Third Eye Breathing

Third Eye Breathing
through Tenabah, c2012

1. Place your inner attention at the Third Eye Point, the
space between the eyebrows and slightly upwards.

2. With a kind of peripheral awareness, notice your
inhale and exhale.

3. Gently intend and allow your inhale to become
deep, slow, and full, expanding the rib cage in the
front, the back, the sides, downwards towards the
belly, and upwards toward the shoulders, but never
strain.

4. Gently intend and allow your exhale to become soft,
slow, and smooth, gently deflating the expansion that
happened during the inhale.

5. Imagine and feel that the air is filled with luminous
energy and breathe this in on the inhale.

6. On the exhale, feel like you are giving permission to
the energy to heal you and change you.

7. Inhale receiving, exhale allowing.

8. Inhale accepting, exhale letting go.

9. Inhale flowing into exhale with no pauses.

10. On the exhale, feel the you are mentally directing
the energy gathered by the inhale into the Third Eye
Point.

11. Feel like you are gently pumping energy to this
Point and feeding this Point that energy it needs to
activate, open, and evolve.

12. Try to do at least 100 breaths at a time.

13. When doing Third Eye Breathing, do not dwell on
any negative thought.

14. Notice anything negative, angry, sad, or fearful,
and do not identify with it, instead see it as impersonal
phenomena arising inside you.

15. Instead of feeling "I am angry", for instance, feel
"Anger is arising within me".

16. Feel the difference between watching a
phenomena impersonally and identifying with the
phenomena personally, sourcing the phenomena in
your identity, owning it, and claiming it.

17. Nonidentification with thoughts, emotions, and
sensations that are negative, have the mark of
suffering, and are unpleasant or painful is very
important for Third Eye Breathing, because thought
energy has greater power to manifest in your lives
when we focus there.

18. Cultivate the feeling that ordinary life, the material
world, is an illusion, a dream, and/or a manifestation of
consciousness.  This is how life appears to a fully
awakened Third Eye.

19. If possible, look at a mandala of an enlightened
being and visualize a light going from Third Eye to
Third Eye with the enlightened being in the picture. 
Choose one that you feel affinity with.

20. It is also possible to simply do this completely
through visualization.

21. If possible, chant the mantra that invokes the
presence of this enlightened being and mentally chant
this.  This will also keep the mind from wandering into
negative thoughts.

22. Trust and allow the energies flowing into you to do
whatever healing, mentally, emotionally, and physically
that is needed.

23. Notice when the primary focus of attention has
fallen below the Third Eye and gently return it there. 
Keep everything else within the peripheral awareness
and allow it to be there without identifying with it.

12/21/2012

About 12/21/2012

There has been a lot mentioned, pro and con, about the Winter Solstice of 2012 that is approximately on 12/21/2012 CE.  There are several positions about what is going to happen before, during, and after this day.  The positions range from the scientific materialist skeptical view that nothing in particular is going to happen on this day, and that it is just another day like any other day, to an apocalyptic and catastrophic end of the world with or without a possible rebirth into a better world.  Central to many views of the Winter Solstice as being special is the Mayan Calendar and the work of Jose Arguelles in decoding the Mayan Calendar to come up with this date.  Even on this level, there are even more possible positions, about the viability of his analysis of the Mayans and ancient history in general.  Some historians do come from a kind of modern view of ancient history that humans were more primitive, more barbaric, and less advanced than we are in the 21st century, even though some of the drone bombings, water board torturing, lashing ropes around enemies and pulling them around with trucks until they die, to scraping their skin off with surgical knives, to making toy butterflies that blow up children, to putting a whole race into ovens during World War II, dipping whole families in an acid pool where they are slowly and painfully digested for days, and making a whole church out of the bones of designated heretics would outdo any primitive barbarism that I have found in my historical studies.

My sense is that the extreme apocalyptic view and the scientific materialism view somehow play off of each other.  The former pushes a perception of the future that is so extreme that it is easier to debunk by the other extreme.  My feeling is more of the kind that "there is usually something historical and real to the myths and traditions of the ancient world".  It may not be a complete validation of everything that they believe as they believed it, but it is usually a validation that something happened that was interpreted within the framework of their beliefs, myths, and histories.

