Polarity, Tantra, Consent and Oneness

Many creator deities throughout history are considered genderless, androgynous, or have both “masculine” and “feminine” attributes. These creator deities developed the world and all its inhabitants. This process represents the first step in Our journey to self awareness.

In Judaism and Christianity, Elohim and Yahweh, were described as androgynous deities who then created Heaven and Earth, the animals and humankind.

In ancient Egypt, Atum came into being all by himself, then created Shu and Tefnut, air and moisture, who then created Geb and Nut, earth and sky.

The Dogon creator god Amma was androgynous and created self-fertilizing deities who produced humans.

It is no secret that the genderless creator/universe/God/Goddess is a common theme throughout the ages, and that from this Oneness, came duality. From the monad, the oneness, the void, came the dyad, or the two.

Everything has two sides; there are always opposites; every concept has its counterpart. Similarities and differences are two sides of the same coin, with opposing forces sharing the same essence but varying in intensity. Extremes converge; all truths are partial; contradictions can be harmonized. It suggests that everything possesses two opposing aspects, but these 'opposites' are simply the two ends of the same spectrum, with a range of degrees in between.

Polar tension created our experience on Earth, and is also the root of our limiting belief of separateness, from nature, and from our own divinity. It could be said that we came to Earth to experience duality, and the journey back to unity. We are not separate, but experience an illusion of separation. We are not separate from one another, from our Higher Selves, from the divine. Our energies impact the collective. As humans, it is easier for us to see our own reality as we are the center of our own experience, and it takes more practice to be able to see the whole. Yet the world is comprised of these seemingly opposite poles: left and right, light and dark, positive and negative, masculine and feminine.

Yet polarity is not as neatly defined as we might like, despite our societal conditioning.

In Hindu Tantra, Shakti is the feminine, energy, power and creation, where consciousness takes form. Shiva is the masculine, formless consciousness, stillness, awareness.

In Daoist teachings, the yin is associated with earth, shadows, femininity, and receptivity. The yang represents heaven, brightness, passion, and energy in motion.

In Buddhist Tantra, there is cosmic consciousness, which is receptive, compassionate, and moves us towards emptiness. Then there is the manifestation of will, drive, the embodiment of physical wisdom.

As you can see, many different words and definitions are use to describe various polarities. Shiva is formless consciousness and passive awareness in one teaching, but in another is will and drive. Shakti is life force, but in another teaching is consciousness and receptivity. The definitions of opposites are not absolute, because they exist on the same spectrum.

Tantra itself is about weaving seemingly opposites into union. It is finding the wholeness of union within our own being, releasing limitations to our full divinity. It is liberation through expansion.

When we stay open to the lessons from each polarity in balance, we create a portal to the divine. We can embrace all aspects of ourselves becoming whole, instead of desperately seeking our missing parts outside of ourselves.

True mastery is having the power of polarities and knowing how and when to access both opposites, and the entire spectrum. This allows for internal union, and gives us more range, more consciousness.

When we do not limit ourselves to one expression, we gain access to the full spectrum, and thus have access to the full palette of possible experiences. We can then move freely, consciously, and even intuitively between polarities. We can even find the place of balance and move from there.

When it comes to eros, when we move from a place of inner balance, we can then play within polarities, moving from one to another as desired or in response to a partner. We may do this consciously by choosing to embody one polarity, one half of a duality, but we may also become adept at doing this fluidly, and can reach a state where the energies shift slightly to one polarity or another many times within an experience of connection with another.

There is also a place, a state of flow, where both partners can give and receive simultaneously, cycling the energies through in perfect balance.

Many queer people are quite skilled in fluidly shifting across the spectrum and intuitively sensing in and responding to energetic shifts, as they often have not been limited by traditional societal conditioning.

There is also a more elusive place of divinity, where both partners are in a state of balance, and moving the energy together from a place of divine union, where polarity no longer pulls us out of a balanced center, and total oneness is experienced.

It is the experience of Oneness that we so often seek through connection with others, a calling back to our unity consciousness, our innate divinity. We do this through partnership, sex, and community. Yet, when we remember that we are already whole, and we already contain Oneness, the full spectrum of duality, within us, then we can stop compulsively seeking it outside of ourselves, and can instead connect from our Wholeness/Holiness.

Without this balance within, our interactions can be extractive, designed to fill our voids with the offerings of others. Sex can be extractive, community can be extractive. When we instead are moving from a place of internal unity, we can be joyous cocreators moving from our divine nature.

Outside of eros, this balance might look like being able to understand why you have a certain trigger, how it shows up in relationship, and what you need, while also seeing your partners viewpoint and how your trigger is impacting them, their triggers, and what they need. You can hold two opposites with the same level of awareness, compassion and sacredness.

Can you hold all the parts within yourself with love, honoring your innate divinity? Can you do the same for your partner, seeing them in their divinity? What about your community?

