What's Happiness Got To Do With It .. Women, Life and Pleasure? Try the Tantric Approach!

The illusiveness of happiness! What a rat race to find it and then if you were lucky to get it how do you keep it? Marcus Buckingham’s research and findings in HuffPost based on his paper "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness" inspired me to reflect on my own progression in life to happiness and on the happiness of the hundreds of women I have worked with over the past 10 years as an intimacy and relationship coach.

What’s happiness anyway? The older I have grown the happier I have become. And that does not just have to do with that I now own a business, making a difference in the lives of women and men, and being in the most inspiring relationship with my Beloved and business partner. That’s rather a result of something else.

After all happiness is a state of being! And how did I arrive at that state of being? For me this occurred through two major life experiences that awoke me to that state: One experience had to do with “accepting “what is” at the present moment and declaring that I am happy which I learned through Buddhist meditation at Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village. That philosophy is totally in line with what Buckingham indentifies in his findings: “The women who could answer positively to the questions [regarding happiness] …, simply decided that they were going to be happy. They made that choice.”

The other experience had to do with “weaving” or Tantra. What did I learn about weaving? It was about reintegrating my feminine with my masculine or the yin with the yang that is frequently out of balance for women living in this time and age. Most of us have learned to develop our masculine side that is required to compete and make it in the world. Great capacity to have! However, if my feminine got dwarfed because of the dominant orientation towards achieving in the worldly dimension I am just not whole any longer.

Here is what Tantra-Kundalini.com says about the feminine and masculine:”According to the philosophy of Tantra, the entire universe is a manifestation of pure consciousness. In manifesting the universe, this pure consciousness seems to become divided into two poles or aspects, neither of which can exist without the other.

One aspect, Shiva, is masculine, retains a static quality and remains identified with unmanifested consciousness. Shiva has the power to be but not the power to become or change. The other aspect, Shakti, is feminine, dynamic, energetic and creative. Shakti is the Great Mother of the universe, for it is from her that all form is born.

According to Tantra, the human being is a miniature universe. All that is found in the cosmos can be found within each individual, and the same principles that apply to the universe apply in the case of the individual being.”

The aspects of feminine and masculine show up in women just as they do in men. However, they are not merely to be considered as gender qualifications. To illuminate the principles further take a look at this chart and locate yourself on the right or left or in between in various areas of your life: family, intimate relationship, work and career, body, hobbies, etc:

Masculine	Feminine
Creative focus	Creative flow
Purposeful presence	Open & connected
Desire for truth	Desire for sourcing and sustaining
Oriented towards vision & goals	Oriented towards love and care
In one’s mind & focused	In one’s emotions & flow
Emotion of compassion	Emotion of trust & gratitude
Looking at life from the outside	Looking at things from within
Fear of failure in life	Fear of rejection & loss of love
Work before intimacy	Intimacy before work
Doing	Being
Giving	Receiving

Integrating the feminine with the masculine, the spiritual with the sensuous, the body with the soul, the giving with the receiving wholeness shows up. Experiencing wholeness is the source of feeling pleasure, joy and yes, HAPPINESS!!! It’s up to each woman to return to that wholeness. The tantric practice provides a guide to that wholeness as shown by transformative shifts in many women who have worked with me here at TantraNova

Looking forward to your comments and thoughts abut this topic of happiness! See the comments section below.

To learn more about my work with women go to Women's Retreats at TantraNova

 

 

Follow Dr. Elsbeth Meuth on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tantranova@tant

Comments

[David M]

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[khanti]

Happiness is where you find it and not the search for it.

[Dr. Elsbeth Meuth - Huffpost Blogger]

Exactly! Thanks for your comment. Happiness is to be found in the here and now - in our beingness. Thanks for engaging with me around this topic of happiness!

[Ziona Etzion]

Is happiness not a choice?

I think that by living an active life, having a large network of
people and learning new skills one is fulfilled.

A good sense of humour also helps and not taking oneself
too seriously as well.

Good communications skills are also a big part of the story.

[Diana Daffner]

Great post, I find it facsinating that in the Tantric system, we celebrate the feminine as the active principle. While there are some similarities with the Chinese yin/yang approach, that's a major difference. Yin is used to describe some of the same feminine attributes, but is considered to be more quiet and receptive in relationship to the activity of yang. It is when we women most fully relax into our yin nature, that the Shakti energy comes alive in us. In the yin/yang circle, that is evidenced by the white, yang dot on the dark yin side of the symbol. Shakti arising out of the depths of yin.(Nothing can be totally yin or totally yang; each eventually turns into the other.)
Shiva awaits that emergence of Shakti, he is enegized by it. And so wholeness - and indeed, happiness - comes to both. (And yes, none of this is truly gender-based, which makes Tantra such a deliciously flexible experience.)
Diana Daffner, author of Tantric Sex for Busy Couples
http://IntimacyRetreats.com

[Dr. Elsbeth Meuth - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks, Diana, for further illuminating the polarity of shakti and shiva. So great to have your partnership here!!!