To set a few things straight, Jose Arguelles did not merely study the Mayan Calendar, but a very wide range of ancient time markers, including the Hindu Yuga system, the Buddhist Kalachakra system, the Incan calendar, the Taoist I Ching Calendar, and very possibly the Druid Celtic Stonehenge Calendar.  With the possible exception of the last calendar, I seemed have been within two years of every location that Jose Arguelles studied in his quest to understand the ancient calendars and what they could mean.  I did see some of the very same ruins and do especially remember the Mayan ones when I was in Yucatan.  I remember my 
Spanish teacher in the 4th and 5th grade talking about the ruins and even organizing a field trip to visit the Aztec ones that were nearby.  She shared a story about how modern archeologists found a Mayan mural that showed a lot of stars.  Their comment was "look at these primitive ignorant people, making up stars that do not exist", but then were shocked when a more advanced telescope was invented and found the very stars that the Mayans put on the mural and which could not be seen with the naked eye.  Then there was the archeologist who found an Anastazi calendar of spirals which recorded a wide number of celestial events with elegant simplicity.  The archeologist was dismissed by her professional association because, "If they were able to make the calendar that you assume that they did, they would have had to have known calculus, but they were too stupid for this and therefore they could not have done this."  I could go on and on with stories like this, where some possible fairly advanced technology, whether calendar building or acid based batteries in Egypt, or even sonic levitation using chanting and sacred geometry in Tibet (sketched with notes in a journal of a British visitor to Tibet in the early 19th century), there is evidence of cultures which were very advanced (or the remnants of highly advanced cultures in artifacts left in other cultures that remembered them) and not as primitive as modern archeology imagines.

I found when I was studying Taoism that this religion was based on 4 of 5 books that came from Lemuria, and that the further back in time you went the more advanced the knowledge was.  It seemed to have downspiralled over time.  I found later on that this was a common process in history when an advanced culture is destroyed and the immigrants from this culture only partially save what they can take with them.  Because the new culture does not have the infrastructure to sustain the same level of knowledge, much later on dies with the first immigrants, only a small portion gets sustained from generation to generation, with some of the knowledge lost with each succeeding generation until the advanced knowledge and the infrastructure of the new culture find a level that matches (then social evolution goes forward again in the usual way).  The books of Lemuria become the basis of the I Ching, the Tai Chi, acupuncture, geomancy, and herbalism (Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM).  It becomes the foundation for Chinese science which evolved gunpowder, the compass, ships capable of trans-ocean travel, and spaghetti.  The fifth book that was lost, arrived in Hawaii, was called "the book of surgery", and is now woven into the shamanic healing traditions of the Kahuna.  It was apparently about a form of surgery that did not involve cutting people open, but used chanting, splints, and herbs.  I got a chance to study and share a little with one of the healers of this tradition.  This person did validate my own healing path and did confirm my deductions from Chinese history.  John Blofeld, a British scholar who eventually became a Buddhist, found that the the Taoist calendar with its predictions was very accurate when it came to weather and the farmers in the village he stayed in used it in their planting and harvesting.  He commented that it was so accurate that it was almost as if the weather obeyed the calendar.

Then I found a Tibetan text that mentions the parathyroid gland long before western civilization discovered it.  Another person found that there were special Tibetan singing bowls, usually in pairs, that were brought out for specific healings and for specific glands.  When one European researcher amplified the sounds of different body organs, the ones that were used for healing the specific gland matched the healthy sound of the organ.  They were helping heal those organs by a sophisticated rhythm entrainment process that a few cutting edge sound healers are just beginning to emulate.

The Hopi and other tribes carry what are called the "memories".  They are considered a sacred trust and are passed down from generation to generation.  They talk about us being in the 4th world and are in transition into the 5th world.  They talk about the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd worlds, what happened to them, and why they collapsed.  In one of the previous worlds, there are descriptions of saucer like flying ships and visitors from the stars.  African tribes have a similar transmission of memories, often passed from shaman to shaman, and talk about visitors from the "dog star" (Sirius) teaching the first shaman in their lineage.

