In my steady endeavor to bring the masculine and feminine within myself and my life into a healthy balance, I recently decided to partake again in a Tantra workshop. As it had been recommended to me and as it was geographically and timewise easy to accomplish, I accepted the offer by the secret-of-tantra institute at the Zegg site in Bad Belzig, about an hour from Berlin. I transferred the course fee, read the list of things to bring and thought as the workshop was called “Oil-ritual: sensing and touching”, it would probably be mostly about massage with multiple hands and lots of massage oil.
Jumping into the cold water or rather: warm oil
A kind co-Berliner who also wanted to participate in the oil ritual took me with him in his car to the workshop. On his way to Bad Belzig he expressed his joyous anticipation during our drive to Bad Belzig. At that moment however I couldn´t quite grasp what was supposed to be so special about it – for an experienced tantric practitioner is rather relaxed in dealing with oil massages, even in groups. My driver then continued to share this experience with other tantra teachers where boundaries had been crossed in an unhealthy way and dramas of jealousy of archaic scope had unfolded. That fed my skepticism. Even though I had never experienced alike…but… of course tantra can create a hot furnace of feelings with according explosions.
When my nice chauffeur didn´t show up later and apparently had left, my distrust grew… Later I learned that he had changed his plans because of his actually rather bad cold and had sent the workshop leader a text message.
Without any idea and alone
So I was all by myself when I met later with almost thirty complete strangers in the workshop space of the ZEGG center. We all listened to the explanation of the seminar leader, Silvio Wirth, what this weekend was actually about. The core of it was to go together with the other 23 participants and four assistants into an “oil-tub”, stark naked and with 5-6 liters of warm oil in order to…well…what exactly? Teem? Silvio described as a rather incomparable mixture of “swimming, gliding and flying” with closed eyes and one was to lose one´s sense of time and space… That set my inner alarm off: “loss of control!!!” I actually hate it not to know where I am and with who I am, not being able to control the pace and what´s going on at the moment… However I was not contemplating escape, rather my curiosity and my sense of adventure grew.
Willingness makes almost everything possible
Discreetly I scanned the other participants, approximately an equal number of men and women, ranging in age from mid twenty to mid sixty. Among us a friendly English who had read about it with delight and then was unable to find anything alike anywhere in Europe despite his intense search. Only when he entered the key words in German into the google search engine and then ran the text of the website through google translate, he realized his wish would be fulfilled. The fact that he didn´t know any German did not stop him.
As the majority of participants had never experienced a tantric workshop nor an oil ritual, some turned a little pale. Silvio´s description and the remarks of others who had already experienced it increased our respect for the ritual. In some it turned into downright fear – depending on temperament and state of mind – feelings of shame, fear of making mistakes, anxiety about claustrophobia arose and a few women with long hair worried they might get stuck with others lying on their long hair…
My main fear was less the massive nakedness or the possible encounter with an erect penis – (or lingam as the tantric term is) or to be stuck with my hair, but the extreme physical proximity of so many then no any longer identifiable people. As we were supposed to keep our eyes shut and focus on our skin as a means of perception it would be impossible to gain an orientation in the swarm! No longer an upper and lower, but probably only an inescapable in-the-midst…
Good care
Fortunately Silvio and his Co-Leader Kalinka, as well as six assistants – or angels as they are charmingly called – are most experienced with it. Silvio said it was probably his 25th or 26th oil ritual and they managed to meet everybody exactly where they needed to be met – even though s/he might not have any idea about that her/himself (any longer…).
The task of the “secret-of-tantra-crew” was to turn a group of over thirty people into a community within less than 24 hours. A community where everyone was caring, trusting in every other and the entire group, expressed a healthy sense of boundaries and the willingness to be responsible for him/herself so that every participant felt safe and comfortable and was able to enjoy the experience to the maximum. Truly, no small challenge!
But they succeeded! Partly because the harmony among the leader’s team offered an ideal starting point of trust, care and understanding: with their “basic tone” they tuned the whole group. And partly because the intelligent structure and loving organization perfectly served the whole; as well as various dance meditations and exercises – that I will not describe here in detail. Their preparatory effect reveals itself only doing anyway. Also the English gentleman felt fully integrated – due to some participants who happily translated for him. So less than 24 hours later we were all willing to dare this adventure of “being in the oil” and face the transformative power of the oil.
Oil is a sacred and healing substance
For of course oil is a magical substance – especially in the context of a ritual and independently from its actual biochemical composition.
