Demanding that the little him shape up (Open your Heart, Express Yourself) to the full glory of what he is capable. As tantrics have always known, this is the mystical power of the conscious female, the yogini.

And you wonder where the modern day mystics have gone... They are going where mystics are supposed to go. Check out the scriptwriters, the rock bands, the writers, the poets, the artists, the thought leaders. Look at Lady Gaga. ‘It doesn’t matter if you love him, or capital H-im. Baby you were born this way’. Or the quietly witty video for ‘Judas’. Just because she’s exploring the shadow, doesn’t make her dark. It's a journey to the underworld, like the goddess Inanna. This is what women are supposed to do: feel and express without judgement. Feeling involves throwing a harness on darkness, rawness, pain, and pulling it into the light. Transmuting it through art into something less scary and freeing. There’s a great power in saying: This is how I feel. What are you going to do about it? Heal it, accept it or fix it, but don’t argue with it or deny it.

I could go on (and on), but in the meantime, what about the song which inspired this post... True Blue?
Go on, have a listen. I bet you’ve forgotten how childlike, innocent and uplifting this song really is.
​

As promised, we have a brand new playlist! 

You know, back in the day I would have made you a mix tape...but this is more portable.

This juicy playlist is called Guilty Pleasures...

It’s designed to be played at full volume with lots of raucous dancing, jumping up and down, singing at the top of your voice. It is perfect for shadow body healing.

When healing the shadow body, guilty pleasures need to be embraced and integrated.

You need to stop holding yourself tightly, keeping yourself ‘together’ and feel expansive.
Give yourself permission to feel childlike and joyful.
Accept your primal nature and any tension you perceive between your enjoyment and your mind.

As with the previous playlist, these songs have been rigorously tested in the Tantra Mataji kitchen and you can be assured that they rate highly on the Ecstasy-O-Meter.

When you’ve got this little lot out of your system, try meditating right after. I bet it will be a good one - you’ll find it much easier to quiet your mind and savour your inner peace.


Enjoy!
​

I am mama
and child
I call for baba
while called
your beloved
but daughter?
It's fine
that I don't
get this
and I'm calmly
losing
my mind
Your mother
when you suffer
sister-friend
to take you down 
brother
with the others
defender to
the end
You always 
have an answer
and it's
different
every time
Who am I?
Who are you?
Who are we
not?
The ‘I’ is
confused
but I AM
loved
and that
is all the 
explanation 
available 
at this time



My reality. Just me.

If I AM ok, but you are not, what difference does it make who is who?

Divine confusion.

Which part of the whole of humanity did you pick up when they were giving out slices of karma? Your concept of 'self' is a part of that karma too.

Hmm, this looks interesting,
I'll explore what happens when.....
Oops. 

Did the game you were playing collide with someone else's?
Can you hear the cosmic laughter?

WE are looking pretty funny. And we are looking pretty awesome. And cute. 

We are the sweetheart - mischievous angels.
How many lovers can we hustle?

What happens if we melt all the parts of ourselves together, take little leaps of faith towards each other? How many 'serious' players can we wrestle to the ground in a heap of giggles?

We might have to get closer. It might feel more intimate than we're used to. 
It might start to look a little like ecstasy.


I am the breeze that plays about your lips
You kiss me back
Softly your essence gives itself up to me:
tender, treacly pleasure
Butterflies lightly meeting in the air
circling apart, then touching
Undisclosed, beaming joy
provoking bubbles of inner laughter
feeling each other this intimately
a startling, delicate delight

​When love itself comes to kiss you,
don't hold back!  When the king

goes hunting, the forest smiles.
Now the king has become the place

and all the players, prey, bystander,
bow, arrow, hand and release.  How

does that feel?  Last night's dream
enters these open eyes.  When we die

and turn to dust, each particle will
be the whole.  You hear a mote whirl

taking form?  My music.  Love, calm,
patient.  The Friend has waded down

into existence, gotten stuck, and 
will not be seen again outside of

this.  We sometimes make spiderwebs
of smoke and saliva, fragile thought -

packets.  Leave thinking to the one
who gave intelligence .  In silence

there is eloquence.  Stop weaving,
and watch how the pattern improves.
​

Resurrection. It's inside all of us. 

