Dialogue: Mark Whitwell and Christine Marie Mason on Embodied Divinity

A conversation between Mark Whitwell, yoga teacher and author, and Christine Marie Mason during Week 1 of the Living Tantra course. Recorded in April, 2024, in California and India.

Christine: Mark, I'd love for you to speak to this idea that you mentioned before—that we are the power of the cosmos arising, and what that really means when someone internalizes that understanding vis-à-vis power structures, embodied life, feeling tone, and love for all creatures on this planet who are also the cosmos arising.

Mark: Thank you, Christine. I'd like to start by saying—if we're interested in God, the idea of God, we're not trying to get something from God. We're not trying to get to God. We are participating in God. That's all religious life is—not to try to get something from God, not to try to get to God, but to participate in God. That is religious life of all religious stripes and colors and cultures and languages.

Because here is God—what can create the human body? What is creating the human body? What is that? It's like, my God, what is that?

Christine: And what about sex in this framework?

Mark: Likewise, sex is not trying to get something from it. It's not trying to get to sex. It's not even trying to have sex. It is to participate in what is already there. Sex is to participate in what is already there. God is to participate in what is already there. Life is to participate in what's already there.

I'm saying to you very sincerely—you are the power of the cosmos. You factually and actually and scientifically are. Your body is the power of the cosmos. There is no getting to that. There is not even trying to realize that. Life is perfectly expressing itself through you and me and the trees and the bees. Is it not always already happening? There is no getting to it. There's not even trying to get something from life, because it is already happening.

The body is the miracle of opposites coming together that we call male and female. They came together, something happened—a beautiful collaboration occurred between opposites, and then one cell appeared. Nine months later, everything was provided in your mother's womb in a perfect way. You survived and thrived. Then you came out into the womb of Mother Earth, and everything is given to you that you need to survive and thrive in the natural state.

Christine: In the five decades that you've been bringing forth aspects of this message, when people can see that miracle of their own beauty and embodiment, this sort of pandemic of "make wrong" and judgment—how do you respond when people bring that to you?

Mark: First of all, it's the recognition in ourselves. When we're in the world—and as some great yogi said, "be in the world, but not of the world"—I'm not suggesting dissociation at all from the strife of humanity. We feel it daily. When you're in the natural state, you feel the pain of all creatures. It's an unbearable pain, the wound of love. We feel grief because we are love.

Our first obligation to ourselves and to the world is for you and me to recognize this fact: that we are the power of the cosmos, happening as pure intelligence. The body is pure intelligence. The body is extraordinary energy. The body is already in natural harmony with the earth realm, with air, with light, with the green realm, with human others. The whole matter of procreation—male and female are already in profound harmony that is life itself.

For us to recognize that there's nothing to change here. If we realize there's nothing to change here, then we don't have to change anybody else. There's nothing to change. Everybody is the wonder and beauty of reality itself—everybody, including those who are in dreadful despair and dissociation and anger and hostility.

Christine: How do we be when we're with friends and students who are in despair, saying "I'm a mess, life is a mess, I'm feeling hopeless"?

Mark: From this position of "I don't have to change myself, and I don't have to change anybody else"—from that position of caring, of compassion—we might have this conversation: "What is the body?" I find it can sometimes relieve people, sometimes quite suddenly and dramatically, because they've never heard it before. The only framework that is the world is the one of "there's a problem, and I have to solve the problem." More often: "there's a problem and I'm the problem."

Christine: I was talking with my friend Jay Kopelman yesterday—he's a Marine who was extremely angry and violent when he came back from Fallujah. He was talking about returning to love, about having been touched by this idea that actually he's fine—he is the embodiment of love. All these things he's learned have been layered on him. In that space was the only time he could finally feel love from someone else—only when he didn't hold the secret belief that there was something fundamentally wrong with him could he see that love that others were giving him. That love had never changed, but as long as he had the secret belief that he was broken, he would never receive it.

Mark: Beautiful. As far as we're embarking on this conversation for the next six weeks, that's one of the big movements: Is there any place in myself that I'm still holding the idea that I'm anything less than the magical expression of creation? I did nothing to will myself into being. I'm not responsible for my existence—it's just a magical unfoldment. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a process in the mind of creation.

Is there anywhere that I'm still holding judgment about the quality of that embodiment being less than perfect? Because if that's there in my body-mind, my heart-mind, there's no way I'll be able to receive the kind of love that's available in the world or to give it.

Christine: But let's not be naive about this framework shift...

Mark: Exactly. The only framework of the world is "there is a problem, and the problem is not being solved." That is what the thought structures of civilization are. So this is like an internal bomb going off—to recognize that actually, I am the power of the cosmos. Reality is unspeakable beauty happening—you and me and the trees and the bees and the flowers. Unspeakable beauty is happening, always already happening.

For us to recognize that as factually the case—suddenly that framework of the world dissolves. This reflection on what is actually life happening as you and me and the trees is very worthy to have on a daily basis.

