Nietzsche, Tantra, and what two radically different traditions agree on about authentic self-expression
Most of us are waiting for permission that is never going to come.
Waiting for the community to approve us. The institution to validate us. The relationship to complete us. The achievement to finally justify us. The teacher to pronounce us ready.
This week’s piece closes the Wild Man month by bringing two of history’s most unlikely conversation partners into the same room — Friedrich Nietzsche and Tantra.
Nietzsche says: most of the values you live by were never actually chosen. They were inherited. And living by inherited values you never examined is not a life — it is someone else’s idea of one.
Tantra says: the self you have been trying to become is already present. Not somewhere else. Not after enough practice or enough healing or enough evolution. Here. Underneath everything layered on top of it.
Two traditions. Two centuries. One conclusion: the permission was never anyone else’s to give.
The piece includes the Wild Man’s closing practice for July — the permission ritual. One question. Two words. And the practice of finally saying them to yourself rather than waiting for someone outside of you to say them first.
The paid piece this week closes the month personally — what this July has actually asked of me, and what I am finally giving myself permission for. That one is behind the paywall.
Read the full piece →Giving myself permission — finally,
Shiva J