I found that one particular author named Graham Hancock to have cataloged much of this information.  He started out as an investigative journalist and keeps this discipline in his study of ancient cultures, tries to document everything well, and together with his wife and professional photographer travels the world and does his own research, while at the same time studying whatever research others have done.  What he finds is that all these little bits that I have bumped into my whole life add up to a large picture.

It seems that a vast number of these cultures marked a vast array of celestial events with great precision, and marked many events that would be useless merely for navigating the oceans or planting and harvesting.  What he found was that many of them charted a great cycle that was related to the Earth/Sun traveling across the entire galaxy and came approximately back to the same point.  This would usually be marked with an alignment of Earth, the Sun, Sirius, and Galactic Center.  It also seemed to be related to some kind of wave emanation energy that would radiate from Galactic Center and do a kind of quantum-genetic download of information that would help the next phase of evolution.  The calendars seem to key into events within this larger time cycle.  It is like a galactic astrology.  Like regular astrology, the "prophecies" are not rigid and fatalistic.  They give an awareness of the energies shaping the events and what our choices could be to use these energies well.  There is a difference between unconsciously reacting to these energies and consciously working with these energies.

It seemed that at the heart of the spiritual life of many civilizations is how consciously working with these energies was very key to keep the civilization in alignment with an optimal path of growth and that not all these civilizations were able to sustain this level indefinitely.  They met challenges that led to their own eventual demise.  Some of them apparently saw this was going to happen and left traces of their knowledge that could survive for thousands of years and be decoded when another civilization reached a sufficient level to understand what they left behind.

In the Buddhist Kalachakra system, there is a similar calendar that has been passed down through the Gelupa sect (the sect of the Dalai Lama) and which has been a hidden and secret tradition for a long time.  The current Dalai Lama has now initiated many people of different cultures into its practice.  Although it is not core to my own work in this lifetime, the bindu system, visualizing points of light in the body and chanting certain seed syllables (in order to move energies and shift hormonal chemistry) are similar to the Tumo practice that I do.  The Kalachakra system is actually a little more complex than the bindu mixing that I was trained in.  Part of this path is that the energies of the cosmos, recorded in a kind of esoteric astrology, affect the bindus and, in their turn, the bindus help us to be more directly sensitive to their energies, more able to use them, and even conduct them to others for their own healing and growth.  It is about "using the physical body as a basis for enlightenment".  It seems that there are echoes of similar practices in other traditions, like the ancient Egyptian ones that were later transmitted to the Greek Mystery schools, one of which Plato belonged to, and chronicles in his writing called Timaeus (and some in Critas).  When you add the writings of Plato with that of Plotinus and Pythagoras, you get a very advanced system of meditation.  There is also the Jewish Qabalah which has a similar set of correspondences.  I prefer the Buddhist system for a few reasons, one is that the knowledge seems to have arrived in modern times relatively intact.  The other systems have more spinning around them.  Some of them even have "blinds" false statements placed in them to confuse people who are not initiated properly into the mysteries.  There is apparently a code that helps one to know which statements to remove.  Some of the other traditions, too, were so persecuted by orthodox religions that very little of what they may have actually taught survives.  When viewed from the Buddhist Kalachakra teachings, it seems there is enough left to acknowledge there was once a system of similar meditation training within those traditions, but there is sometimes not enough of some systems left to actually follow.  Occasionally I have found some enclaves that have reconstructed and enlivened these traditions into a viable practice that gets results.