Labi Siffre is today's guru with this powerful anthem:

​​
​The higher you build your barriers
The taller I become
The further you take my rights away
The faster I will run
You can deny me, you can decide
To turn your face away
No matter 'cause there's

Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no
There's something inside so strong
Oh, something inside so strong

The more you refuse to hear my voice 
The louder I will sing
You hide behind walls of Jericho 
Your lies will come tumbling
Deny my place in time, you squander wealth that's mine
My light will shine so brightly it will blind you
Because there's

Something inside so strong, strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no
There's something inside so strong
Oh, something inside so strong

Brothers and sisters
When they insist we're just not good enough
Well we know better
Just look them in the eyes and say
We're gonna do it anyway
We're gonna do it anyway

There's something inside so strong
And I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no
There's something inside so strong, oh
Something inside so strong

Brothers and sisters
When they insist we're just not good enough
Well we know better
Just look them in the eyes and say
We're gonna do it anyway
We're gonna do it anyway
We're gonna do it anyway
We're gonna do it anyway
Because there's

Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no, oh no
There's something inside so strong
Something inside so strong 
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no, oh no
There's something inside so strong


​

Today, I’m excited to be introducing...
(drum roll), The Divine Lover bhakti playlist. (You can find it here).

Explore consciousness with me through Bhakti yoga...

This is the first Tantra Mataji playlist which has come to fruition but there are more to come. These are the result of many years of rigorous testing in my very own kitchen. Each playlist has its own focus, but together they are designed to help you become more alive, more total, experience more love. In order to make the list, each song has to rate very highly on the Ecstasy-o-meter. The blend of artists, lyrics, music, and combination of songs in the list adds a further dimension of complexity.

Who do I mean by The Divine Lover?

Your sweetheart? Your guru? Your deity? Does it matter?

Sufis know God as the Beloved. Jesus offers himself as the Bridegroom. Shiva is a loving husband to Parvati. Krishna is Lover to many. What are these archetypes telling us about our relationship with the Divine? Who or what will point the way to communion with the ONE and Divine Unconditional Love?

I am not making any apologies for the song choices (Boyzone warning). There will be some tracks which you don’t immediately like. That is ok. There may be some song transitions that shock you. The goal is to PLAY with the list. If something annoys you, ask yourself which part of you is annoyed. Savour the tracks you do like or which move you. Stop and start and play the ones you like over and over. These are not designed as background music or easy listening. Ideally, if the idea resonates, you will treat this as sadhana and ‘work the list’. Turn up the volume and sing. Dance around. Do it in front of other people. Especially if it’s ‘not you’.

‘Yes, but I don’t really do Bhakti’ I hear you say. Hmm, that’s what I used to think - not a devotional bone in my body. I guess that joke is on me (spontaneously dissolves into puddle). If you are human, you are capable of Bhakti yoga. If your goal is bliss and ecstasy, try it. Paramhansa Yogananda once told a disciple, “Kriya Yoga plus devotion works like mathematics. It cannot fail.” It’s a bonafide path of yoga that works, especially in combination with other practices.

And if you’re still hovering, this is not just a simple Bhakti playlist (you can find plenty of those already on offer on YouTube). My mix-y up-y mix tapes are tantricly woven to challenge you a little, activate more energy sub-harmonics, and help you expand into totality.

Enjoy.

​'Our love affair was a prickly thing
I thought you were ugly and cruel
But mysterious
You enticed me back'
​

​This...

I was planning another post, but given the current diplomatic crisis between the UK and Russia (and the world), this one feels more timely. 

As love affairs go, this one's been pretty damn big for me....

Moscow is my Himalayas. I start to breath differently there as soon as the plane hits the tarmac. It's a place to feel more alive. I realise not everyone feels like this.