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When it comes to consent, the traditional, rigid views on polarity, the illusion of duality actually creates an environment where consent violations and micro consent violations happen frequently, and often without question.

While this most often occurs with heterosexual dynamics, these themes can be present in any relationship structure with partners of any sexual or gender orientation. Due to the common societal conditioning, heterosexual couples tend to be more limited by western definitions of masculine and feminine energy, yet these views on polarity are not limited to sexuality or gender.

If we expect a woman to be open and receptive, and a man to drive and penetrate, and we allow ourselves to be stuck with these limiting ways of relating, we are of course going to experience issues with consent. These stuck views on polarities disempower a woman from claiming her desires, being assertive, or stating a boundary. They disempower a man from relaxing into receptive stillness, riddled with expectations to drive to meet the “expectations” of the feminine. This keeps us stuck, does not allow true attunement, and sets the stage for mistakes.

Why is it that heterosexual men are often are more resistant to being partnered with other men in tantric or erotic practices? Could it be because men are often defensive, even afraid of the often nonconsensual, penetrative energy of other men? Or because they find safety in their penetrating methods and don’t know how to find safety, power or worth through other ways of being?

When we practice finding inner balance, we are better able to state our desires and boundaries, and better able to attune to the desires and boundaries of others. We release ourselves from an unconscious script, and can actually connect with the person in front of us, honoring their full authenticity, their full divine expression in that moment. We can also move fluidly and gracefully as that authentic expression might shift and evolve while connecting with that person, allowing for a greater expanse of experience.

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Not only do these concepts apply to physical contact, but also energetic integrity. Are you compulsively, or unconsciously penetrating someone energetically without their consent? Are your boundaries so porous you are allowing all energy within a space to come into your field? Are you so tapped into someone else’s erotic play that you are feeding off their energy? Are you expanding your own erotic experience with such energetic intensity you overtake the space, impacting the experience of others without awareness? These are all nuances of energetic situations that we need to become aware of as we relate.

This becomes even more important when in altered states, such as when using medicines or substances, moving erotic energy, or sharing a group field where energies become heightened with the collective.

When we are in a group field, we are sharing and amplifying energies with one another and the collective, and our choices now have an even greater impact, calling forth a greater level of responsibility and awareness.

For example, can we notice when we get triggered, and do emotional release to prevent our trigger from leaking energy in the group space unconsciously? Can we recognize if we are moving from lust, rather than the heart, we may unconsciously drain energy from the group field? When we play on the lines of our relational boundaries through energetic games of lust, seduction, and validation, we exacerbate micro consent violations in the group energetic field, which can then manifest in the physical or continue to expand into larger violations.

When we worship our community, our lovers and our partners as divine, and honor their authentic expression, we bring THAT energy into the collective space.

This is all part of energetic integrity, and it is part of a more complete awareness around consent.

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Part of being mindful of the collective, and caring for community is sovereignty. But not in the traditional self-serving sense, where individual sovereignty is expressed through acts of unconscious separation, power plays, and extraction without regard for others but for benefit of the self. This outdated, narrow view of sovereignty keeps us in loops of manipulation, greed, fear, lack and superficial relational connections. It keeps us tied to oppressive systems and structures of separation, which actually takes us farther from the truth of who we are. (This is part of the reason we all seek burning man - to break free from systems of limitations - if only for a week.)

This egocentric view tends to be described as patriarchal, which highlights why a fixed perspective on polarity can lead to imbalanced energies, and why seeking conscious balance can help us better navigate our own experiences, support the experiences of others, and approach our collective field with integrity and divinity.

Our souls want connection, we want to be authentic and relate with one another’s divine essence, we want to be part of the collective. Instead of allowing ourselves to be manipulated by lower vibrational temptations from ourselves and others, or allowing ourselves to take from others, we can move with intention, integrity, and divinity. We can remember that we’re already whole, safe and complete. This is where we claim our true sovereignty as divine beings.

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When we remember that we are divine, and part of the divine Oneness, we become mindful of others, our partners, our community. We take on this responsibility with honor, and thus allow ourselves to connect more deeply to others through our Truth.

In practice, this might look like being mindful of the substances you are taking, or communicating to a partner, friend or camp mate about what you are on, where you are going. That might mean stepping in and asking a camp mate if they are OK if you have any question. That might mean going up to someone who is behaving a bit aggressively or being pushy with sexual advances, and asking to take a pause and have a chat.

That might mean managing your own spiritual field by creating energetic containers to support you on a medicine journey, moving stuck energy as it comes up, or knowing when to emotionally release so you don’t leak excess emotions onto others. It might mean asking for help with any of this!

We are being asked to take our collective consciousness to a new level. Let’s see how we can all strive to connect with the divine essence that is the core of who we are as we move through this ascension portal.