Jose Arguelles focused on the Mayan calendar but also integrated the other calendars that he studied.  I think that he did a good job of this.  There are a number of scholars, both mystical and materialist, that have questioned his analysis.  But I believe his analysis because he was able to predict the "harmonic convergence" with his analysis, an event which already has passed.  I could feel, during that day, a cool energy move into my crown chakra, and did notice that after this event that people's experiences were more synchronized.  For instance, I found that for over one week, everyone who came in had somehow hurt their right shoulder and it had a partly physical synchronicity cause and an emotional cause, with the latter being key to process for healing.  On an inspiration, I called a healer I knew on the other coast of the US and asked her if she had a lot of people with right shoulder issues, and she was shocked and said, "How did you know?".  What I found interesting is that this collective synchronous sense has been stronger since that convergence day, and now it is woven into, "background awareness".  It seems a precursor to a greater level of harmony among people that wants to manifest.  The backlash of this is that interpersonal tension is also felt more acutely.  It is part of a law about how emotional process works.  I call it the "law of opposites" that when something wants to happen, then all the opposite energies rise up to oppose it.  These energies rise up to be cleared or we can get stuck in them.  If we process what arises, then we can manifest the desired outcome.  Every change has a resisting force, a kind of inertia, to be overcome.  This same inertia is what makes the new pattern establish itself and in a sense become resistance to what will wants to appear next.

Part of the Mayan calendar is to map out cycles of 13 days that form a kind of growth cycle.  There are several interlocking cycles behind the calendar.  This is different from what Arguelles called the "time is money" calendars of the modern world.  It seems many ancient calendars were into cycles and patterns of growth, and that astrology is really about this kind of awareness too.  This is an interesting and big subject, but I can only touch upon this here and mention it in passing to other subjects.

In the Kalachakra teachings, there are two calculations that dominate, one where the key year is 2024 and the other is 2027.  When I was doing my own studies, I found that by assuming and correcting them to 2012, they line up very well with the Mayan Calendar, and also by correcting THE HOLY SCIENCE by Yukteswar from 1800 to 1812, this also aligns the Hindu yuga system with the Mayan calendar (to be fair, Yukteswar's 1800s number was a general figure that was expressly less precise than 1812).  When these three calendars are in alignment, then an interesting timescape is mapped.

The yuga of science (dwarpara yuga) starts in 1812, with most of the scientists in known history being born after this time.  The "shadow" or "orb" of the dark (kali) yuga is cast for 200 years and ends in 2012.  After the solstice of 2012 is crossed, the period of time called "the Bodhisattvas and Dakinis of the Earth" happens (Lotus Sutra).  This is where more and more people on Earth awaken to enlightenment in a kind of general collective awakening.  It will be similar to the Great Dakini period in Tibetan Buddhism where more females got enlightened near the same time than in any other time period (about 1,000 years ago), thanks to White Tara incarnating as Machig Labron, thanks to Yeshe Tsogyal, Mandarava, Sukhasiddhi, Vajrayogini, and many others.  While the Great Dakini period was more localized, the "Earth period" will be more grass roots, global, and collective.  The Earth period is a transitional time period between the Pisces Era and Aquarian Era, the interzone between these ages (In a Nova PBS special called "Magnetic Storm", there is a small segment covering the interzones between the ages and how the magnetism is in a kind of flux before a pole shift, the magnetic field of the Earth is undergoing a fair amount of change as we speak, with one airport realigning its runway to match the new magnetic north).  This period is roughly 500 years long.  In the Kalachakra teachings it is divided into 5 periods of 100 years each.  Each period has its own challenges.  The first one is entitled "the war of all against all".  This is where humankind divides itself into all kinds of competing factions and struggles against itself.  Behind all these factions is the separative logic of the ego that is secretly at war with anything that is not itself.  In that time, what is shared is that the secret of giving humankind the best chance of growth and healing is to see the "other" as an manifestation of Buddha nature, rather than as an enemy or stranger, to meet in love and compassion, to realize it is worth the risk to do so, and trust the process of healing the disease of separateness.  The last 100 year period has a dogmatic religious prophet representing an authoritarian god, as a kind of synthesis of all dogmatic religions, and who gets the arrogance to attack Shamballah, the spiritual crown chakra of the Earth.  A battle happens and this being is defeated, and then on the Winter Solstice of 2512 CE, world peace begins to appear on Earth, at last.

