Venus and Her Lover

by Becca Tzigany

  After shouting many sacred names, we stood quietly. The wind scrubbed us clean.

  James spoke. “When the path disappears, the real journey begins.” I nodded. “One more thing,” he said, taking my hands, so that we faced each other. “We have to change the title, Becca. It is no longer Venus and Her Lover – Reinventing the Myth. We have transcended the myth!”

  Overcome with hilarity, we smacked each other’s hand in a high five and stood there shaking our heads and laughing. Through the whole grand adventure, all the years, we had been artisans laboring on a noble masterpiece of mythology, to now decide it was simply a practice exercise in crafting the true magnum opus: our liberated selves.

  Who knows? Maybe this exercise would prove useful to others, so we agreed to not burn the paintings or chuck the writing, but to persevere toward publication. James shouted, “We send Venus and Her Lover out into the world!” Opening our arms toward the sea-swept horizon, we repeated it together, “We send Venus and Her Lover out into the world!”

  The winds grabbed our words and carried them swirling around the empty Fort Aguada, crumbling – just as the Patriarchy, with its walls and defenses and warfare — was crumbling. The trees whipped our intentions and hurled them out to sea, where they rode on currents to touch every shore. The aether, which permeated our ceremony, glowed with the power of love, seeping into all dimensions the vibration of oneness.

  Being and Becoming

  The point of enlightenment is not merely to transcend the world so that you can be free of it but to embrace the world completely, to embrace the entire process as your self, knowing that you are the creative principle incarnate, and you have a lot of work to do.

  ~ Andrew Cohen

  Contemplative after our ceremony, James and I climbed back onto the motorino to pay our visit to the top level of Fort Aguada. Wandering through the extensive stone courtyards, we looked at the big white lighthouse, storage chambers, jails, gunpowder room, water storage, and other defensive structures.

  We ended up on the top ramparts, strolling at a pace set by James’ hobble. From the high vantage point, we could see the wide bay opening into the Indian Ocean, bordered by forested uplands and the city of Panjim in the distance.

  “All this natural beauty, and then this monument to separation and defense,” I commented. “Why can’t we humans get past separation?”

  “Who’s asking?” James put to me Ramana Maharshi’s most enduring question, the basis of his practice of self-inquiry. Following the question leads the seeker back to Source, the One.

  “Great question, James, but actually what I want to consider is why. Why are we here? Why would the All That Is create all this, this solid reality?” I asked, tapping the solid laterite block of a wall one-and-a-half meter thick.

  “Well,” James began, “If it were me...”

  “It is you, Mr. I Am That!” I interjected.

  “OK, I would do it all just to hold you like this...” James grabbed me brusquely and held me tight to his chest. “…so I could make hot, passionate love to you!” We kissed a long kiss there on the ramparts. Luckily no Indian tourists were nearby to witness our scandalous display of affection. Too bad they missed it, as James would say.

  In our kiss, I was hit with a realization: “Desire!”

  “Desire!” James repeated. “Yeah, of course, my Venus, you know all about desire! In fact, virtually everyone does, one way or another.”

  One of the earliest known hymns of Creation comes from the Hindu Rig-Veda. For all I know, Inanna had a hand in composing it. It includes this verse:

  Before there was night or day, birth or death

  Could there have been some knowing, invisible Spirit,

  some essence of goodness like a conscious, infinite Presence

  breathing with windless breath?

  In this darkness shrouded by darkness,

  In this fathomless ocean of featureless, still water,

  Could this unmoving force have caught its breath with longing

  And roiled the dark waters into hot motion,

  Planting the primal seed – born of desire –

  Into the heated void?

  ~ Translation by Carolyn North175

  Longing, born of desire. Could the Void, Emptiness, the Unmanifest, outside of Time, containing no thing, have decided to define its infinite potential?

  I described the scenario. “OK, so you’re the All That Is, floating in endless bliss, everything beautiful, total peace, forever and ever...”

  “Bo-ring!” James said. “There’d be no surprises, ever, no challenges, no change. Wouldn’t you wonder what it would be like to create in Time and Space? Experiment with your innumerable possibilities?”

  “Well, did you? You must have been there, if the Unmanifest contains the seeds of everything that could ever exist,” I said.

  “Sure! And did you? You were there, too, since we are all One. We all come from the One. Did you say to yourself, ‘How about I play a game? How about I create?’” James said.

  “Lila!” I exclaimed, referring to the Hindu concept of divine play, spontaneity, delight in action. Brahman, it is said, brings the Unmanifest into the Manifest realm out of freedom, not obligation, simply to enjoy the creation of it.

  James continued. “And what a game! Boundless creativity in multiple dimensions. Like an incredibly complex chess game, with so many possible outcomes.”

  James and I were on a roll. I continued. “So you divide yourself into Self and Other...”

  “Duality. Polarity,” he said.

  “Shakti’s creation, Kali’s destruction... that makes separation, domination, selfish predators, adversaries, and suffering inherent in this existence. Buddha called it the First Noble Truth: ‘Life is suffering.’ Stanislav Grof called it the Cosmic Shadow. Is it worth it? For you, James, how you’ve had to fight to survive, all the pain...”

