SF Gate.com Dec 12,2001

Tantric Orgasms For Peace Yoga raves? Peace parties? Meditation? There's more than one way to heal a nation's ravaged soul

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

These are the things you hear about living in a place like San Francisco. On flyers, from friends, at obscure Web sites, by word of mouth. A little tough to find, but real and necessary and good. And they're all right now happening in a neighborhood near you:

Late-night yoga tai chi rave parties and funky peace rave parties and happy calm exhortations from all over the spiritual map, urging you to open your eyes and tweak your personal mantras just a little to help effect world peace and bring about global harmony and maybe a quick end to all this war and karmic pain and Dick Cheney.

It's a relatively major yet entirely decentralized, non-religious spiritual movement spanning the world from SF to Europe to the twinkle in the Dalai Lama's eyes, all about realigning energies and reenergizing the cells of humanity in certain positive vectors.

All about radiating invaluable peaceful vibes out to the world, all in a nonmilitary and decidedly unthuggish battle against the waves of horror and vague depression and PlayStation2s tormenting the nation of late.

It's one part beautiful heartfelt truth and one part hip cultural groove and one part eye-rolling New Age blathering and one part genuinely vital and needful anima-boost for the species, exactly the kind of thing scowled upon by hardcore gun-drunk pro-Bush military types who don't know how to dance and hate movies with subtitles and of course you don't hear anything about it in the mainstream media.

After all, there's only one God in Which We're Supposed to Trust, and do you really expect to see a CNN reporter hanging at an SF yoga rave, all body glitter and painted toenails and sly knowing smiles, reporting on the necessity of strengthening the spirit and the heart by way of laughter and downward dogs and ecstatic booty shaking? Not when there's all that vile Dick and Rummy misinformation to disseminate, you don't.

Scattered throughout the City, many other alternative options for the nuanced and intelligent soul to rebuild the spirit: peace marches and group meditations and sympathetic Ramadan fastings by non-Muslims, random assortments of alt-peoples gathering in art spaces and yoga centers and the house of that guy who used to be a player over at Excite and cashed in just in time and now feels a little guilty and spends his time not working and holding cool gatherings in his living room and supplying all the drinks.

Countless throngs of people are indeed doing amazing things to help the world and to heal themselves in the wake of Sept 11 and the US bashing of Afghanistan, and the public at large really knows almost nothing about them, because they have nothing to do with bombs or shopping or hunting those evil evildoers or cranking up the screeching war machine and decimating your civil liberties and confiscating your tweezers at the airport.

Also (more obviously) available, for the mainstream activist: Letter-writing campaigns and various money-raising food-collecting blanket-gathering drives to help the downtrodden and dispossessed in Afghanistan and maybe elsewhere, but mostly Afghanistan because we can only focus on one war and epic tragedy and ruined nation at a time (sorry Ethiopia, Croatia, et al).

And of course such endeavors are also necessary and righteous and good, people getting involved and taking steps as best they can, even if such acts are rather packed with sad irony (i.e.; sorry for bombing the living hell out of your homeland and sending you fleeing for your life, little one. Here have a teddy bear).

People are also having more meaningless post-traumatic sex and post-traumatic babies and proposing more post-traumatic marriage and eating more post-traumatic junk food and deciding not to move all that far away from home anymore, family-oriented urgings and a general hankering toward closeness and familiarity and kinsfolk now ruling the American emotional landscape. Which is also all lovely and good and fine, if you think it is.

Then there are the orgasms. Not everyday orgasms, mind you, but Tantric orgasms, the whole-body kind, sustained and powerful and life-affirming and deeply spiritual, Buddhism-inspired movements afoot here and there to encourage people to delve deeper into their hearts and sexualities and enjoy such orgasms as much as possible, given how they are, by all accounts, the most powerful and positive and cell-affirming and karma-flowing humanity-helping thing you can do for your body and heart and soul right now. Or ever.

This is not a joke. People are doing this. At least, reliable sources tell me they are. And you want to believe it. You should believe it. Tantric orgasms in the name of world peace. Sounds ridiculous. Sounds like some sort of New Age only-in-SF-and-maybe-Berlin neo-pagan anti-American vaguely traitorous liberal tree-hugging crystal-gazing BS. It's not.

What, you'd rather buy a sweater to feel better? Hang red, white and blue Xmas lights from the tract home? Stick a little flag on the SUV? Buy a gun? It's your choice, really.

-- (roland@hatemail.com), December 12, 2001

Answers

LINK

-- (roland@hatemail.com), December 12, 2001.

A cold beer and an attitude adjustment will do just fine, thank ye : )

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), December 12, 2001.

A cold beer and an attitude adjustment will do just fine, thank ye : )

Surely you jest, Cap'n. TANTRIC orgasms? I'd always thought that if my orgasms got any better I might have to kill myself, but I've gotta ask: "Roland: Is there a manual?"

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), December 12, 2001.

"Then there are the orgasms. Not everyday orgasms, mind you, but Tantric orgasms, the whole-body kind, sustained and powerful and life- affirming and deeply spiritual, Buddhism-inspired movements afoot here and there to encourage people to delve deeper into their hearts and sexualities and enjoy such orgasms as much as possible, given how they are, by all accounts, the most powerful and positive and cell-affirming and karma-flowing humanity-helping thing you can do for your body and heart and soul right now. Or ever."

Always willing to do my part for the good of mankind. ; )

-- Pammy (orgasms@re.awesome!), December 12, 2001.

The word Tantric has a feel to it that sounds like your getting ready to be done by a nanobot or some such cosmic thing, now if'n ya said "cop a cosmic nut", then we're talkin' meat and taters.

Besides, I got better positions than what Iv'e seen in the yoga books ; )

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), December 12, 2001.

Where's the enlistment office?

-- helen (my@duty.calls), December 12, 2001.