The Kalachakra predictions are mainly symbolic and allegorical.  The leader who invades Shamballah is probably not literal, but probably represents the dogmatic religions of this time period or any time period.  It is a symbol of any spirituality that is not based on direct personal experience, but which obeys an external authority and is willing to kill, convert, and repress others in the name of this religion.  The crown chakra represents the wisdom of enlightenment itself and how, because it is based on direct experience, is very real and able to withstand and overcome the forces of literal external dogma.

The intermediate 300 years are phases where there is a mixture of processes happening.  These parallel the natural awakenings that happen in meditation practice within each person, and relate to overcoming the three poisons of the mind of addictive craving, judgmental negativity, and obscuring delusion.  The last 100 years is about the subtle ego sense itself that holds the three poisons together.  The first 100 years is about the outer effects of the ego in terms of karmas, earthquakes, wars, poverty, disease, tidal waves, political power struggles, and misery.  The natural disasters have to do with the five elements of earth, fire, air, water, and space being out of balance.  As the energies of life work on the Earth, they will try to bring the biosphere back into alignment and will cause periodic earthquakes and tidal waves.  While none of these natural disasters are necessary and there is not a fatalistic prophecy that any of them have to happen, there is a generalized probability sense that many kinds of disasters will happen and, indeed, have already happened.  If you took the last 10 years of news and wrote a summary of all the wars, famines, plagues, tidal waves, earthquakes, disease outbreaks, and political power struggles, it would sound very apocalyptic.  It is about as good and as bad as it gets in this transitional time.  Humankind has not yet evolved to the point where it can notice and take responsibility for how it has imbalanced the biosphere.  When it does, it can reshape and heal the world back into a viable system where earthquakes and tidal waves will be rarer.  The balancing gestures of life will not need to be as drastic.

There are three other things worth mentioning about 12/21/2012.  One is that, in the larger timescape, there are extraterrestrials, very advanced beings from other worlds, that are part of this history and who have been a part of this history.  They were responsible for the Mayan murals have stars that are invisible to the eye and for much shamanic knowledge.  They are mentioned in ancient texts often.  With the Mayans describing their teacher as having fallen down from the sky.  Even in Buddhism, the Buddha himself comes from the Tushita star system and incarnates to teach humankind the dharma.  More than one sacred text or tribal memory lineage mentions them.  Millions of humans have seen them, tried to photograph them with all kinds of cameras.  Crop circles are drawn by the ETs and contain messages that align with these calendars and their messages.  Government military people got "lucky" and shot some out of the sky.  Some of the technologies we have were reverse engineered from a few shot down craft, including, I suspect, the gyroscopic mechanisms in the cell phones and ipads (which have way more capability than what they are used for).  I think there is more about them, like zero point energy power sources, that could eventually help humankind out of this barbaric time period.  It seems that there is something like the Star Trek prime directive, but instead of meeting only civilizations that achieve warp drive, it is about whether or not zero point energy is attained.  We have already done so, but the governments are blocking its implementation.  Their power base is founded on fossil fuel resource control and zpe would end this completely.  Part of how this time period is designed is that humans will need to link collectively with each other, forming a kind of direct democracy, or consensus nonviolent anarchy, and create a world without oppressive rulers.  It is partly this stimulus, this social evolution pressure, that makes the Bodhisattvas and Dakinis of the Earth appear and gently take over the guidance of the species.  At one point, and not for the first time, ET and human interaction will be re-established.  If people are wondering why it does not happen now, it is simply not quite the right time.  The ETs that really matter are not interested in the norepresentative governments of the Earth, but in the regular people and their lives.  They do not want to get shot down again and dissected.  They are making small incursions into history when it is useful.  They do not want to stop our own self empowerment by taking over.  They are working with a lot more beings below the usual social radar, even as we speak.

Two is that we are already in the alignment of the 12/21/2012 Winter Solstice, inside its orb.  The energies are already present and will move into deeper and deeper alignment as it approaches this day.  It is actually 3.5 days starting around noon of 12/20/2012 and ending in 12/23/2012.  The sky will look a little bluer.  Some prophecies talk about 3 days of darkness.  I do not think it is literal, except for maybe a wobble in the very high northern latitudes (and the southern equivalent).  There will be a feeling of fresh energy like the feeling after a good cleansing rain.  The energy will feel a little lighter.  There will still be many of the challenges that are happening for humans now, but they will feel more workable.

