I’ve started down the path of Tantra.
I’ve finally sunk to the point where I can let the pain be, and be with it.

“Once you can accept that you are born alone, live alone and die alone, you might be able to come to terms with life.”

It’s what I needed to hear. Life is hard. Here’s how you deal with it.

This isn’t some new age, rah! rah! approach. This is getting to the heart of matters. Accepting the hurt. Being real.
Take in the pain, feel it, accept its realness. Wise advice. Ignoring it, pretending it doesn’t exist just fuels it. And I have built up a good stockpile of fuel.

I thought it odd that one of my first lessons in Aikido was how to fall. Surely, I remember thinking at the time, I was doing this art to learn how to never fall again.
It was one of the most valuable lessons in my life. It is why I am almost incapable of physically hurting myself in all my other activities.

First lesson of Tantra: feel the hurt, accept the pain.
This is how you transform it.

If only I’d discovered this path in my teens. The last decade may have been a better place.