Hi Andy! You are teaching sadomasochism at an esoteric festival! What kind of tradition are you connecting it to? White, red, black, Hindu, Buddhistic, or an enlightened Guru?
I have received this question many times, so I wanted to provide a direct answer. I started to learn rope bondage in the sadomasochistic subculture in my twenties. Ten years later, I was invited to an esoteric gathering as a teacher, very much by happenstance. It was Sexsibility in Sweden, a festival that is very much inspired by Barbara Carellas’ book Urban Tantra (2017). Funnily enough, I’ve heard that Barbara regrets calling it ‘Tantra’ in the first place because of this question in particular! Apparently, people liked me, so I kept getting invited to more and bigger events. In essence, I believe that we are practising a handful of techniques and values that make sense without connecting them to a religious and spiritual legacy. So it doesn’t matter if you associate the methods with a Hindu or Buddhist deity or none because they work for most people anyway.
As I understand it, most esoteric practices are about the circular oscillation between expansion and contraction, bravery and safety, or insecurity, to use my favourite word. Tantra is said to mean just that; expansion (tan) and contraction (tra). Just like the yin and yang in Taoism. And it’s kind of a continuation of yoga and Ayurveda or any belief system with a cyclical worldview based on rebirth compared to the straight movement from life to an afterlife in a promised land. Esoterism can take different forms in different areas of life, but it is broad enough to encompass all expressions of being. Some divide it into colours, like white being connected to spirituality and devotion, red to sexuality and sensuality, and black to power and control. Esoterism is also commonly divided into the left- and right-handed paths. The right is the righteous, holy, and pure. While left being manipulative, catalytic, and chaotic. These words are symbols to explain the frame of what is happening and not happening in their practice.
My five-year-old inner asshole wants to say that my devotion is to the rainbow because the approach is to welcome all reasons to explore oneself. Doing so consciously with a no-fucking-charity attitude. This idea grew out of spending considerable time in esoteric circles where the newbees often adapted an impossible attitude of complete self-sacrifice for whatever partner they happened to be paired up with by their guru leader or divine chance, without knowing whom deserved their devotion. Hence I praise focusing on what is good for yourself and communicating that clearly. I think my practice is more consensual and conscious than traditional esoteric practices, as those were dogmatic sects. It’s most definitely not a guru movement, and I’m not a guru who knows better than you.
However, I think the focus on the present experience is very similar. Not an expectation or a goal, nor a memory from the past. Slowing down to have time to actually experience the present. It’s hard when the brain makes lazy shortcuts and shows us our assumptions about the present instead of what is actually there. There is also a paradox because fantasy is super important as a guide. Barbara explains it well in Urban Tantra – make all the preparations using all your knowledge from the past and your fantasies about the future, BUT when you begin, you have to let go and trust the present. The Holy Trinity of tools which best bring us to the present and the embodied experience are breath, intent and energy. Rituals are an extension of this, to separate the present experience in time and space from everyday life. We can prototype new behaviours and consciously decide how to incorporate them into the outside world. This allows us to check in with our morals and, when possible, ask for consent.
The most important idea here is that what we suppress is just as important as what we express. To suppress something takes effort because it is the activity of blocking something that wants to be expressed. This is the big difference between suppressing and letting go. The suppression can be rooted in our society or our personality. Sometimes suppression is vital, like suppressing sexuality in the workspace or avoiding old traumas. Other times it blocks us from expressing the grandeur of our being. This is why prototyping it consciously and consensually in a safer and braver space is so important. For example, learning to dominate someone in a sadomasochistic play has made me much less interested in dominating people in everyday life.
Recently, I have been hearing more complaints about how esoteric practices are so eroticized. I think people are looking for intimacy, and sexuality is the only way many people know to get there. Modern society is itself intensely yet ambivalently sexualised. A casual look around our media landscape and it’s not long before you hit Tinder, some porn or porn-adjacent images, read about twerking, incels, the latest #metoo villain, Netflix series about one-night stands, threesomes, intergenerational relationships, etc. Yet at the same time it is all very controlled and taboo in the way they clearly define what is right or wrong, good or bad. That people have so much trouble dealing with sexuality makes it the perfect place to start an esoteric journey! Returning to the Osho quote about the sex, heart and divine, I wish we could teach instant spiritual enlightenment to everyone, but it doesn’t work when most are stuck in the most superficial, mechanistic aspects of sex.
Maybe this is where my love for sadomasochism shares something with the old esoteric traditions. Religious societies have always been very active in controlling power and sex. Limiting sexuality to a means of reproduction and dividing the power according to a caste or feudal system. I’ve been told that many old esoteric ideas were a form of rebellion against this. In this vein one can argue that even Marquis de Sade was part of the French Revolution with his hedonistic writings.