The energies, being "sung by the Sun to the Earth" (the other messages from Sirius and Galactic Center are being sung through the Sun, related to how magnetic waves use each other as carrier waves) to stimulate quantum, genetic, and consciousness shifts.  There are things that we can do to receive these inputs more deeply, that have to with visualizing a radiant dot of white light at the third eye point and doing deep, slow, connected, and full breathing without strain while gently and mentally intoning "Om" (this is the simplest and will give a feeling of what is possible, there are a number of other bindu exercises that are part of a system of teachings).  It is also worthwhile to become vegan in terms of diet and to do some herbal detoxing so that the interstitial fluids that the cells float in is clean enough for an even deeper detox.  It is also important so that the hormone system works in a less confused way through the body.  Although it seems that there are powerful hallucinogens or entheogens that seem to temporarily boost one to this level, mainly serotonin flooders, they may be too imbalancing to be useful in the long run or on a regular basis.  It seems that it takes about 3 to 6 months for the serotonin to normalize after their use, assuming one is at a certain level of health.  There are other brain chemicals which also are affected.  I would recommend tonic herbs, like Ginseng, that when embedded in a healing process can bring the brain chemistry to a new level of functioning that can be sustained.  There are some new challenges related to all this because of environmental pollution, but you do the best you can.


Three is that nothing I have written here has to happen and what I share is not dogma.  Life is always greater than our extrapolations and premonitions.  In the Kalachakra teachings, the prophecies are given with ways to avoid all of them happening and even compressing time so that the challenges are met with and dealt with earlier.  The only thing that I believe with absolute certainty is that me and everyone is Buddha nature, because that is my ongoing direct experience of everyone.  When what I share is written down, it is just words, one view among many.  I am writing so that people can feel at peace with the unfold of life and this time period.  I do feel that crossing the 12/21/2012 marker is significant, but not catastrophic.  We will still need to master meditation, learn what it means to truly love each other, and open up to the wonder of being alive.  Having shared this, my sense is that all the changes are proceeding as the general predictions expected, with the exception that there is more sorrow, disease, and poverty than was expected at this time juncture.  There is a saying in the Pure Land sect, one the sects that chants to call down the healing and blessing power of Amida Buddha, that goes, "The greater the karma, the greater the grace that comes to heal it."

Om Namo Amida Buddha Hreeh.

Om Namo Amida Buddha Hreeh

I wanted to share some thought of encouragement to support the process that we are all moving through as we move through the 12/21/2012 time marker and beyond. In terms of a single thought, with only five words, this is the most positive and powerful one that I know of. "Om" is the universal frequency. When resounded we tune into the universal energy field that permeates all of creation. It is the unified field of Einstein manifesting as all that is and unifying all that is. It means that separation is an illusion and that we are always one with each other within this unified field. "Namo" means to invoke, to call upon, to entrust into, to surrender to and allow, to open up to and be changed by. "Amida Buddha" is the name for the Buddha of Infinite Love and LIght and also the name for the Buddha of Health, Physical Regeneration, Long Life, and even Physical Immortality. "Amida" is a fusion of these two aspects and therefore means a Grace and Blessing Energy that can heal life on Earth and transform it into a Pure Land. Amida Buddha is a Dhyani Buddha or Archetypal Buddha, beyond the genders of male and female, and both male and female at the same time. The female aspect is called Pandaravasini, or Queen of Fire, and represents the enlightened or subtle aspect of the fire element. The corresponding wisdom is called the "wisdom of pure perception" which is the capacity to see everything as it is, without the coloration of mental interpretation of any kind, seeing everything as a manifestation of primal luminosity. It is like removing all the colored windows of mental interpretation and looking directly at the light itself. Amida Buddha is sometimes designated as "he" because of Dharmakara, who was a Bodhisattva on another planet who made the 48 promises of what he would gift if people called upon him. He merged with Amida Buddha and became a Nirmanakaya emanation of its energy. He worked hard at transmuting energy for many vast numbers of lifetimes to create a "mercy seat", a place where all karma could be burned away completely and liberation easily attained. Because of his attitude of being gracious and his pure dedication, he merged with the aspect of our inner being that has the same attitude, the Amida Buddha within us, and brought this energy into dynamic aliveness so that by chanting the name "Amida Buddha" we can access this energy source and let us transform our lives completely and totally. "Hreeh" is the seed vibration of this energy family, represents "karma burning" and "the compassion that dissolves all karma completely". It is a symbol for an awakened conscience that understands karma very deeply. It is able to feel deep repentance and remorse so thoroughly that the root of karma is wiped out. It is able to forgive so totally that the karma of others is wiped out. When visualized and chanted, this single syllable becomes the whole mantra, and when vibrated into the cells of our body evolves our body into a light body. What is required from us is only a small amount of sincerity, since love is nonviolent and does not violate free choice ever. To the degree that we sincerely allow ourselves to be transformed is the degree that it is so. In the tradition, you chant long enough until the chant is sincere. When it is sincere, then we are transformed. We first attain mental peace and faith, then realization, and then even light body. It takes roughly one million repetitions to become enlightened and one billion to become a light body. Deep concentrated sincerity can accelerate this.

