PORTALS

Below you will find some portals that we can pass through together in one of my events, concerts, workshops and private sessions, or that I can open for the participants at your private or public events/festivals.

The Sound Portal

Over the last decades, we have witnessed a boom in “Sound Healing” practices, but the use of sound as a means to reach certain states of consciousness and unleash the body’s natural ability to heal itself is an ancient art that was born with humankind.

This sacred art has been transmitted from generation to generation by sound masters / musicians / shamans / mystics, mostly in an initiatory manner, but we can also rely on an immense body of written knowledge and archaeological evidence that dates back more than 20,000 years and continues to be relevant in our time.

The direct transmission from my teachers and my 30 years of research on that corpus of knowledge are the basis of my practice.

Although I own hundreds of instruments, my teachers have taught me that the most precious instrument is the practitioner themselves. The quality of their presence and the ability to create the appropriate soundscape for each particular circumstance and place, and at the right time, is where the secret of this art lies.

The Silence Portal

There are thousands of types of meditation, from sitting still to complex meditation techniques that include very precise instructions for breathing, visualizations, body movements and the chanting of mantras at the same time.

I like to think that they are all variations of the same gesture: “To open the door of the portal of Silence, and to immerse oneself in it”.

And where is that portal? Many mystics and meditation masters have given us the same answer: “In the center of your being, which is also the center of the Universe”. Meditation aims to take us directly there.

After having trained for many years in traditional Buddhist Meditation and Western Mindfulness techniques, I discovered Osho Active Meditations, in which all the dimensions of our being are involved and nothing is left behind, and my life changed forever.

Over the last years, I have put my creativity in the service of Meditation and created, alone or with other facilitators, new ways to find that inner silent center, combining Art, Sounds, Philosophy, Poetry, Dance and Visual Arts.

The Tantric Portal

The growing interest in Tantra in the West might be a sign that we are heading towards a collective spiritual awakening, but for those of us who are studying the original sources of this refined spiritual tradition, it is evident that there is a high level of confusion and misinformation about the subject. A good start is to make the distinction between:

1- “Classical/Traditional” Tantra
A spiritual movement that appeared in South-East Asia around 1,000 years ago and was articulated in Sanskrit scriptures called the “tantras”.

2- “Serious” Neo-Tantra (this is my way to call it, it is not a category accepted by scholars!) Which refers to Western spiritual schools that combined some elements of Traditional Tantra with Western psychology, personal development techniques and other disciplines.

3- What is known in the West as Tantric Sexuality”.

4- “New Age” Neo-Tantra
Practices or schools where Neo-Tantra, Neo-Paganism, New Age, Mystery Schools and many other elements are melted together, without a deep understanding of the key concepts of each tradition and the cultural context in which they were born.

In Traditional Tantra, sexual practices were only found in certain lineages, and prescribed to certain initiates, while in “Serious” Neo-Tantra, sexuality is accepted as part of the practice, but still occupies a marginal place.

In “Tantric Sexuality”, the original spiritual goals of this practice are completely lost and there is an almost exclusive focus on sexuality and the attainment of pleasure, and while obviously there is nothing wrong with that, it can hardly be called Tantra. Unfortunately, a lot of people only have this concept in mind when hear the word “Tantra”.

In “New Age” Neo-Tantra we can identify a main focus on the attainment of peak experiences (known as “spiritual materialism”), like “Kundalini activations” and there is a tendency for there to be weak ethical principles between the practitioners and the participants.

The type of Tantra that I am interested in is Traditional Tantra (especially Kashmir Shaivism) and some “Serious” Neo-Tantra schools and teachers. My main focus of research now is the work of the great Tantrik master Abhinavagupta and the role of Sound in the Tantrik ancient scriptures that we have access to and how we can apply them in our daily lives.

When I create a Tantra event, or co-create it with other facilitators, my intention is to invite the participants to pursue the highest goal of Traditional Tantra: “Being awake to our true nature as Infinite Consciousness, and being free of attachment to all that is not our essence nature”. Once this realization and state of freedom is attained, as a corollary to it, a feeling of extraordinary peace and bliss naturally arises.

The Art Portal

When a person is denied the chance to express themselves, a part of their being is being mutilated. I am fully convinced that Art is capable of healing, making miracles happen and rebuilding our chaotic society that has lost its soul and direction.

In ancient cultures, people healed themselves and communicated with higher realms of existence by dancing, playing drums, performing body painting and other ancient arts, which were available to everyone.

Nowadays, the society is split between the “professional artists” and the “non-artists”. There is a kind of taboo against playing an instrument that “we don’t know how to play”, or dancing a dance that “we don’t know how to dance”. Most people feel obliged to apologize about it before trying, and this is usually done with a lot of shame and fear of judgement.

That’s all pointless nonsense!

In order to dance, paint, sign, and play an instrument, the only thing we need is to just do it and experiment with it, like children do, without fear.

Dr. Valerie Hunt, professor of Physiological Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, the first to measure the human biofield in a laboratory, wrote: “When a person’s energy field reach higher vibrational states, he no longer experience material things such as bodies and ego states, but knowing, higher information, trascendental ideas, insight about ultimate sources of reality, and creativity in its pure form.”

This is the point where Meditation and Arts meet. Meditation takes us beyond the cage of our physical brain to be fully present in what she called “the field of the infinite Mind”, where we can experience pure Creativity and higher thoughts. Art help us to express them in the material plane for our personal and collective wonder and understanding.

The Wisdom Portal

It is true that we cannot go deep into a spiritual path just by reading a book, but it is also true that without a correct orientation, our practice can be ineffective or lead us to the wrong destination. This is why having a coherent View (or Darshana) of the spiritual lineage we are following is highly important.

For example, if we practice Yoga while thinking that “Yoga helps us to be more flexible and healthy”, that’s perfectly fine in itself, but of course it will be more difficult for us to reach the higher goals that Yogic systems aim for, which go beyond the physical body.

As a spiritual seeker, these are some challenges that you might encounter whenever you want to learn the philosophical systems of the spiritual practices you’re engaging in:

  • The primary sources are in languages you don’t speak (Sanskrit, Chinese, etc.)
  • You cannot easily access quality translations or commentaries for those primary sources, because you don’t know where to start, they are too expensive or the choice is overwhelming.
  • You only have access to poor online content that is not intended for serious study, but just for marketing purposes. As we all know, the “marketing of spirituality” tends to produce “easily digestible” and oversimplified information about these spiritual paths.
  • You are not familiar with the technical philosophical terminology, and/or you find spiritual or philosophical texts/scriptures boring and/or too obscure!
  • Because it’s normal for there to be enormous differences between your worldview and that of the culture of the spiritual path you are engaged in, you might encounter some “false equivalences”. For example, “Creation” in the context of most of Vedic philosophy is not something that happened “at the beginning of time”, but a continuous process that is being unfolded in every moment.
  • You are given confusing information by your teachers/instructors, who also had to face the same challenges.

As I LOVE all this boring and complicated technical philosophical/cultural stuff :), I had this thought one day: why shouldn’t I try to find a creative way to explain these complex systems to people?

That is how I created some interesting ways to transmit this knowledge through poetry, visual arts, special activities, exciting workshops and conferences.