We caught up with Deborah Taj Anapol, who is one of the most seminal figures in tantra today. She is the author of Love Without Limits (1992), Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits (1997), The Seven Natural Laws of Love (2005), cofounder of Loving More Magazine, and producer of the video, Pelvic Heart Integration. Her latest book, Polyamory in the 21st Century will be published in 2010.

Dr. Anapol, who has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Washington, has worked with groups, partners, and individuals who are exploring conscious relationships and sexual healing for over three decades, leads workshops internationally, and is considered one of the leading figures in the neo-tantra, sexual healing world. Several years ago, she left a successful career leading Tantra seminars worldwide to explore intentional community and sustainable agriculture in Hawaii.

So what are you working on these days? What's your next big project?
 
Right now I'm writing a new book on polyamory which includes all I've come to understand about how and why people choose to be polyamorous - the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'd like to do another book in this vein on Tantra and the Sexual Revolution. Beyond this, I have no clue what's next. I face the great unknown.

[Ed note: I suspect that for Taj, what's next includes writing and swimming in a warm climate.]

What are the basic principles of your work? How did these principles come to you?
 
Balance. Sustainability. Reciprocity. Consciousness. Truth. Love. I've had some great teachers in the form of other humans, but really my principles come from experiencing the effects of their opposites. If humanity does not wake up to the consequences of our current way of life and evolve very quickly to another level, we're going to become extinct. I guess that might be what's necessary but it does seem like a tremendous waste of thousands and thousands of years of effort.

Do you meditate? Tell me about your daily practice.
 
Yes I meditate. Sitting down  - or standing up - or toning and chanting while picking coffee or planting seeds - or swimming in the ocean. daily practice  in being present in each moment with all senses is the core of what i do, and it's time that we graduate from "practicing" to living in this state of awareness. What good does it do to turn it off when meditation practice is over?

Are you in love? If not, share with me something about your greatest love.
 
Do you mean romantic love? I'm in love with the natural world, with the 'aina, this sacred land. with the sun and stars, the oceans, all babies everywhere. with shiva and shakti, with love itself.

What's your personal definition of tantra?
 
Embodied spirituality. As far as I can understand it, Tantra is the spirituality of indigenous peoples. Those in whom a connection to pre-patriarchal consciousness still exists. What we call Tantra, or more specifically Kashmiri Tantra or Non-dual Tantra, is rooted in the indigenous tradition of the part of the world that is now India, Sri Lanka, and Kashmir, but every ancient culture has its own version.

Tell me something that really changed you, or set you on your path.
 
This story is from my 7 Laws book: I remember the first time I experienced the euphoric state commonly known as “falling in love.” I was twenty-three years old and thought I’d been in love several times already, but one doesn’t know what one doesn’t know. I thought that the songs and poetry about this mysterious state of romantic love were fantasy or myth – something made up. It was only after several romances and one marriage that my previous tastes of this condition were revealed to be relatively superficial.

This overwhelming feeling crept up on me over a period of several days leaving me happy but dazed. The earth itself seemed alive and literally moved beneath my feet each time my beloved touched me. When I looked into his eyes I heard bells ring and my heart expanded so wide it felt as if it were cracking open. Everything I laid eyes on shimmered with a beauty so intense I could hardly bear it. I lost my appetite. Food seemed unnecessary when each breath I took nourished my soul. I felt a sense of peace, calm, and joy I had never known. Fear, a familiar companion, disappeared.

What I’d called love before, seemed bland and uninspiring in comparison. In retrospect I realized that my beloved ignited this experience of transcendent love in me at least in part because his own heart had been blown wide open. He later described to me a spiritual awakening several years before we met which had radically changed his self awareness. I now know that mystics throughout the ages have described their encounters with the Divine in language which echoes that of romantic and erotic love. At the time I only knew that something huge had happened to me and I thought it was all about him.

From the first time he touched me, gently stroking my bare arm in an attentive but undemanding way, I realized I’d stumbled on undiscovered territory. Up until then, I’d only been touched by people who wanted something. There were men who wanted to seduce me, or impress me, or marry me. Some were lost in pornographic fantasy, others worried about whether they knew what they were doing or if they were performing well. Women, starting with Mommy, had yearnings too. They communicated their needs to be loved and appreciated as well as their insecurities and craving for reassurance through touch. I’m sure I was not alone in having rarely if ever experienced touch that was not agenda driven!

This new love transformed my sexuality. Sex had always been a spiritual experience for me, but I’d never known it could be like this. We flowed together effortlessly on many dimensions, becoming one being, but that was only the beginning. For without saying a word about it, he somehow communicated to me that he was worshipping the Divine and that I was She. At that time, nearly thirty years ago, the idea that I was a goddess was a completely new concept for me. Fortunately, this knowledge came in through my body, not my mind, and felt very, very good. It totally bypassed the resistance I would certainly have had to mentally acknowledging what I now know to be true.

Instead, and quite predictably, my mind decided that I had found my soul mate and immediately began planning a future of blissful togetherness. But it was not to be. I was already committed to attending graduate school a thousand miles away. Even if I’d been willing to change my plans, which I was not, he wasn’t exactly begging me not to go. Our bodies and souls fit together beautifully but our personalities did not.

Our deep friendship has lasted to this day, but when we physically parted ways several months after first meeting, I felt completely bereft. At the same time, my beloved’s absence propelled me into a lifelong search for the source of the love I’d first discovered through our encounter. For this I am eternally grateful. Had we stayed together it would have undoubtedly taken many more years for me to find the impetus to look within.

It’s totally human to long for love. Often this longing first appears as a tremendous desire to connect with a particular romantic partner. If this longing is fulfilled you may be content for a time and look no further. If you are frustrated in your efforts to attract, or keep, the affection of the man or woman of your dreams, you may be more motivated to investigate the source of this longing. Either way, you will eventually come face to face with this mystery. What is this longing for love? Why is it so powerful? Where does it come from? And how can it be satisfied?

Spiritual teachers from every tradition have always told us that you can only long for that which you already are. It appears that the love is in someone else, but this is only an illusion. Sooner or later, you will discover this for yourself. The love that you feel is inside, it can’t be felt any other way. If you didn’t already know love intimately, you would not long for it. You wouldn’t even suspect its existence. If you have never tasted chocolate, you do not crave it. Once you have sampled its delights, you want more. And once you’ve had fine chocolate, nothing less will satisfy you.

Somehow, most of us have forgotten that we are pure love and so we seek it outside ourselves. This longing is very useful in that it serves to activate your quest for love. Ultimately this search for the beloved leads you to the realization that you feel love when you are being loving, not when you are being loved by another.

What is the best spiritual advice you can leave our readers with?
Know that you are whole, perfect, and complete exactly as you are. Not you as an individual, separate, controlling egoic mind, but the Self you really are. Remember who you are.

When I look back on the most rewarding experiences in my life, fifteen years ago I would have said my greatest joy was making love. Now I would say enjoying my incredibly wonderful children and grandchildren. Of course, there is a connection between sex and reproduction, but who knew that raising my kids would turn out to be the most satisfying thing I've done in my life!