A Temple Night shook something open in me. To explain why, I need to begin at a Tantra festival in Goa and with a man I will call N.
Part one: meeting N
I met him on the first day of the festival. He was Swedish, a Tantra teacher and musician, almost twice my age. In his embrace, many feelings arrived at once: calm, openness, acceptance, admiration, desire, curiosity and passion. I could release control.
On the second day, long conversations showed us how much we shared. Then N took me along Goa’s empty roads on his motorbike, fast enough to make me squeal and hold his back more tightly.
When I wanted coffee, he chose a place, settled me at a table, asked what I wanted, ordered and paid. I experienced this as healthy masculine energy: strength expressed through care.
We almost missed the afternoon workshops. I had promised to assist a teacher with a class on Tantric touch, while N chose a meditation in another room. Later, we met for lunch, played in the pool, swam, hugged and joined a volleyball game.
Wet, happy and tired, we walked towards our bikes. We said goodbye, then suddenly decided to ride to my home together.
Our contact was beautiful. Sex stayed outside it. The experience still felt deep, physical, energetic and strongly alive with masculine and feminine qualities.
We talked for hours. Some Tantric traditions describe knowledge passing between lovers in a whisper. A teacher might appear in an ashram or at a European training, and sometimes an experienced practitioner appears inside an intimate encounter.
We closed our time with an energetic check-in and his words:
“This contact was beautiful. Perhaps it will happen again, and perhaps it has finished. Now we separate. What is mine belongs to me. What is yours belongs to you.”
I repeated the words back to him.
The Temple
On the third day, we entered the same Temple. We arrived together, shared a short embrace and danced while meeting one another’s eyes. I admired his presence, especially when he climbed onto the stage, picked up a djembe and played easily with the DJ.
After about three hours, ecstatic dance opened into a Temple with different stations. I met the gaze of an acquaintance from Amsterdam and we went towards a kink-focused space. There were spanks, passionate kisses and waves of energetic orgasm, with genital touch staying outside the interaction.
Time disappeared inside the combination I love: a brief, intense pain followed by pleasure. I was loud. Afterwards, I worried that I may have disturbed people exploring quieter stations through soft touch, holding, massage, chocolate and fruit.
When my own play ended, I wanted to hold N. Across the room, he was in a physical and energetic exchange with another woman. I assumed their contact would soon soften too.
It continued.
I moved through the space, watched couples and groups, enjoyed my own company and shared a few embraces. Then I saw the time: one in the morning, with only thirty minutes left. N and the woman seemed to be moving deeper.
Our final embrace would never happen in the way I had imagined.
The pain came from a fantasy one part of me had built. Perhaps our connection mattered less to him than it did to me. The thought passed through my heart and landed in my solar plexus.
I stayed. I sat in a place where I felt safe and could see N. Their actions mattered less than what was rising inside me. I watched my feelings and met the inner demons I had released through sound and impact earlier that night.
Then something changed.
I could see the woman’s face. She had soft curls and a playful smile. We had shared workshops and exchanged glances before. I saw how much she was receiving from N, and I felt genuine happiness for her. The previous day, I had experienced a similar connection privately in my room. Now she was receiving her own meeting with masculine and feminine energy inside the Temple.
N carried a strong masculine presence. Beside him, many women could feel more of their feminine selves. I watched him serve her experience so she could release control and move more deeply into sensation, touch, goosebumps and energy.
The scene was beautiful.
That beauty kept breaking apart when a voice inside whispered about rejection. Why was he with her? I wanted this man. His masculine energy felt more beautiful than any I had met. I wanted a partner who chose only me and made me a lasting priority.
I looked at N and connected with him quietly through my breath.
Another inner voice answered:
“Look at this beautiful man. He is almost twice your age. He read his first Tantra book at fourteen, twelve years before you were born. You cannot own him. Keeping him for yourself would take something away from the women and men he meets. Release him.”
My heart tightened fiercely. Then, feeling my determination, the grip began to soften.
Compassion appeared. Empathy appeared. Love appeared.
In my classes, I often separate love from relationship. Partnership, family, agreements and responsibility give relationships their form. Love itself is the unconditional feeling moving inside us. Through it, we meet ourselves, other people and the wider world.
The Beatles sang that love is what we need. That song has always been my favourite.
A gift
Later, I caught N beside the pool and asked for five minutes. I had brought several small incense plates from Kazan, handmade from black chamotte clay and marked with the mantra Om Shakti Om. I gave one to him.
I told him that each time he lit incense, he could remember me. The plate was my way of saying thank you.
He had shown me an integrated, caring masculinity and a balance between masculine and feminine qualities. I saw qualities I wanted to develop in myself and hoped to meet in a future husband.
“Thank you for letting me see and touch these qualities,” I told him. “Thank you, Shiva.”
He embraced me and said we were friends now, seriously and for as long as he lived. His smile acknowledged the age difference between us.
He invited me to Sweden. We imagined meeting somewhere in Italy instead and took a photograph together.
At the festival’s closing ceremony, we met other participants’ eyes, danced, held one another and thanked the people whose presence had mattered. I embraced N closely, along with the women and men I had come to know during those days.
I breathed out. The festival had ended, and integration continued.
Another reunion waited ahead with a close friend and former lover. Our connection also resisted easy labels. We knew we were never meant to build a conventional relationship, yet warmth remained between us.
I felt curious about what that meeting would teach me too.
Thank you to my mind, heart, body and spirit for carrying all of this. Thank you for reading.
