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The way of Kashmiri Shaivism has been transmitted orally from master to disciple formillennia, through teachings of astonishing modernity and rare simplicity. The tradition’s foundation texts speak to the free and intuitive intelligence, offering absolute truth right from the very start. You are Shiva One of tantrism’s distinctive characteristics is the presence of numerous femalemasters. They have kept the mystical current from foundering in precepts, oversophisticated forms or a hidebound hierarchy. The unique teachings they have created are totally immersed in reality and open without distinction to every human being. In a movement entirely free of artifice or dogma, the tantric teachings invite us to tastean ever-deepening, ever-more-direct contact with what is. They lead us to discover an attention which neither comments on nor judges reality. This attention relaxes, stops sorting out what is best or right for us and separating what is spiritual from what isn’t. This is how we discover a presence which is light and intense, sensitive and ever-new, never fabricated. Life itself becomes our field of exploration, practice and creation. Oursenses unfiltered by mental commentary, we dare to plunge ourselves into contact with the whole of manifested reality, a contact unhindered by any belief or ritual. Through various tantric yoga practices we develop a more and more refined awarenessof our bodily sensations, of space and of the rhythm of our breathing. Borne by thissensitive awareness, we discover that we can touch the absolute at the very heart ofnormal activity. The shaivist way also presumes the student’s courage and the passionate desire toenter into a total intimacy with herself or himself, without the support of reassuring ritualforms. On this path in which the human being is accepted in her or his entirety, there is nothing to transcend or liberate. The entire palette of thoughts, feelings and sensations is used as the mystic way. “In a state of extreme desire, anger, greed, confusion, pride or envy, enter your own heart and discover the underlying peace. My desire, my anger, my violence, my pride. You showed me that unless I touched them deeply my love could not blossom.”1 At the heart of this unrestricted intimacy with ourselves is the nugget of the Self,the limitless source from which everything emerges and to which everything returns in acycle without end. Shaivism brings us back to a pure non-duality, with no divinity outsideourselves. We are at once Temple, Worshipper and the Divine, which is the literal symbolism of the trident of Shaivism. This mystical, millennial current invites us to recognize our essence, pure and free from the very beginning, and return at last to theliving, free, spontaneous human condition. 1. Translated from Tantra Yoga, le Vijñânabahïrava tantra, translation and commentary by Daniel Odier, © Albin Michel 1998.
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