From a mythological view oil is perhaps something like the neural fluid of the Earth – just like water is the blood of the Earth. However, petroleum is rarely used for religious purposes… But perhaps it is not actually that surprising that crude oil has become a source of power as fuel for us and for many their vehicles have cult status… However for our physical body we generally prefer essential oils:
Essential oils have always been used for healing and are gently rubbed into the skin of dying and newly born humans are often – especially in a religious context. Essential oils have the capacity to make us get in contact with our very own essence – each in its own way. They strengthen our feelings of connection, of feeling embraced and warmth and therefore support in a special way the threshold crossings of our soul – wherever the threshold may happen to be.
Oil has its own magic
Furthermore it was always an expression of blessing and honoring: in antiquity and to this day among indigenous people oil is regularly applied to statues of divinities and sacred symbols. The ancient Egyptians and their gods always had a special relationship to essential oils and especially perfumed oil. Later on Olympic sportsmen and victorious Roman generals for their triumphal procession anointed their bodies with oil. Jesus is sometimes called the “anointed one” and also in the empowerment rituals of the Catholic church the candidates are anointed with oil.
In German we also have a pejorative term literally meaning “oil-idol” – which now is applied to people who seem like stuffed dummies. But originally it referred to a painting or a statue painted in oil and anointed – and that surely for worshipping reasons.
Art played a role too
Only now, in the aftermath I asked myself how Silvio actually came about to offer this oil ritual, for it doesn´t really seem to be part of the classic canon of tantric traditions. So I read his text on his website about it. I discovered with delight, that his impulse came from art – from Viennese action art of the 1960ies to be more precise and that it is occasionally combined with body painting. As a matter of fact I actually thought that body painting could enhance the ritual – for that also has a mythic power. And I am quite sure that whole body oil experiences were part of the ancient mystery schools. However since we only know little about them, we can only speculate. But fortunately this is irrelevant to our intensity of the experience in our time.
The inexpressible in slippery words
Silvio and other “revenants” concerning oil were right, when they said, it was actually an indescribable experience. The senses are indeed stimulated in a way that is far beyond language. And I do not only mean – particularly for those whose imagination is running wild right now – the orgiastic, primal, archaic – or what is actually more fitting in my view: the unconditional, infinite and universal.
But this is a blog and I´m a writer and therefore I dare to describe the indescribable…while being absolutely aware of the fact that it can only be an approximation. Similar to reading a recipe and rather than tasting the dish…or, to do the matter more justice: reading about sex rather than experiencing it yourself….
For of course it is a highly sensual experience: your fingers or face brush against a breast and feel the nipple, then a penis nudges you in your back, a leg glides under an arm, a belly lifts up your head, a hand slides on your buttocks, a foot rubs your shoulders and the continuous flow…in between…always noticeable the softening oil, that regularly sprays onto the naked bodies like a warm rain and seeps into everything: in hair, ears and elsewhere… and unites all and everything ever more…
A mystical experience
At the same time one can feel that this sacred space is being held and tender souls, invisible but audible and sometimes tangible, make sure that everybody is doing fine, that confuses “fish” find their way back into the “swarm” and that oil can be removed from the eyes. Furthermore impulse sentences intensify the experience: you are reminded of dolphins, amoebas and drops of water. Frequently changing but always suitable music enhances the atmosphere. All are part of a magnificent “Gesamtkunstwerk” – a kind of universal work of art. It is fueled by the power of love and the aim is the encounter – with the other, with yourself, with whatever is feared/or desired and whatever else wants to be revealed.
And so every “fish” had its very own experience: there were women who had the subjective feeling of only surrounded by men, just as there were men who felt, they were only surrounded by men… there were some who had the feeling of never having enough space, whilst other felt they had to search for the next body… Some felt, the pool was immense, others tiny… Some were grateful that their need for physical touch had been finally saturated, others felt pawed and some came in contact with deep feelings of sadness, loneliness and old pain – and all was allowed to be and welcomed by all.
It was moving and fascinating to listen to the individual accounts of the experience afterwards – that also included rising and sinking lingams…
Shame and charme
But before the discussion turned too shameful for all concerned, a wise woman remarked that she generally appreciated erect lingams and that this was something really beautiful and that she was sure, that many women felt like her.
I agreed with her from the bottom of my heart and it inspired the following poem in me – since I really am dreadful at writing verse and rhyming, I shy away from calling it a real poem, maybe it´s more of a ditty:
An erect lingam at the right time
Increases lust and raises the feminine
An erect lingam at the wrong time
Requires humor and a wise feminine
(Non-Tantrics can replace lingam with boner and will not spoil the bad poetry…and more about the charm of visible boners and nipples in an earlier blog entry.)
