyond successful. Within ten years more than 10,000 women in the Czech Republic were part of this school, including more than one hundred teachers.

I was thinking, “I have not so much time.” According to doctors, there was and is a high possibility that I could also die young. I could face the same destiny as my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. They all died young from ovarian cancer, with small children left behind. This closeness to death made my life even more intensive, without compromise.

One day I met Sarita and fell in love with her teachings. In just two years, The Tantra Essence Teacher Training brought me much closer to connection with the divine. This profound energy was pure nourishment for my heart. After graduating from the Teacher Training, I took a series of Ayurveda Shirodhara sessions. While receiving the sessions, a voice came to me and said: “Invite Sarita for teaching a Woman’s Teacher Training”.In this way, our journey together began. From day one, we were very successful. The Goddess Essence Teacher Training brought so much light into the heart of Europe! And, at the time of writing, we are co-creating the Goddess Essence Teacher Training in Bali, opening this work to women from all over the world! I envision it will bring joy, love and divine connection to all women! I can’t wait to see this blossoming happening. For me, in my role as organiser, it is pure joy to be part of this manifestation.

Love, Durga (monikasicova@seznam.cz)

My Path into Men’s Work by Swami Anahata

My vision of doing men’s work is to bring masculine energy back home. Ever since man first went to war, he never quite came back. The wars may be over, but his energies are still fighting invisible enemies in the name of survival. And as for the woman in his life…without the presence of a man who may be physically present but lost to the computer screen, his woman feels lonely and bereaved.

I would like to bring this man back into the bedroom. Back to where his heart beats. There, by reclaiming his masculine energy, he will relax in love and peace of mind. 

I would also like him to re-engage with his woman. And do it in such a way that she will feel attuned to the equal human being he is, and feel nurtured and cherished by him as she will nurture and cherish him. All the while, he will remain a full-blooded sexual animal, grounded in his body’s awareness and centered in his meditative consciousness.

I am passionate about working with men because I myself missed a solid masculine energy from very early on in my life. My father left my mother when I was seven, so I had no strong imprint of a male role model. That left me confused about my identity as a man. 

In my youth, I would long to have a male friend with whom I could reveal myself as I really was. It was very painful to discover that most of the men I knew were more interested in women than in me. They would hang out with me as long as there were no women around, but as soon as the girls turned up they would pour their best into them. 

So, when I was introduced to a men’s workshop for the first time, I felt like I was coming back home. For the first time, I felt relaxed, joyful and connected. Having lunch together, teasing each other, creating sacred theatre, expressing emotions… these moments from that experience have stayed with me. I felt like I was living through a part of my boyhood that had evaded me, and for the first time truly entering manhood. 

When I moved to the West in 2013, I noticed that Western men have all kinds of challenges around trust – trusting that they could speak freely about their feelings rather than believing they had to banter about their prowess. In the part of India, I’m from, most men are quite ready to share their stories and show how they feel to other men. 

I soon learned that there was this gift inside me where I could help to bring a certain trust into male masculinity. I could help men to start enjoying each other’s company in a fresh way. 

So, it became a driving passion for me…  I wanted to create a new kind of men’s gathering where men can come together and start talking about their real-life stories and begin to inspire each other by being who they really are, Sharing not only their success but failure too.

Another thing which encouraged me to create my own style of men’s work is the fact that whatever is available in the market today in this area of men’s work on themselves is lopsided in what it offers. On one side there are workshops that resemble military trainings. Under the guise of initiation rituals and rights of passage, men are forced to participate in rough, aggressive processes, some of which can lead to an emotional shutdown. In many cases they are even known to have re-traumatised participants. 

On the other hand, there are the types of workshops where participants are invited to connect to their inner feminine – their loving, sensitive side. Here, the whole aim is for them to own and respect the softness inside themselves, with the idea that until they do so, they won’t be able to honour and respect the feminine outside – in other words, women. This is for sure a valid and important point. However this is not a good starting point. 

My understanding is that a balanced support model is somewhere between these two extremes. This would include allowing men to fully accept and engage with the nature of their testosterone-driven manhood, while remaining in touch with their sensitive side. This means accepting their sexual wildness, their male competitiveness and their rough side as part of an expression of their biology. By learning how to bring increasing awareness into the sexual act and allowing presence to guide the male hormone into channelling its powerful energy towards cultivating a healthy, grounded, compassionate masculinity. 

Imagine riding a bull, holding on to nothing more than its horns! Without having tamed its wild power, you will be tossed onto the ground immediately. But once you feel able to bend in harmony with your wild, erotic forces with presence of mind that would be the right time to invite the connection to your inner feminine. In this way the two different types of energies come into balance, and this is what’s needed in men’s work. It is my own understanding that as long as we men don’t own our powerful, energetic bodily impulses, we will miss something that the world so much needs from men.

So, my workshops are designed in such a way as to begin with an invitation to create a grounding in presence through meditation. And when a foundation in that has been established, we move on to the awakening of sexual energy. 

Once the sexual energy is alert and fully flowing throughout the body, it becomes distilled into pure energy and ceases to be sexual as such. Now, in the way the same fuel can illuminate lamps or drive air conditioners, this pure energy is available for however you wish to direct it. And it is then that you will start feeling ecstasy in your ordinary day-to-day life. 

Doing simple things like driving a car, playing with kids or cooking your dinner will bring you joy. For men to feel ecstatic without having to compete for the best-paid job, prove to others he’s the strongest in the pack or chase after every hot woman that appears in his sights… this is what is needed for men to relax. 

Up till now, rather than exploring the unknown force blocked inside of them, the majority of men have felt safer sleepwalking their way through a life always obedient to what society expects of them. Men are afraid of awakening this sexual energy, because once the energy is fully awake, then the boxed-in life that most men live will no longer work for them. This freshly liberated energy will start bursting open those structures like a powerful flood breaking a dam. 

In the second stage, I invite men to turn this sexual energy inside and discover their true purpose in life. This soul calling is at the core of each man. Through misdirected education and ill-judged conditioning, we have been distracted from life’s original true intention. So, whatever we achieve through our work, our family, or our love relationships will never completely satisfy us. The satisfactions we do get from these things may give temporary relief, but they always fall short of what in our bones we know is our true destiny. Even highly successful men, if they have a little sensitivity, find themselves feeling as frustrated as those who repeatedly fail in life. 

So, it is very important to discover your Soul Calling – the one that beckons from your innermost heart and that you can only hear when there is silence and stillness.

I have created processes that are done in wild nature to awaken the inner knowing. I have reintroduced potent rituals from ancient India to support men and help bring them back to their original life purpose.

Once you discover your true sense of destiny and you feel solidly grounded for the first time – a grounding that does not arise from any activity – you start manifesting a life that is uniquely yours. Each action you take will have an inner authority behind it. Your actions will fully engage you and will leave no emotional residue. Now, whatever you do from this space will be in service of femininity in you and outside in the form of nature, women, rivers and our Mother Earth. You will serve truth, godliness and beauty.

Love Anahata (www.tantraearth.com)