On tantric transcendence
Illustration by © Gustav Klimt
In conversation with Mayara Assis on self-evolution and sacred sexuality
Desires have been distorted. The danger is to be beguiled into believing that we must desire the distortions. Over time, concepts of satisfaction have been constrained to the physical senses, an injustice that has left many starved of their own sacred sexuality. Artfully designed, our surroundings are saturated by stimuli promoting the body as object, self as consumer; lover as commodity. To be, as we’ve been taught, is to be dominated by external, (often) deceitful forces—enticed into a false state of belonging to a society of beings who have forgotten how to belong to themselves.
Subliminally, we are told: to live is to succeed; to make love to conquer. In the beginning of that story, the soul had no say, but we can rewrite its chapters towards our own enlightenment.
The disempowerment of the divine self is undone by the return to oneself; remedied by our remembrance of romance. But to live a sacred story, one must first awaken. ‘So she thoroughly taught him,’ German-born Swiss poet Hermann Hesse writes in his masterpiece Siddhartha, ‘that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it’.
Mayara Assis
To experience this tender hunt for the body’s secrets, it is necessary to diverge from the path that has been paved in pursuit of more immediate gratification. Driven by her desire to guide others in the transmutation of their own sexual energy, holistic therapist Mayara Assis has experienced first hand the self-empowerment that arises within when one commits themselves to their own spiritual evolution. Born and raised in Brazil, the now US-based quantum healer dedicates her energy to training others in the development of their own sacred sexuality. The practice of awakening pleasure may have become a dying art, but when we connect with souls such as Assis we realise it need not be forsaken.
As Hesse reminds us, ‘...after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of being used or misused’.
KATHRYN CARTER: You received your first energy healing certification when you were only seventeen-years-old. What was it that piqued your interest in the art of energetic healing so young?
MAYARA ASSIS: When I was younger I was spiritually curious and interested. As a teenager though I started feeling really anxious, and would overthink due to this heavy anxiety. Then I started to have stomach aches which led to my being diagnosed with gastritis, soon after I also started suffering from migraines. My mother took me to regular doctors but they never found a solution. Thankfully she was always really open to holistic healing [methods], so when someone told her about reiki she found me a healer and I started having regular reiki sessions, and that’s when I first started learning, when I was around sixteen-years-old.
So it was your own personal journey that led you to the realm of holistic modalities?
Yes, after I started seeing this woman I started researching the method and did my first certification with that same healer, then a second certification. I then went on to learn meditation, and afterwards moved to the United States where I kept up my studies in yoga and energy healing and all kinds of different modalities.
Do you feel it was working so closely with your energy body that allowed you to tune into the knowing that you came here for a reason?
Definitely. I learnt at that time that we all have a purpose, and I wanted to know my own. Eventually, I realised that this personal healing journey had taught me skills that would actually become my work. But at first I was still mostly looking for things that I loved and ways to make money [separately], it was a long journey to really make this a full time career.
You’ve been on this path for a while now. Do you remember there being a specific moment in time when you awoke to your soul’s higher purpose?
With many people awakening is related to one really challenging situation. My awakening was a gradual process, it happened over time, but [looking back] there was one period in particular when it was really bad. When I was young I already had many spiritual abilities, open perceptions, [but] I just didn’t understand. In those moments [as a child] I was really scared, I didn’t understand supernatural things or ghosts and I had experiences that I couldn’t explain, and I had no guidance at the time. So at the beginning of my journey I couldn’t sleep alone, because I hadn’t yet awoken to what it was I was going through.
Having extraterrestrial experiences at such a young age would have been difficult. As you grew older did the symptoms, so to speak, of your awakening change?
When I was a teenager I started having migraines and symptoms of gastritis, which was all a part of my awakening, too. Many people often experience physical symptoms when they’re ascending. At that point I started to learn more about our energy bodies and started to understand that we have a purpose in life. We each have a soul, and there is more to this life than what we see. So much of my own awakening was also made possible by being in romantic relationships with others, those experiences in particular were very connected to my path. But these relationships also heightened my anxiety, so after this first challenging partnership I moved to the United States, which was another huge step in my journey.
You were still so young when you took that step on your own. Do you feel you were guided away from Brazil and to the United States to learn certain lessons?
Yes, after the move many things happened, particularly from 2015 to 2017. I’d gotten married in Miami but then I got divorced and moved to Los Angeles after graduating from energy healing school. So I was on the path of love and light but simultaneously facing more and more of the dark side of life, looking at the things I did not want to look at before.
Perhaps no coincidence that you were forced to face the darkness before you could fully embrace the light. Shadows are sometimes our most powerful teachers.
Yes, I just wanted to look at the beautiful things in life, but I also knew I had to look at my lack of self love. Soon after my divorce I got into an abusive relationship which, in its own way, awakened me to myself even more. The intensity forced me to look at my own codependency from my past, I had to realise [the hard way] that I was letting my romantic relationships get in the way of my path. So that was the moment when I realised that if a relationship comes it would have to come with me on my path, or else not be a part of my life at all.
To refuse to compromise yourself for the sake of another is a powerful thing, particularly in a world where we’re often subconsciously taught to compromise ourselves for the sake of another, if only to avoid the perpetually-pitied single status. Did anything trigger that decision?
I remember one week in particular. I had a kundalini awakening and it was quite intense, during that week I experienced an opening of my high sense perceptions. I was seeing things, and having almost the kind of traumatic awakening that many people talk about. It was a week-long experience and everything changed after that. I became 100% focused on my purpose and my growth.
Speaking of seeing things. Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said: ‘Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.’ Do these words resonate with you? If so, what do you think looking within ourselves teaches us, that looking to the exterior cannot?
