CarnalNation

Master Sunyata Saraswati has said that Tantra is “not for wimps” and I can certainly agree. My own path has been anything but wimpy. It was precipitated by a spontaneous ten-month long kundalini eruption, which eventually resulted in a profound spiritual crisis. Fortunately, I met with guidance precisely when I needed it the most.

I was slogging through the worst of this crisis the day I agreed to take my oldest child to a Renaissance Faire. If you’ve never attended a Renaissance Faire while feeling suicidal, I highly recommend it. You’ll be diverted, at least, by displays of shiny swords and people who may or may not know how to belly dance. Ribald Elizabethan songs will remind you that life is worth living (at least in other epochs), and the Danse Macabre, which wends it way through the faire with rattling bones and piping flutes, provides fashion tips for funerals. Even in my worst moments, surreal juxtapositions are a comfort.

I grabbed my kid and made a beeline for the fortune tellers in the Caravansary area. I’ve never had one  before, but I knew I needed a reading. And I saw immediately who should give it: a beautiful, elegant black woman who was seated like a jewel in the middle of her cushioned enclosure. This woman provided a simple key to my horrid state of soul, and within twenty-four hours all my agony resolved beautifully, coherently. Cristhal Bennett also became my friend, and later, for a time, my teacher of Kriya Yoga.

Cristhal Bennett is an accomplished teacher and spiritual guide. The Renaissance Faire was just a gig - not an indication of her true work and sphere of activity. Even so, I am glad I was able to find her in just such an unlikely place. I have relied on her insight and her friendship for several years now, and wonder that she is not more widely known. She is a superstar of wisdom, particularly the wisdom of working with kundalini energy.

As I learned that I could seek training to understand and manage the potent force which had caused me such excitement and grief, I began cruising the Internet for a Tantra teacher. I was attracted by the warmth and poetic quality of Jia Khechari’s website. He was in Napa at the time, and I studied with him before he relocated to Chicago. Our sessions were ritualistic and had a timeless quality. I began to feel myself flowering in appreciation of my own Shakti power. He is grounded in his devotion to the great goddess and awareness of his own Shiva energy.

During this time I also made my first forays into Ipsalu Tantra, a well-known school of Tantra. Bodhi Avinasha is the founder of Ipsalu Tantra. She taught the first “Ipsalu Level One” weekend I attended, and I basked in her presence. Bodhi has the most beautiful voice. She and Sunyata Saraswati co-wrote The Jewel in the Lotus, so I owe a great deal to his influence as well as hers.

Cristhal, Jia, and Sunyata Saraswati are three spiritual teachers who are children of the African disapora. I have been profoundly influenced by their work as I’ve wended my way along the tantric path, periodically bumping up against my own limitations. When I step back from my own story, I observe something about the larger American Tantra community.

I notice there is room for more conscious work - and proactive intervention - regarding certain influences of culture, particularly in the realm of race and racism. I notice that residual attitudes or gestures still linger, though in a diluted and subtle form - not intentional, but unconscious. As I view the phenomenon of the Western Tantra explosion in this country, black Tantra and yoga teachers are not visible in the best known Tantra networks and circles. My point is not that people of color are intentionally excluded, but that they are not intentionally and explicitly welcomed.