I bought this book yesterday. It seems pretty damn cool. I don't know of many other books which provide an overview of spiritual life, and spiritual truth for that matter, through the context of interviews and lots of research. In fact, I know there are other books consisting of interviews, but I don't know if they provide an overview in the form of good commentary from the author.

I also like the fact that it emphasizes the ordinariness of enlightenment, in fact the word "translucent" is used by the author because he feels it's a better descriptor, and the book seems to hint in the direction that it is indeed happening more rapidly on a global scale because as Adya says "humanity is at the Omega point".

There are some excerpts which you can read here: http://www.translucen...

I like this one on sex:

"Chapter Eight: From The Big Event

All sex, in fact all life everywhere, is about the meeting of masculine and feminine energy, the meeting of consciousness and light. This does not mean that men always represent the masculine, or that women always hold feminine energy. It means that sexual union is always about a more conscious presence penetrating a more yielding, loving surrender. We have worked with translucent gay couples, male and female. With some, one partner holds more masculine energy, and the other holds more feminine. And in many cases, they alternate who is the leading, masculine polarity and who is the surrendering, feminine polarity. For any couples, these polarities can sometimes be reversed. This has less to do with physical position than with disposition. As soon as a man relaxes, waits, becomes soft and vulnerable and yielding, and as soon as a woman becomes more assertive, initiating, and penetrating with her presence, you have reversed polarities. This can be a great thing to practice intentionally, for a few minutes at a time, to experience more deeply the opposite sexual essence.

For a translucent couple that has learned both to polarize and merge, sex is transformed from a personal act of intensified pleasure into something of quite different proportions. Orgasm is a glorified sneeze compared to what is possible when we step out of the small box of physical pleasure.

When partners are willing to practice with translucent sex, they both come to the sexual meeting from a physical fullness. The man has not only realized himself as empty consciousness, absolutely present and able to contain all movement, but he has also brought that realization down into the body. The woman has not only experienced the essence of love, but she has also practiced opening so much that she emanates that love itself, from her whole body. She becomes an embodiment of the divine feminine paradox: the supreme strength of absolute yielding, vulnerable surrender. This is not a matter of imitating or acting out certain qualities but of relaxing into your natural essence, which takes no doing or effort at all, only conscious practice.

A translucent couple is not meeting to get something from each other, or for themselves, although they will both be blessed. They are not meeting to get off on waves of physical pleasure, although their bodies will pass through those states as a result. They are not even meeting to love each other in a personal way, although they will know that love more fully than they could in any other way. They are not actually meeting as Hank and Loretta Higgins of 1032 Marigold Lane anymore, although that will be the point of departure. Sex is now being offered at the altar of translucence itself.

Translucent sexual union is what Deida calls ?the human realm replication of the union of consciousness and light.? This union can, and often does, occur within an individual. Tantric art shows us the union of Shiva and Shakti as the melting and merging of the inner man and inner woman. In hypermasculine traditions, this was as good as it got, finding this union of the inner masculine and feminine, then meeting the world without gender.

With translucent sexual practice, we consciously choose to embody the great union of consciousness and light. The more masculine person (usually, but not always, a man) embodies consciousness gifting through the body, and the more feminine person (usually, but not always, a woman) embodies light and love in the body. Both partners are allowing a gifting that is universal, rather than personal, to pass through them. When a man and a woman meet in this way, the two polarized offerings become a full circle, and there is a fusion of consciousness and light, of yin and yang, much greater than could ever occur within an individual. The masculine essence gifts the feminine so deeply with trustworthy conscious presence, through one partner?s body, and the feminine essence gifts the masculine so deeply with love and light, through the other partner?s body, that the boundaries of fullness meeting fullness finally break, and they pour into one another.

Without this full circle, a masculine person?s disposition is to feel, ?I want to get back to that nice peaceful emptiness, I don?t want to deal with all this stuff of life. It?s a burden, a hassle.? Through the completion of the circle, through giving the gift completely to the feminine, he realizes that ?stuff? is not a problem at all; it is all made of consciousness anyway. He can surrender into life. He becomes uncollapsible, free in the midst of the swirling of form. No matter what, he can still fully give of himself. He is no longer afraid to open into life and finds the marriage of consciousness and form.

Woman is freed of her longing to be fully penetrated by God when she opens her heart way beyond the known, and allows the Big Love to move through her. She realizes, in the undefended giving of everything, that her world of form is already fully penetrated by divine consciousness all the time, and always has been. She is no longer just Loretta Higgins; she has become Kumari, the Divine Goddess. She has become the feminine principle itself, opened in radiant undefended love. She allows herself to be completely penetrated and taken in a conscious act of surrender and devotion to the masculine principle, which is entering her and filling her with its consciousness. She is transported beyond her longing to be loved into being love itself."


Btw, did I mention the Tantra Chair? LOVE this chair. I need to get one ASAP. This is NSFW especially the "position guide" though I'm sure your coworkers will love it. I think I want the Mahogany with Silk Bamboo.

http://www.tantrachai...


Here's another part from the excerpt on bottoming out about how humanity is shifting that I like. I especially like the end where it's stated that the egoic state is not made to be wrong. It is just that human beings now more than ever have the capacity and choice to bring unconsciousness to light and transmute the egoic mind and the emotional body into the state of a pure presence:

"Many translucent visionaries believe that this is now happening to humanity as a race. James O?Dea, the president of the Institute for Noetic Science, calls the symptoms of extreme Iago expression the ?death throes? of a paradigm we are now abandoning. As we exhaust every possibility of lack-based, desire-based, separation-based living, we have no way out but to wake up and take an evolutionary leap. O?Dea feels that those who can recognize the process have a specific responsibility. Their job is to hospice the death of the old ways, with dignity, with compassion, with patience, and to midwife the appearance of the new human being."

The correct link for excerpts is: http://www.translucen...