  James answered, “Is life worth it? Of course. Is bringing another human being into life worth it? Absolutely, and then having to deal with them and learning to love them unconditionally – what could be better? Is creating my art worth it? Hell, yeah!”

  I said, “So we fall from Spirit into Matter – forgetting where we come from – then climb our way back up – the ascending current – to remember our Oneness, the nondual singularity of Consciousness...”

  “…And then jump back down – descending current – to experience the aches and enjoy the pleasures of the body and the material world. Through it all, the trick is to remember who – and what – we are,” James completed the idea.

  “When we get out of balance, like now in the Kali Yuga, with so much death, war, desperation, self-deception, denial – the whole mess of the modern world – we need to affirm life more, to return to the beauty of the play...” I said.

  “Yep. It’s one massive disconnect in these times. So to affirm life more, we can call up our universal trait of desire, and... Shakti makes loves to Shiva. Voilà! There’s the re-connect,” James said.

  I looked at my lover, as memories flashed through my mind of the many times we had experienced transcendent bliss while making love. Drawn together by the blinding fire of desire, joining our bodies and our essences, we could achieve – or rather, let in – torrents of energy that did seem greater than our little selves. Could that be the evolutionary impulse of the Universe, flowing through us? After all, it was through sexual energy that people made babies, that Spirit incarnated into Form, that the Unmanifest became the Manifest.

  Sexual attraction felt irresistible. Andrew Cohen, in his book Evolutionary Enlightenment, delineates the characteristics of traditional enlightenment as being, and that of evolutionary enlightenment as becoming. Both paths provide “a mystical spirituality and a source of soul liberation.”176 Cohen says, “While Being feels like eternal peace, Becoming feels completely different. The evolutionary impulse is
felt as a sense of tremendous urgency, an ecstatic urgency.” That’s what sex felt like, like ecstatic urgency, born of desire.177

  That also explained our artistic obsessions. It is what got James to the studio day after day, painting in a strained style, for years on end. He was, as he said, “on his knees to the Goddess.” It is what yanked me out of bed with ideas insisting that I write them down at 4:00am.

  It was this ecstatic urgency that propelled us relentlessly around the world to answer questions about the War Between the Sexes, to understand the archetypal meanings of myth, to discern the truths within Tantra. We had offered up our Caribbean home, our family lifestyle, any wisps of security, and our futures on the Tantric altar of illumination. Irresistible was our spiritual quest.

  Returning to James, I explained this wider realization to him. He joked, with sexual innuendo, “Well, that gives the Big Bang a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”

  That reminded me of our conversations with Nassim: We humans, at the event horizon, gather information for the Universe to know itself and mediate the information feedback loop between the radiative (Masculine) and contractive (Feminine) – an ongoing process.

  “Shakti making love with Shiva,” I said. “That’s what is symbolized by the shri yantra and the yoni-linga we see in every temple here. And it could also represent the ascending and descending currents of spirituality, as well as the recipe for manifestation.”

  I felt a warm breeze refreshing the sweat on my skin. Whitecaps glistened in the teal sea. Savoring the moment, I said, “All this time in my meditation practice, I would chastise myself for not being able to hold the no-mind still point longer. It’s vital to experience that peace, I understand that, but now I know what was always pulling me back: the impulse to create, the ecstatic urgency to become...”

  “One of the principles of Tantra is continuous creation,” James added.

  “Uh-huh. Continuous creation through the archetypes, taking form in the 3-D world. We, as creators, steer how it unfolds, if we are conscious enough. The game is always in play. Lila, always lila!” I said.

  James remarked, “All these ideas... Duality, the Masculine and Feminine, god and goddess – via their union, are issuing forth through the five elements in continuous creation. And we’re the microcosm of a sacred macrocosm, so we can affect it. Tantra brings all these ideas into one philosophy, into a way of life.

  “Becca, I love our Tantric life together! It’s been such a ride! What a thrill!”

  I said, “We truly are the co-creators of the manifest world. That means that the One, Brahman...”

  “The All That Is, Infinite Consciousness...” James added.

  “Yes, the Great Spirit – whatever we call Source – It is actually expanding through us. Not only is It knowing Itself through us, It – we – are becoming something greater!” I exclaimed.

  James put his arm around my waist and said, “Yes! Creation is not a one-time event. And that is what spurs evolution. Change is the only constant, after all.” Facing the ocean view to the horizon, he concluded, “This is all one big work of art! Our masterpiece!”

  Sat-chit-ananda

  Rumi used to advise people to “Look for the answer inside your question.” The Road to Aguada had turned into an illustration of that principle. Remembering that ride through Mango Lane so many years ago in Puerto Rico, I realized that my old burning questions had been addressed. I recognized how James, Alex, and I had all been fanning out into our authentic selves since then.

