In the lovely title of their hit by the same name the
Bee Gee's posed this question..."How deep is your love?".
The answer is of course...endless.
Yet perhaps a better question posed might have been
how deeply do we allow ourselves to feel this love?
We are often shallow in our expressions.
By this I do not mean that we are shallow people...far from it.
We are deep beyond our worldly recognition.
But we seldom express ourselves so.
Why?
Tantric traditions tell us that within every moment we are
either opening to the presence of love, or closing in fear
and refusal of what is.
Tantric teacher David Deida calls this our "clench".
Every moment is providing us an oppurtunity to open in love.
Every moment of fear, anger, resentment or any other closure is
an oppurtunity to open our clench.
Shakespeare said that nothing is good nor bad less thinking
makes it so. Very Tantric.
Nothing is good nor bad.
Yet things may feel so.
And this makes them real.
How we express this...to ourselves and others
is our choice though. Too often we identify so strongly by
these emotions and rampant feelings that we fail to seperate
ourselves from what we experince.
I AM angry, I AM afraid, I AM ...and so we are.
Yet we're not.
Ever.
We are the everness of a blue sky...though clouds may threaten to
darken our view.
We are the vastness of the ocean....even as waves storm across
our surface.
We are love....in the face of all opposition. Always.
Feel the force of your clench fully. Feel the breath, high and shallow
in the chest. The Buddha wisely said that we are not punished for
our anger, we are punished by our anger. This is the same with all
lower energies. Our breath becomes shallow and hurtful...as does our
response. Yet by feeling this clench, by the mere act of observing, we bring the greater
awareness of love to light. When we fully recognize our clench, when we ARE this living, breathing
clench...we slowly begin to deepen our breath. We breathe down into our bellies and soften our
jaws and loosen shoulders.We become softness...by becoming soft.
Clench a coin in your hand tightly, tighter, and even tighter still.
How long can you hold this?
Yet turn your hand palms up...surrender....the coin resting gently
on your hand. Simply feel this differnce.
The clench Vs. surrender.
In the end...surrender always goes the distance. Our clench is limited by the very
output of our energy. The open palm conducts, distrubts, and absorbs.
In Tantra we turn what we don't like...upside down. We take the clench...and surrender to
the open palm.
This is alchemy. The transformation of the lead of shallow expressions...into the gold of
our pure presence. We are the Tantrika's and Masters. Always.
How deep is your love?
How deep will you express it?
Love,
Eric
Original Post
~~~Barbara 
