Offerings to The Divine

At the severe risk of becoming boring and repetitive I really do think that as Tantrics that we can and should make our whole lives an offering to the Divine. There is no higher gift than to give ourselves completely to the worship of The Divine. And this means making every action, every thought something that we would quite happily give a God or a Goddess.

The Divine is, I feel intensely personal. For me, I worship not only Avalokitesvara, but also the Divine within each of us. I also very clearly worship physical beauty.

The absolute best offerings we can make are our lives. We offer our fitness, our diet, our exercise regimes, our meditation, our morality to The Divine. There is a very real place for incense, candles and rituals in embracing The Divine, both the Feminine and the Masculine, but I feel that these become empty and indeed an exercise in one upmanship if we don't take our worship of The Divine out into our lives.

I am also of the opinion that Tantra has spent way too long in the shadows. We should be open about our practice and the best way to do that is to present Tantra as a lot more than an excuse to indulge in excess and what seems to many a complete absence of morality. It is going to be very hard to present Tantra as a, for want of a better word, religion, if the main activity is the pollution and trashing of our bodies and what seems for better or worse as nothing deeper than getting our rocks off. It will be significantly easier if we present Tantra as a complete way of life. One where health, beauty and morality are paramount.

My offering to The Divine is the complete rearrangement of my life since I began to practice Tantra I have pursued and gained a different way of life. Where once I ate fish & chips, pizza, beer, and red meat on a regular basis, I now eat leafy green salads and am determinedly Flexitarian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexitarian 

I openly laughed at what is recommended for men over the age of 35. I have dropped almost 40 kg...yes you read it properly, 40 kg, since I was in my mid 30's.  Where once, much to my now ex-wife's intense chagrin, I was a couch potato, now I absolutely enjoy my morning yoga and weights and feel odd if I'm not walking frequently. I have been acutely unwell recently and in my all out drive to regain my health I offer the almost daily improvements in fitness and stamina to The Divine. My health is returning with a vengeance and the joy that comes with this is also something I offer to The Divine. My life has gone something like the cartoons that follow. Even our laughter can be an offering to The Divine.