  What satisfaction there was in that realization! Sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss), Ramana Maharshi and other spiritual teachers reminded us, was the reward of awakening. At the same time, we had a constant choice between the affirmation of sat-chit-ananda and the negation inherent in the Kosmic Shadow. It was like this:178

  sat

  chit

  ananda

  Nondual

  Awareness

  truth, infinite existence, pure being, oneness

  consciousness, awareness, wisdom, intelligence

  naturally-arising bliss, love, happiness, divine pleasure

  Shadow in Duality

  impermanence, death, disease, separation

  ignorance, misunderstanding, self-deception

  pain, anxiety, shame, guilt, sense of inadequacy

  In this existence, I could choose to marry the polarities within me, to transcend their limiting definitions. The arrow of evolution was jabbing me into the Integral meme and beyond. Matriarchy or patriarchy? Partnership. Creation or destruction? Evolution. Autonomy in my relationships or communion? James and I were nurturing both in an intersubjective dynamic, practicing communication, collaboration, and cooperation: the realm of Culture. The nondual path of Tantra and the Tantric dalliance with duality had become my sadhana, my daily spiritual practice. The more awake I became, the more likelihood of sustainable relationships healing our society.

  Such healing rested on a process of personal enlightenment. My relationship sadhana had brought my life, more and more, into the transcendental realms of sat-chit-ananda.

  After our walk through Fort Aguada, James and I mounted our Vespa to head down the mountain and go home. Riding on the back of the motorino, I looked overhead at the feathery leaves and flame-red flowers of flamboyán trees. Here in India they call them royal poinciana trees. Swatches of lime-green and scarlet against a glowing blue sky flashed through my vision. The smell of first mangoes rotting sweetly on the ground mixed with salty air. I sighed and closed my eyes. As if sitting in a lotus posture, I felt myself holding a yogic asana, while paradoxically speeding through space. But was this any different than all of us, catching a free ride spiraling through the Universe, here on our vehicle of preference, Planet Earth?

  But to describe it more precisely: I felt like I sat perfectly still in meditation, and all of reality was swimming by. In fact, it felt like I – the One behind my eyes – was there, and Becca the meditator as well as the whole kosmoscape of flamboyán trees, lava rock, overripe mangos, chirping creatures, and thoughts about the word Albuquerque were all floating through my awareness. I was simply there – always had been, always would be – in that infinite realm just outside time and space, beyond duality, before incarnation... just there feeling amused by the cavalcade of amazingness that sailed through me.

  Glancing upward, I spied one bud in particular, as it seemed to be quivering. Then, with unstoppable exuberance, it burst into bloom, revealing four flaming vermillion petals and one white petal rimmed in red and streaked with yellow and scarlet. The one white petal looked like red-hot fireworks shooting up from the center of the flower, like stars whizzing at warp speed in a spiral-arm galaxy, like light screaming into a black hole...

  A hummingbird, pulled in by desire, penetrated the virgin flower, and then flitted away.

  “Stop! Stop the bike!” I called to James.

  He pulled off the paved road onto a dirt path. “What? What’s up?” he said as he turned the motor off.

  “James, I just saw that flamboyán blooming!”

  “Yeah, we passed under quite a few of them. So what’s all the excitement about?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” I explained, “except for the laws of physics and time which say that no way could I watch a flamboyán flower burst into bloom before my very eyes. It was like it was blossoming in slow motion, but I saw the whole thing – while we were speeding past it! How is that possible?”

  James threw his head back and laughed. “Gimme a break, Becca! After all the magic and synchronicities of today, you’re surprised that you hit a time warp with beauty?”

 
I stared at my Mars man, speechless. He was right, of course. Shaking my head, I got off the motorino and looked at the view. Sparkles danced on the waters of the bay below us, as coconut palms shimmied in the wind. A chuckle rose in my body that erupted into gales of laughter. “Woo hoo!” I shouted to the dolphins who surely must have been nearby, laughing with us in their underwater-squeaky way. “Woo hoo!” I called out over the sea, which surely nudged the whales into song, which made the currents run, which made the galaxies spin.

  James had parked us underneath a frangipani tree, and the perfume of the white-lobed flowers hit me. Sweet like pineapple or gardenias, tart like oranges, creamy like coconut. Straddling the motorino to face my Mars man, I put my forehead to his. Hugging in a yab-yum, our bodies began deep breathing together. Breathing in the smells of our sweat and the frangipani’s fragrance, breathing out.

  With each breath, I felt pulsations growing within me. With eyes closed, I consciously breathed up an effervescence from my groin, into my womb, into my belly. At the heart chakra, a ball of light expanded, enveloping both James and me. I heard him sigh with pleasure as he held me tighter. Oh, my beloved man! Applying my will, I opened my throat to the sensations. “Oh...” I moaned. Higher they rose, spiraling into my third eye, and then surging up through my crown. Suddenly a spasm shot through my body, from root to crown, and then descended, showering us in a fountain of light.

  As the pulsations continued, I beheld a divine choreography of desire and creation: Shiva Nataraja in his sublime dance of consciousness – thump, thump – twirling stars like sparklers, and Shakti moving her hips as if doing hula. From her yoni poured luminescent orbs that hung in the air a moment before disintegrating to reveal forms of life – crystals, mushrooms, plankton, daisies, honeybees, dolphins, panthers, serpents, doves, monkeys, atoms, quarks, planets, comets, suns, galaxies. An endless parade of life forms danced through my orgasm with the Kosmos.