I keep coming back to this: slow the fuck down. It has its origin one cheerful evening in a Camps Bay restaurant, dinning with a small group of travellers I’d not met before. As happens in the customary sniff-down of these new meetings I was asked what I do.
I’m accustomed to even those closest to me having no idea what I do (for good reason) so I’ve learnt that a simple “I build websites” is the gentlest route out of that question. Occasionally though I may offer that I work with Tantra.
I’m generally somewhat reticent to use the term Tantra (topic for another post) but it neatly collapses into three results: I become invisible for the rest of the evening, I get to hear how offended the person is by whatever their perception of Tantra is, or I’m met with some level of curiosity. In this instance I was effectively asked for my elevator pitch. My considered response:
Slow the fuck down.
Then I became invisible.
There are effectively three ways to work with this:
- As a response to our perceived reality of external phenomena (described in The Subtle of Subtle, and alluded to in Ten to One and on My One Life).
- As a way of deepening and expanding our perceived experience of reality (described in The Subtle of Subtle and engaged in the About page, which is rather an experiential introduction than a conative explanation – in other words don’t just read it, use it as a meditation).
- Through a variety of practical applications – the most obvious being the literal slowing down of love making.
When I refer to ‘life as meditation’ this is in part what I mean – Tantra (in my limited perspective of it) is holding this experience as a meditation that is practiced constantly by remembering to slow the fuck down.