When I hear those words what comes to mind is the quantum universe, and the idea that when we look inside we find our true power.
You mean the theory that consciousness creates reality? The notion first popularised in the West by American-Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann?
Yes. When we look inside we don’t only find our inner power, by doing so we can also learn. We learn to take responsibility for the reality that we are tuning into, and for the reality we are attracting. When we look inside we can gain this wisdom, by examining how we’re living our lives and asking ourselves what kind of energies we’re feeding, and what kind of thoughts.
So true, as the words of the Corpus Hermeticum—attributed to Hermes Trismegistus—teach us: ‘As above, so below. As within, so without. As the universe, so the soul.’
Yes, it’s about learning that we have the power to create a better reality for ourselves. When we’re in the quantum realm we can literally tap into different dimensions and travel different timelines that feel more harmonious, as they are more in alignment with our purpose.
To remain focused on the realities we choose to create and to not let others impact our vibration is I suppose a part of what we all have to learn.
Other people and other beings may still create disharmony in other parts of the universe, in other dimensions, but that doesn’t mean that these disharmonies have to be a part of our reality. There are many different realities available [to us]. We must not forget, too, that this is a holographic universe. As you’ve said, as above, so below. When we look within we can learn a lot about the universe.
Absolutely, I agree that we can all make a conscious choice to protect ourselves from energies that cause disharmony in our lives. Even so, it’s rarely easy when you’re new to the journey, especially since we’ve all ended up on Earth at a particularly chaotic period of history. Do you hold your own personal views as to whether or not you—and all of us—have come here for a specific reason?
Yes, I feel we have, and the key is to awaken to that. If we don’t we can forget [why we came here] and get trapped by, or entangled in, the world, and that can last for lifetimes. But when we awaken to the fact that we do have a spiritual purpose, which is a part of one’s awakening, that’s how we begin to evolve and realise the relevance of everything. So yes, I do feel like we have a purpose here, even each cell in our body has its own reason for being.
We’re reading a lot more about the concept of cellular consciousness nowadays. As the developer of the Body-Mind Centering® Bonnie Bambridge-Cohen puts it: Embodiment is the awareness of the cells of themselves. It is a direct experience. There are no intermediate steps or translations. There is no guide. There is no witness. There is the fully known consciousness of the experienced moment initiated from the cells themselves. In this instance, the brain is the last to know. There is complete knowing. There is peaceful comprehension. Out of this embodiment process emerges feeling, sensing, thinking, witnessing, understanding, compassion. The source of this process is free; it is love.
Yes, each cell has a reason for being and they know why they do what they do, we’re just not always aware. By remaining so unaware we almost go against this flow, or against our own environment, because we think we’re isolated individuals, and that is when we can form cancer cells and they can become destructive to the organs. When we wake up to our purpose we achieve greater unity within ourselves and with one another. We may be born in different places or come from different cultures, but we’re all still a part of the same body that is planet Earth. So to come to know our purpose we must ask ourselves: how am I supporting the collective? Because we’re all a part of this expansive consciousness, we’re always evolving and growing and learning. So how are we helping the planetary collective that is in turn a part of a greater collective—the solar systems and the galaxy and the universe and so on.
There’s so much more to it than many of us realise, perhaps purely because universal laws are not something we are always taught. How would you describe your purpose in [this] life?
It’s becoming more clear, but, as for all of us, it keeps evolving and changing. I feel like my purpose is to help people awaken to spirituality, which is beyond religion. Spirituality is about connecting to the universe and to the soul and each person is going to have their own way of doing so. So my purpose is to help people raise their awareness.
You’ve also been called to help people learn how to harness the power of sacred sexual energy. The nature of this work is quite intimate, spiritual and specific, and yet it has such a profound impact on our entire being as well as within society as a whole.
Yes, sacred sexuality has become a big part of the healing that we’re going through in society, and it’s so needed. I’ve always felt that we don’t receive a lot of good spiritual guidance with our intimate relationships, so I feel blessed to have the experience that I do. Embracing sexuality has always come naturally to me, even when I was out of alignment and in toxic relationships, and I think that’s why I can relate to so many others who’ve experienced similar things.
Your own personal encounters with distorted sexual dynamics have deepened your compassion, but it seems as though these lower vibrational experiences also intensified your desire to harness sexual energy in a way that empowered you.
Yes, I have experienced a lot of [sexual] distortions and traumas, but now that I have awoken to my soul’s purpose I know that sacred sexuality has been a part of my path for a long time. Our sexual energy is so powerful, and our sacred unions are too.
Spiritual sacred unions such as soul mates, and twin flames?
Yes, which are essentially unions of matching frequencies. When feminine and masculine polarities come together in spiritual sacred union it’s very powerful. Conversely, unconscious unions between these energies can also distort and pervert the ways we tap into the most pure, blissful divine energy there is—sexual energy. So I feel a part of my purpose is to help people understand and remember what love truly is, and what sacred sexual union, and respect, really feels like.
Truly sacred sexual unions seem so hard to find, and experience, in the 3D plane at present.
Here in this dimension things are so overly-sexualised and we’re all so disconnected. But sacred sexuality is all about connecting. Connecting to our divine nature, to our spiritual nature, to our souls, our instincts and our emotions, too. Love that we are speaking to this.
Me too. In many of your teachings you speak of the importance of understanding that no other being has power over you, which is something I believe we all begin to feel, at a soul level, as we ascend. Even so, many never ascertain this sense of self-empowerment.
I feel like we must recognise the importance of connecting our commitments with our intentions on the path to becoming sovereign beings, it starts there. We must first remember and then embody our commitment to this path. For each person that process will look different, and it will happen in different degrees.