Fifty Shades of Tantra by Cyntha Gonzalez
Judging by the box office success of the cinematic adaption of the bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey, E L James has clearly put her finger on an edgy yearning of the collective consciousness. Most epic films capture the pulse of the society at a given moment. Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner’s interracial couple hit the screen in 1967, three years after the US Civil Rights Act passed and the year interracial marriage was legalized in the U.S. In 1979, Kramer vs. Kramer won several Oscars, including Best Picture, as it addressed a father’s struggle and success in gaining child custody, when divorce and custody battles were becoming common fare. The award-winning Brokeback Mountain of 2005, depicts two gay rodeo guys falling in love, just when gay rights were gaining steam over the entire western world. The Sessions in 2012 validated professional sexual surrogates and active sexuality amongst the disabled. What is the Fifty Shades frenzy validating loud and clear in the psyches, hearts and groins of millions?
In the West, the 60’s Sexual Revolution enticed sex out of the closet, gave women the Pill, legalized abortions, normalized pre-marital sex and accepted unmarried couples living together. In the 70’s women claimed their personal and professional power and men began claiming their long-shamed emotions and repressed vulnerability. The 80’s saw women wearing power suits and some men becoming house-husbands while marital rape was identified and condemned. The 90’s gave space for these sweeping gender changes to root and they become commonplace the world over. In 1999 in the UAE, the university enrolment of girls doubled from the year before. In the noughties more Saudi families than ever agreed to send their daughters abroad to study. Shortly afterwards Tantra workshops were increasingly established in a multitude of countries.
However the woman’s subtle sexual essence had been largely ignored given she’d been busy securing her various freedoms. E L James is giving the loudspeaker to the masses of women daring to name what their deeper sexuality is finally admitting to. She longs to be taken, not cruelly or heartlessly. Her soul, heart and body long to surrender and open, despite self-protective protests. In order for such letting down, her lover has to be directional out of integrity and not out of a weak, insecure ego. Is he opening her for her benefit, or solely for his? Christian Grey takes Ana on a ride of revolutionary discovery. He also reveals his increasing vulnerability as the innocent, trustworthy Ana surrenders to him.
We always attract our reciprocal, whether in the harmonious heavens or the dark shadowlands we cohabit. Ana’s father died when she was a baby and Christian was born to a drug-addicted prostitute and an unknown father. They were both raised by fathers who were not blood. They navigate letting down, trusting and daring to open to love, together. They are mirrors of each other in their respective roles. Christian dialogues with the part of himself that wants to surrender in his innocent Ana. Ana’s inner goddess takes command of her sexual expression through Christian’s guise.
But it is not just compatible wounds and reciprocal projecting that draw these two together. Sex is one of the most savory, succulent and enticing psychodramas of spirituality that exists. I see their playing the submissive-dominance game as a psychodrama to ultimately surrender to and trust in the Divine.
There are several correlations between human sexual dynamics and a deeper spiritual quest:
THE CONTRACT: In the contract that Christian Grey proposes to Anastasia Steele, it is glaringly no different than the agreement devotees, nuns and monks sign when they enter an ashram, monastery, spiritual community, sect or controversial cult. Dietary restrictions, required physical exercise, deprivation, rigorous spiritual practices, as well as being devotional exclusively to the deity or leader that they are following, make up house rules. The purpose of any spiritual community’s discipline is to take the devotee to a Oneness with the Divine in an exalted transcendence beyond ego and body. The more refined the dense body becomes through diet and discipline, the more the Light can get in and be accessed. It can be the same with BDSM culture, particularly if the Dominant is truly feeling into what the Submissive most needs for their greatest liberation, as ironic as that may seem.
SUFFERING and PAIN: Sometimes life lessons are excruciatingly painful and confining. Sometimes we are left out in the cold after their mean slap. Sometimes we are rescued in love and comfort. But dare we trust their occurrence? Dare we realize their lessons? This is where the fine line straddles. Is the Mother Superior, Swami Guru or the Dominant egoless enough to be in command of the devotee or unequivocally not?
SEDUCTION: Seduction wakes the body up…sultry energy rises…tension heightens. When the body opens, the heart opens. Seduction then goes beyond being taken over by our lover, but consumed by something mightier than us. That rising tension is life energy moving into the upper chakras where the human self is uplifted and shatters into a timeless connection with the Universe, the Cosmos and all of existence.
I believe Fifty Shades of Grey’s popularity is not only validating the enactment of BDSM fantasies, but is actually an ardent desire to bring spiritual surrender into one’s sexuality through these more daring expressions. How do we bring that into our own ordinary bedrooms? If committed, it’s not about getting a new lover or seducing someone we don’t know. It’s about riding that edge in our very own relationships. It’s asking ourselves what’s the daring next step? Is it sharing a fantasy? Is it enacting it? Is it braving radical honesty? Riding the edge of transparency can be just as erotic, as the ego is taken to its furthest stretches. As a collective consciousness, we must be seeking something more, otherwise we would not be flocking, of late, en masse to bookstores and movie theatres for such.
One way to practice this is taking turns, of one of you playing master or dominant, and the other playing submissive, slave, servant, devotee or whatever you may call it – for an entire day. There is a spectrum in which you can play master. You can be sadistic, cruel, vengeful, passive aggressive. You can be tame, safe, equal. Or you can feel into what would most stretch your lover into their cutting-edge ego death and fearlessly take them there because you love them that much. The submissive opens to the love that the dominant wants to give. So actually as “Master,” you are actually the midwife or initiator, taking your partner into more trusting, expanded living. Yes, it may involve some daring sexual expression. If so, do you take your lover with love and integrity to that edgy place or do you have an agenda? And if your partner succumbs without protest when they feel that you have more egoic motives, that could be revealing codependency and fear. In each moment your lover will feel your integrity. Are you commanding with fearful control? Or are you commanding from the same fearlessness and trust that you ask your lover to surrender to you in.
Being a submissive to your dominant is entering into a zone of absolute letting go, trust and surrender. Strong emotion might erupt. Desired acts by your master may resuscitate old trauma or abuse. Images of past humiliation may overwhelm the present moment. All is felt fully. And then something else eventually happens when you stay with it. Devotion. When enough trust and authentic surrender begin to predominate, ecstatic joy and love emerge. You spontaneously bow in awe-inspired love and let go to your partner. A precedent is set that paves the way to devotion to a subtler, infinitely intelligent spiritual source. Through surrendering to our lover, we trace new neural pathways, create new energy circuits, and open our heart wider than before.
When we are the master and we receive that level of devotion, we are blasted with the mirror of our absolute lovability. Dare we take it in? Can we identify with that much love? A masculine partner longs to be trusted and seen for his ability to protect and lead. If a masculine partner is truly in his integrity, he longs to be validated in that honorable state of being. To the degree he is in his integrity, he will attract a partner who is secure enough in herself to open to him. The dance dances itself. And then if we slip, fear constricts us, we shut down. Someone catches the step again. More opening, more trusting to what is follows. Communicating it verbally or silently by gesture or by shared, bonded silence.
We long to surrender. We long to be surrendered to. Sky diving, bungee jumping, trail biking, roller coasters and kite surfing are our recreational ways of experiencing it. Hard, directional archetypal phallus does not waver in its knowing of where it needs to take the receiving, willing, trusting feminine. Unabashed Devotional Directional meets Willing Worshipping Surrendering – this is the new sexual spiritual calling.
Cyntha’s next Tantra Evening for Women is on Tuesday, March 10th. The theme is Spiritual Sexual Surrender. To book go to www.cynthagonzalez.com
