Several Living Tantra readers have recently asked about seduction. Seduction must be in the air. One person said to me: “The whole world is engaged in seduction. Seduction is a very strong force.”

This is true.

Why?

Because seduction is aggression, and few of us have relaxed to the degree that we have left aggression behind.

Consider the difference between flirtation and seduction.

Flirtation is a two-way affair. It is something you do with another person, not to another person.

We don’t say: “He tried to flirt me.”

We do say: “She tried to seduce me.”

Seduction is something you do to another person. You try to capture them.

Flirtation is a little dance. In order to dance, both people need to know they are dancing. Maybe they are dancing with more or less skill, but in any case, flirtation relies on a certain degree of awareness in both parties.

Seduction, on the other hand, always involves subterfuge. You are trying to get something without the other person being so aware. You want to take something.

Of course, it is possible to play a game of seduction, but even the game must involve the unawareness, or pretend unawareness, of the seduced person. This is the nature of seduction.

Seduction relies on and reinforces unawareness: the opposite of realization. This is the key to its violence.

Many people rely on seduction to habitually bind others to them. This is so common, we almost can’t see it at all.

We seductively use words, gestures, emotional expressions, and deeds to get the attention, the approval, the love, the money, the assistance, and even the punishment we crave.

Whenever we use any expression of our energy to force a particular response out of another person in order to reinforce our sense of self, we are engaging in the violence of seduction.

If I am at a party, and I gratuitously begin dropping the names of the illustrious universities I have attended, the books I have published, and the famous people who are my acquaintances, I am playing the part of a seducer.

If the other person is awed or impressed, or made nervous, or even becomes irritated with me, then I have succeeded in creating yet another little karmic string of attachment.

I am less free, and so is the other person. We are all in this together.

Seduction expresses and produces limitation.

When we enter a spiritual community, we carry our habits of seduction right along with us. We may try to bind others to us by displaying our spiritual credentials in various ways, both gross and subtle.

For instance, we may try to bind others in admiration for the famous teachers we have had, or the “secret” empowerments and initiations we have received. Or we may act out our idea of spiritual accomplishment in some way intended to be noticed and reacted to by others.

A good teacher makes us uncomfortable because she or he is impervious to our seduction strategies. When we cannot weave our teacher into our web of seduction, we feel space opening up under our feet.

And so real spiritual life can begin.

My first diksha Guru taught us that an accomplished Tantrika cannot be seduced. I would add that a truly accomplished Tantrika also will not be a seducer.

Tantrik practice is about releasing compulsive patterns and karmic entanglements. We spend a long time in a state of uncertainty about whether we really want to do this or not. We are attached to our attachments!

When we imagine Self-realization, it is generally only a bigger, more colorful version of Getting What I Wanted All Along.

However, once we begin to relax more deeply, we begin to feel the limitations of this situation. These become quite painful to us. We enter into a stage of desperation.

We are still intensely “me-centered,” but this desperation to be rid of our limitations in turn leads to deeper relaxation and the enhanced ability to recognize and feel the pain of other beings.

Even further on, we recognize that there is absolutely no distinction between perpetuating experiences of limitation for ourselves and doing so for others. We live in continuity.

At this point, our attachment to seduction finally ends.

OM Shanti,
Shambhavi

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