Dark Tantra - sometimes also known as Dark Eros - are acts of discipline and punishment brought down upon acts of disobedience, transgression, and wrongdoing. You may also know this as BDSM. It is through these acts that our barriers to our embarrassment, fear, and shame are liberated in a perfect moment that generates a pulse of energy on which we can journey to heights of ecstatic experience and pleasure. It also allows us to discover our sense of self as a true individual who lives independently of social norms and cultural expectations.
Tantra holds the view that our sexuality is sacred. It is through our sexuality that we can connect directly with the Universe, whether in ourselves, in our partner, or simply linking with the ecstatic experience of oneness with the energy of spirit.
The History and Evolution of Dark Tantra
Ever since Christian religious dogma took hold of Western society some 2000 years ago, the loss of eternal life and innocence from the story of Adam and Eve has become a staple tale of how our culture views sexual energy (the symbol of the snake) and the feminine (the symbol of the ripe apple) as sinful and shameful, and how we must be forever mindful not to be swayed away from the sacred and the spiritual righteousness.
In essence, all eros, or all that is erotic, is deemed to be dark.
The Psychological Dynamics of Dark Tantra
When we mix excitement with tension, along with a contraction of the muscles, especially those located within the pelvic floor, we can manifest forbidden sexuality. It is the presence of this tension that gives us the sensation of increased excitement, but in tandem with this also places physical boundaries to our sexual energy and therefore confines most of our experience of pleasure to more or less the genital area.
The Spiritual Implications of Dark Tantra
It is this tightening of the muscles that pushes us into a state of doing, a state of performing, rather than a state of being that just is. It is here our focus turns to simply having sex, completing the sexual act, instead of relishing being sexual and embracing our aliveness.
Furthermore, it is the contraction of energy that arouses anxiety, as bio energetically speaking, excitement with contraction creates fear, and this exposes our uncertainty towards our sexual energy, whether this uncertainty is conscious or not. The tension held inside the genitals inhibits the pleasurable growth of a more sexually energetic charge, which leads instead to the release of the excitement in a genital orgasm, or perhaps more alarmingly, the experience of frustration as the excitement is blocked and suppressed by the tension.
Practicing Dark Tantra Safely and Ethically
What can add to this excitement is the charge of energy that comes about from the act of rebellion, from the elation of daring and of naughtiness, and breaking of taboos. One problem that can arise is living out our fantasies through BDSM rituals, identifying with them, creating bondage clubs and fetish groups to announce our acceptance of belonging, while at the same time parading our unconventionality and nonconformity up against anything remotely vanilla or traditional, then we reinforce the conventions and certainly the morality of the system we seem to want to break away from.
Exploring the Boundaries: Dark Tantra and BDSM
The thrill of the forbidden needs the act of forbidding to produce the thrill. If BDSM ever were to become mainstream (think Fifty Shades of Grey popularity) then the sheer thrill of it would fade away. And as custom, familiarity, and repetition create appetites and desires that become more jaded, grander indiscretions and kinks must be pursued, and a spiral of the need for ever greater and greater stimulation is created.
The ideal environment is to use Dark Tantra to transcend and repair the tensions that create this ambiguous excitement through the conscious excitement of disobedience, transgression, and, ultimately, punishment. By obtaining pleasure in the dark tensions, while still seeking to move through the pleasure of tension and into the pleasures of expansion and relaxation, we can disempower the social conditioning that keeps us insignificant and our sexual pleasure restricted. We shift through the need for intensity from and with other people into an experience free from the need for our own expanded pleasure.
The secret is to enjoy yet remain separated from the dark pleasures of pain and punishment, being neither caught in the net of morality nor by the hook of addiction.
Dark Tantra: Liberation or Reinforcement of Taboos?
Disobedience incites punishment, either affirming or destructive. An affirming punishment acknowledges that we have been wayward, applauds the excitement of the tension in our root chakra as we stand tall as an individual against authority and society, and declares that authority without destroying or diminishing us and who we are. A destructive punishment holds the sole purpose of repressing our naughtiness by instilling fear in us. Destructive punishment may take the form of unrestrained physical violence or psychological abuse such as rejection and the withdrawal of love and affection. This tyranny and fear form tension in our root chakra which cannot be so simply relaxed or liberated. Our naughtiness becomes gallant, even life-affirming.
It is the affirming punishment that needs to meet the excitement in the root chakra forcefully enough to expand it, to transport the energetic charge of punishment while remaining fundamentally safe and respectful.
The Act of Erotic Punishment is Born
The act of erotic punishment disrupts the moral and authoritarian systems by providing the receiver of the punishment sexual pleasure. It takes the appearance and form of physical, subordinate punishment, but energetically it is experienced as an erotic sport, a lively and powerful contact game that gives pleasure to both partners equally. There is no attachment to roles adopted, and both partners need to be able to switch. In other words, to give or receive what is desired with equal capacity. By affirming and compensating the naughtiness, the controlling system is sabotaged and made nonsense of.
The actions and movements of the person receiving the physical punishment become sexual movements of surrender to the energy, made legitimate and imposed by the punishment itself.
When sexual pleasure is denied or refused, the most typical redirection of its energy is into the form of control and morality. This then produces the ridiculousness of a culture where sex workers battle for validity, while to be a soldier, or a trained killer, is a distinguished and honourable career choice.
Journeying down the path of Dark Tantra of giving an erotic punishment is one form of converting control back into pleasure. The more we allow and welcome sexual pleasure in control, the less deviant and perverse it becomes, as pleasure substitutes the need for the violence that occurred as a reaction to its prohibition. Genuine perversion is the use of control while being in denial of pleasure. Whereby the more the pleasure becomes unlocked, accepted, and embodied as sexual excitement rather than as mental stimulation, the less need we have for control over moral justification and other types of violence.
The control it takes to give pain becomes the control to give pleasure, which in turn becomes the pleasure in giving pleasure.
And as you get to explore more and more of Dark Tantra, and delve more into the relationships between power, control, and submission, you will get to discover the spiritual impulses that lie beneath it. The yearning to surrender fully, to give oneself over, is a deeply spiritual urge. As is the desire to use power and control consciously. So is the need to go outside the human body and experience intense energy and ecstatic movements.
In the beginning, it is the excitement of tension that is the conscious foundation of Dark Tantra, but as we feel the transformation into a vibrant erotic union which is a celebration of intense energy, we experience the journey of coming home, an appreciation of sexual energy as space where we belong, as the heart of our being.
This acknowledgment is complemented by profound relaxation, harmony, and that blissfully developed energy state.
And that is what is the core theme of Tantra.
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