How do you learn to love something which initially seems off-putting?
Well, this is the essence of tantra, and Russia has taught it to me well...


'Overcast and austere, you make me glad to be with you
Unwelcoming, you embrace my soul
Once more I breathe deeply in your feather-heavy air
My belly bubbles the buzz none can hear'


Often, the things which seem most 'difficult' are the ones most worth the effort. When I first visited Moscow in 1996, I can safely say I was not immediately in love with the place. It was big, dusty, unwelcoming, had horrible red tape, and all the good nightclubs were hidden un-signposted down some back street only to be reached using a hastily hand-drawn map.
But there was something.... an excitement, a challenge, a significance, a secret, a promise of more.


It is becoming a bit of a theme for me, but if you want to experience ecstasy, you need to embrace complexity - the 'good' and the 'bad'. It is only through transmuting the duality of these that you find genuine unconditionality and passion for life.

Those red stars on top of the Kremlin get me every time....

(Also, y'know, Russians are not that difficult to get on with - lots of my favorite, favourite people in this lifetime have been and are Russian).


Poetry heals, and here is a poem I wrote in Moscow two years ago in 2016, a whole twenty years after my first visit - celebrating the things that had changed, the things that hadn't, the memories, and the constant new-ness. I hope it goes some way to offering a fresh perspective.



Am I old or young? 
This place tumbles my feelings
Heaviness, overwhelm
Until I melt into the flow
Releasing the years in between
Worn like barricades
Can I still be one of you? 
In these spaces so grand 
I lose myself lightly
Mischievous youth
So present in every in-breath
Every mouthful, every undiminished echo 
Still delightfully stern and unyielding
Now flaunting glamour and poise
A new-old presence reinvented again
Laughter squeezes 
Between grid-locked cars
Joy bursts out at stony walls
A face this serious can only be pretending
One tickle and here's a laugh
It's flooding back to me
I remember how to dance through this

Lilac trees invite
Tulips entice
Red stars in the night
Vibrating with stored knowing
A constant landmark for our stories
Yours, and mine
Of course - you were my mentor!
Shaping my young years
Being the anarchy of aliveness
A love of many lifetimes
We must know each other well
Connecting so deeply 
Your love-flow flavour
Comes spontaneously to my lips
I am here, now
Dissolving the distance between us
In the awe of your embrace
I am always young


Do we need a song? Hmmmm. Too much choice. I think on this occasion a traditional one...

​

​I seem to be developing criteria for songs which make it onto this blog, one of which is 'makes hair stand on end'. I could easily not add any commentary to this video, and just say 'ooooh', but in the interests of un-splaining, just a few thoughts....

We are all manifestations of the ONE
The ONE has many lovers
We all remember each other
We are all eternally COOL with this
We are all healed
We are all friends
The poignancy adds to the ultimate ecstasy
We are all

IN
​LOVE

You said
'Do more of what you love'
But I looked at my life
In despair
As there were no more 
Minutes to be found
And I know you're not sadistic
(Honestly)
So this must mean
Something more profound 
I looked again at the strictures
And the activity
I could not have arranged it better
If I was deliberately 
Seeking misery
There was nowhere to go
Nothing to do
You told me 'Do more of what you love'
So I went back to you and said:
There is nothing left 
There is no other way 
You need to show me
How to make love to my life
Teach me how to make love
To my day

​

​
As an assassin 
Gently whispers in the ear 
Of his victim
As he lowers him to the ground
Eyes wide in wonder at his fate
Awaiting the last breath
You speak in tongues
Like an incantation or last rite
And soothing 
Stroke my hair
​

So, when Babaji first came into my experience, I remember being under the impression that I was in a safe pair of hands...

(Laughs hysterically)

Well, kinda.

You know, I didn't know that much about him. I'd never read Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, so I did what any sane person would do in that situation - I Googled him.

And I came across a couple of stories from that book, including this terrifying one which takes place in the Himalayas with Babaji and his group of disciples: