tantric creativity

What if our society treated sex the way it tends to treat creativity? Sex would be seen as a form of thinking or problem-solving. We would find book titles like “Sexual Thinking” or “Habits of a Sexual Mind.” Sex would also be equated with productivity, a type of behavior that leads to a goal like making a better baby, more babies, or both. You would be encouraged to do team-building exercises with your sex partner to become more efficient in your sexual practices. 
 
Rarely would any scholar mention what it feels like to have sex. You would never find a scientific paper dealing with passion, desire, sexual arousal, orgasm, or love. It might be surprising to learn that sex involves any emotion or bodily sensation at all. You may even come to believe that a computer could be programmed to be more sexual than a person. Masturbation would seem like an oddity. After all, who would be sexual just for the fun of it? The primary reason to have sex would be to produce something that has value in the marketplace.
 
Now, let’s flip this scenario. What if we treated creativity more like sex? Creativity would be seen as a natural human impulse and part of our basic biology. It would be understood that every child is born with an urge to create that manifests itself when the time is right. Being creative would be perceived as a total-body experience involving feeling and sensation and not just thinking. In fact, at its most satisfying and delightful, a creative experience could free your mind of all thoughts, worries, judgments, or concerns.
 
In your creative experiences, you might not be solving any problem necessarily but just expressing who you are and what you are feeling. Before you created anything with another person, you would explore your creativity on your own. And you might discover the transcendent power of creativity at certain moments, when you lose awareness of time and space, hunger and thirst, and even yourself while becoming absorbed in the creative process. Your moments of creative inspiration could be as ecstatic and compelling as any feeling of sexual pleasure.
 
Then there is the matter of Tantra. Just as Tantric wisdom can elevate sexuality and transform it into a path of total love and freedom, the practice of Tantra could do the same for creativity. As it turns out, this is not a hypothetical. There is a Tantric practice that enhances and elevates creativity in this way. It is called Inspiring. Like other Tantric practices, Inspiring involves mastery of the breath, silencing of the mind, and full awareness and control of bodily processes. 
 
The aim of Inspiring is not simply to create something wonderful in the world, although that is a legitimate by-product of the practice. It is to connect at the deepest level possible with your own true nature by embodying a universal creative process. This is where total freedom lies—and total love. 
 
Stay tuned to my next blog for more details.