Tantra - A journey of Recognizing Duality and Unity

Tantra teaches that everything in our cosmos is an integration of DUALITY to UNITY. We have the sun-moon, day-night, hot-cold, heaven-hell, masculine-feminine, conscious- unconscious, both polar opposites; however one doesn’t exist without the other. Tantra teaches to share “to convey” to merge, to weave, to expand and in this sharing we have the opportunity to see through the veil of illusion to witness the play in both dualities of the shadow self and the higher self.

The shadow or “Kali” as it is referred to in Tantra, is our distorted perception and belief centre of our reality, constructed through our lower personality nature from experiences of wounding, the shadow referring to; anger, sadness, frustration, fear, all of the filters of the “lower worlds”. The light represents the truth of our higher self, our higher nature and that of the soul. The soul only knows love that resonates within the kingdom of the divine, that which is UNITY bringing together all of the consciousness of humanity in a powerful beacon of joy and unconditional love.

Sometimes when we look deeply into a person, we may see glimpses of both their light and their dark, the duality of who they are and the persona “mask” they wear in their reality within the conscious level of their evolution or spiritual path. On occasion we may have an opportunity to reveal and share this “truth” through heart space. This truth can reveal the light “positives” in a person and when shared can make them feel amazing, elated, grateful, happy, understanding and empowered, therefore their personality will probably put you on a pedestal and you will become the most amazing person in their eyes and they will unconsciously depend on you for their happiness because the personality has constructed a reality that you are the one that makes them feel good. If on the other hand you need to reveal their blind spots, their shadow “negative” aspects of self, their personality will most probably rebuke, it will get angry, it will suddenly take you off the pedestal and put you in the pit; why? Because you didn’t make them feel good and the lower personality has its own identity and will always at all costs think and believe its views of the world is correct and you are wrong and all the blame will be projected at you. Exposing blind spots can be a shattering and sometimes agonizing experience for the personality to go through, it's identity does not want to hear it, or see it  and will either run, disappear, gossip, defame, bitch, become angry, go into fear and or become silent and ignore you and pretend you don’t exist. This pattern will repeat itself constantly over many incarnations if not recognized, avoidance is not the key, steadfastness and a willingness to see and push through these the disortions of the lower self.

I once went through an experience where my lower personality temporarily turned on my own teacher, conjuring up distorted delusions that it was all his fault that all this “negative stuff” was happening in my life and my life was not going the way I wanted it to, he is obviously not a good teacher, I have been fooled and the personality was fed up and looking for an answer and something to point the finger at to blame so if I blamed him it felt better and I didn’t have to look deeper into me.

Seeing truth of both the higher self and the lower self is an absolutely vital and necessary part of the path to spiritual salvation. One cannot progress towards “light” until one is willing to see their “blind spots” (shadow) and acknowledge them with LOVE. Harmlessness is one of the most important teachings in the highest form of Samaya Tantra, it is the biggest revelation of forging the way towards our authentic self and finding the courage and humbleness to own our stuff, see our shadow, and the biggest joy is forgiveness within unconditional love of self, others and the one that loved you enough to show you the veil of illusion. This is the true journey of the highest form of Tantric practice.

With love

Catherine Wood