Liberation

Tantra Style

When I was a much younger man, I was really, really into mysticism. It was mysticism of a Christian variety, characterised by endless hours spent in prayer and study of Christianity’s sacred texts, and by many thousands of words handwritten in journals to analyse these texts, and, of course, to analyse my soul. I loved the Romantic and Metaphysical poets, I loved to play spiritual songs on my guitar.

I loved every search for anything transcendent.

Like most good mystics, I found in this search some experiential rewards: those moments of ecstasy, of stepping beyond the ordinary, those glimpses beyond the vagaries of change and decay, beyond the material limits of the body and the intellectual limits of the human mind.

But because my path towards transcendence was shaped by a conservative form of Christian belief, it included a negative stance towards the human experience. This can be captured by one word: “sin.”

If you approach Christian mysticism with an interest in the textual traditi…