Christine: And then there's the practical application...

Mark: Because of the programming that's been put in our brain, the recognition could do the whole job—it could be a one-time reality realization and "get out of jail free" card. However, the brain core is like a computer, programmed in the presumption that there's a problem and that you are less than, you're second to something greater than you, and you're not there yet.

So these yoga tantras that were there in sublime cultures have come through to us through Krishnamacharya—the grandfather of yoga, teacher of Iyengar. He went to Tibet in his young life and found the yoga tantras that were still there, pushed into isolation after the 14th century when these tantric cultures disappeared. He brought them down into South India and had a lifetime of teaching how each person participates directly in and as the power of the cosmos.

It's very simple: moving and breathing, the union of opposites in our own embodiment. Above to below, inhale merging with exhale, strength merging with receptivity. Everything is strength that is utterly receptive, like a tree with a strong trunk ascending but resulting in soft, receptive foliage.

Christine: Can we talk about male-female polarity—that we're all half our mother and half our father, containing completion of strength and receptivity within ourselves?

Mark: I'm using the example of a tree. A tree is a great yogi. Look at a tree, learn from a tree. A tree has this male strength ascending and feminine utter receptivity descending. But the two are one. They cannot be separate.

In the distorted cultural embodiment, when that's not true, you get the masculine model that is very strong but not receptive—that gets rigid and angry and breaks. And you get the distortion of receptivity as flaccid and non-agentic and sideways moving.

The invitation is that each person returns inside themselves to strength and softness. If you're the masculine over-programmed to rigidity, you return to receptivity. If you're in the feminine trained to collapse, you return to your inner knowing.

But I'm saying it's simply always already the case. It is the natural state that male and female are in profound harmony, collaboration, and non-difference. The two are one. Male and female are not two things—they are one thing.

Christine: For someone like Stephen who says "I hear and understand this 100%, but applying it and practicing it is another story"—how do we include that difficulty without making it another source of judgment?

Mark: What I love about the yoga that Krishnamacharya brought forth is that he called it "the practical means." To quote Krishnamacharya: "The Yoga Tantra practice is the practical means of actualizing the beautiful ideals of religious culture."

It's one thing to have that recognition intellectually—that the body is the cosmos. But we admit to the programming of exoteric religious thought structures that created civilization and the power mechanism that "you're a loser and you're not yet enlightened."

As well as the recognition, which is a beautiful thing, now to finish the deal, let us do the yoga tantras of participation in what we have recognized. This is a rare jewel—it's not in the yoga industry as we know it. It's not in the neo-tantric "let's get all sexy and have tantric sex."

This is a sincere matter of learning how to do the hatha yoga of strength that is utterly receptive—to exist like a tree exists in the natural state.

Christine: How do we strike the balance between acceptance of being perfect just the way we are while still maintaining initiative to learn and grow?

Mark: The body is in inherent relatedness with the total cosmos. There's a passion there. There's a movement there. The body is in unitary movement energy with the total—it actually is. It is one thing. The body and the total cosmos is one thing.

If there's no cosmos, there is no body. So we don't have to worry about "if you realize there's nothing to change, nothing to be done, that means we sit around like a slob on the couch." You might actually sit around for a couple of weeks, or maybe even a couple of years, until all compulsion that you have to do anything is out of your system.

Make a move from your deepest desire and your joy, not from your obligation, and see what changes.

Christine: As we wind up, I want to emphasize taking this from poetry into practicality—living fully in sensory awareness, breathing and feeling and receiving ever more sensation, opening up sensory perception so you're feeling more and more of your actual life.

Mark: I'm making this insistence on the necessity for yoga practice—it's a simple matter. Please look into the hatha yoga, the simple asana that is right for your body type, your age, and your health. Do a little practice, and see when you actually do the whole body moving and breathing, you are then really participating in reality of life.

Without that practice, even these beautiful ideas remain only ideas. The academics on the tantra and tantric cultures are beautiful, but they remain like poetry at best. And poetry can really mess you up because it's like "Oh, I'm not there yet. That's so beautiful." But the hatha yoga is the antidote for the seeking mind.

The embodied practice is the antidote for just thinking about it or being charmed by tantric poetry. We've got to make this thing real, and it's our own embodiment—the power of the cosmos. That doesn't require poetry or thought or seeking of any kind.

Christine: So we're emphasizing experiencing your body, breathing your breath, feeling your life force as our primary effort going into this week—to take it out of the mind.

Mark: For sure. Moving and breathing with as much presence and feeling as you can muster. The whole body participation in and as reality itself. This is what needs to be in your daily life and routine.

[The dialogue concluded with Mark leading the group through a breathing practice and sacred OM chanting, emphasizing the practical embodiment of these teachings through simple, daily yoga practice.]

Find Christine: ChristineMarieMason.com

Find Mark: HeartofYoga.com