I was also quite touched by the stories of those who had participated as a couple. It was enchanting and motivating to learn that it is absolutely possible to have such an enriching and also quite challenging experience together – by allowing the other a maximum of freedom and allowing it for oneself.
Slithering for world peace
I drifted between several states of consciousness back and forth, depending on how much I managed to turn off my head. In some moments I absolutely enjoyed the total physicality and being able to sense myself and so many others somehow simultaneously and was delighted by the unbelievable and overwhelming beauty of each of these bodies that also was expressed through touch. In this seemingly small eternal moment I could sense with a bliss on a soul level: we all are indeed divine beings – especially in our uniqueness – and yet part of something so fantastic whole, a kind of grand creature, to which to surrender is more than rewarding. Letting go and surrendering was for me the main action of what I was…doing…to whatever that was going on, of which I had sometimes more, sometimes less awareness…until my own hair soaked with oil felt like a strange and yet familiar creature. In this condition it was actually no problem to pull it out repeatedly from between various layers…
And then other instances of my consciousness became active and I got a hunch that the “primal soup of life” might feel something like this – a seemingly confusing and unpredictable chaos and yet with a secret inner order, where no boundary was crossed in a hurting way, because all are carried and protected at the same time…by the oil…that in that moment seemed like liquid love to me…physically and metaphysically.
Dish detergent helps
And also after the oil bath and the washing out of the oil – simply with grease-cutting dishwashing detergent – and the following rest and integration phase, the experience echoed. In some it lead further inwards, in others it increased sexual desire and I had…yet again a headache. Headaches are often a tense expression of separation – people who suffer from migraines usually prefer to be alone, distant from others – and yet it may be also an expression of the primal pain missing the deep connection to others. No wonder that the oil experience triggered and intensified this in me. As a matter of fact I had already had a slight headache before the ritual – but fortunately not during “the oil”. And yet this experience may have catalyzed further healing of this issue – time will tell.
Another participant now dreams of making this profound and sustainable experience available to many more people and children or rather ordering them to do it: for who participates in a group oil ritual every five years will be unable in the long run to entertain war thoughts…
Silvio agreed and said that for him his tantric work and the oil ritual in particular were an important contribution to more love and peace in the world – no matter how small “the drop on the hot stone” may actually be. That might seem a little naïve and starry-eyed to some – but according to my research Silvio is absolutely right. In my view his work has a lot more power than he might imagine or dare to wish.
The oil ritual is a power plant!
A few years ago I listened to the spiritual teacher Michael Roads from Australia, while he was describing his metaphysical explorations concerning nuclear energy. He explained that the destructive force of a nuclear power station matched energetically the anger and desire to destroy of mankind. Indeed this destructive creation – that only humans are able to perform – originated in an absence of love.
I then asked him what in his opinion we humans could do to counterbalance with something constructive and healing this highly dangerous product? What would a “power station of love” have to look like?
Michael scrutinized me to see whether I was yet another representative of the esoteric bliss bunnies who wanted to save the world by being nice. Then he replied that there was no need to build “power stations of love”, for there were already about seven billion. However the sad thing was that most of them weren´t “activated”… For actually every human being had the ability to bring everything (back) into divine order, into holistic health. But we were underestimating our powers and were controlled by our fears. If every human found the courage to live his love to a maximum – then the creations from fear and power would finally give way to the creations from love and trust.
That made a lot of sense to me that day, and therefore I make an effort like many others to do this as often and intensely as possible. Because it may not be quite obvious to all yet, here in all clarity: love is of course not only a physical expression, but also and is very powerful then. S/he who can love her/himself and others unconditionally and is able to express that physically, is an activated power station of love.
Perhaps a chance for mankind
In human history as far as we know it this has not yet been the case, that love and trust were stronger forces than power and fear. However that doesn´t mean it cannot change and maybe even soon. This may seem naïve – but it remains to be proven and I personally definitely belong to those who really are looking forward to experiencing that love overcomes power in our world for a change.
For these reasons too, I tremendously enjoyed the weekend, meeting all those lovely people and the oil ritual. It has enriched and inspired me much more than I can presently fathom. So much more information is exchanged through physical touch than verbal exchange. No wonder that cultures where that is much more part of daily interactions tend to be more healthy and peaceful on a soul level than us – we may be masters of material abundance, but many suffer from a certain lack of feelings and contact. Touching can change that and takes you from the head directly into the heart! I am most grateful to all who made this experience possible and who ever feels compelled to experience it her/himself: I can only encourage you! Most certainly everyone will have their own highly unique and yet extremely enriching experience! The oil ritual taught me personally a bit more about the great mystery of our human existence and the magic of love – and I wasn´t alone!
More information (in German): www.secret-of-tantra.de
