When you travel, you can do it in many ways. You can pay for a guided tour and jump between the main points. Admiring the beauty around you, not with your own eyes, but through the lens of your phone.

Alternatively, you can pack your entire life into a backpack and venture into the wildest places, where there is no signal and no guide. You can just release all that grasping, go deeper, and feel with all your senses. You will not avoid unpleasant surprises along the way, cold nights, hunger, loneliness, fear. You will not be in the comfortable conditions of a five-star resort. Instead, such a journey will be exploratory; you will understand your instincts, needs, and you will find your true self.

Authentic Tantra is not an all-Inclusive option.

There are no constant excitements, miraculous insights full of light, kundalini awakenings, flying on the so-called “high” and spreading love towards everyone and everything, chakras shining with rainbow colors. Tantra is not a sweet donut covered with a thick sugar glaze, with sweet filling inside that you can choose according to your preferences. Tantra is not a trip where every day is predictable, and you can just sip drinks of pleasure offered limitlessly.

Tantra is a challenging expedition, requiring perseverance and discipline,

and at its end, there will be no golden mountain top, where you will stand, feeling powerful and all-knowing. It is a journey into dangerous territories, full of wild animals, poisonous spiders, mud, and depths of darkness, as the truth can be painful but transformative. When your soul truly awakens, you do not shout, you do not convulse in spasms, you do not announce it to the entire world. Tremendous changes always come from silence and in harmony.

If I had to describe how I feel on my tantric spiritual path, I would compare it to being an astronaut.

An astronaut sees what others on the Earth do not see. This perspective is amazing but also terrifying. He is lonely in this state, on this journey, with this knowledge. Surrounded by the vastness of the universe, his thoughts suspended in silence and weightlessness. When he returns to the Earth, he needs time to set his feet on rough and hard ground. His body is weak, but his spirit is powerful, his mind filled with transformative knowledge. His eyes need to get used to looking up, at the sky, which for a while was his and he was part of it.

Usually, what is easier and more enjoyable is attractive and does not require courage or effort from us. You can stay in our comfort zone, in a world of delusion. Or you can move forward and enter beautiful realm of yourself.

Although the decision will be difficult and the first step will fill your body with trembling fear, what you can gain is priceless. Freedom, nirvana, liberation, truth, clarity of mind, the softness and ecstasy of forgiveness, and much more with each subsequent step.

So…

Which journey do you choose?

With a paper bracelet on your wrist, in a resort full of illusion, after which you will return to a life that will pinch just as it did before? Or a wild, unpredictable adventure that will awaken your soul?