The Parmitayana Path

I wrote this for a friend who asked for a summary:

Pranidhana is the 8th stage of the Mahayana Buddhist path. This path is sometimes called "Bodhisattvayana" (a path of loving service to all the sentient beings still in sorrow) and Parmitayana (the path of cultivating the natural virtues of latent within the Buddha nature of each sentient being). They unfold from the initial opening of "dana parmita" (selfless giving which already implies a letting go characteristic of pranidhana) which can be translated as "openness, giving, curiosity, and wonder". It grows through ksanti parmita which can be translated as "patience, endurance, and humility" where we let go of more and more ego. It focuses through virya parmita which can be translated as "energy, devotion, and commitment". It organizes through sila parmita ("ethical idealism, karma containment, and natural discipline"). It is centered in meditation practice in dhyana parmita. It is understood in prajna parmita (intuitive wisdom, direct experience, and transcending conceptual knowing). It is further refined by upaya parmita (skillful means, remedial meditations, and spontaneous creative interaction). It is finally directly felt in pranidhana ("letting go, surrender, and flowing with divine wisdom energy). This pranidhana is grounded in bali parmita (faith, trust, and power to do miracles). It enters its natural sangha (community) in "dharma megha samadhi" where all the bodhisattvas and dakinis who have gone before one (in surrender) are felt as massive cloud of witnesses surrounding one in a visionary living experience. This surrender is integrated in enlightenment or Buddhahood, and then fully activated, awakened, and actualized, and lived within a Mahasiddha. As one unfolds on this path, one element becomes the primary focus in approximately this successive order, though it is really one energy maturing through its own natural growth process. Each one has the virtue of the one before it already within itself. Pranidhana has the energy of openness, humility, devotion, ethical idealism, meditation, illumination, and creativity within itself, just as the ones that are further along the path have pranidhana within them. The 8th stage is where there is only one religion, since every religion really teaches this one virtue. The meditation practices and prayer practices may differ. The ethical ideals and disciplines may differ. The belief systems may differ. But each and everyone of them will have a kind of deep surrender to a divine energy that is intuitively and directly felt. Those who reach this state will suddenly see how there are many saints of every tradition who embodied pranidhana and who inspire others to do the same. Because the surrender makes them more transparent to the Divine, people sometimes feel the divine energy channel through them into the world. This energy blesses, heals, calms, and illuminates and raises the life condition of the sentient being who surrenders to this action beyond the grip of adverse karmas (usually stage by stage, not all at once, but all at once is possible when people are truly ready to lay their burden down). The 8th stage is also where you can see in visions the mahasangha in visitations. These events usually happen when the "surrender is strong" when one is on top of one's process and in the flow. It seems each stage has a relative conditional level of learning and an integration of this learning (like in Buddhahood). In the relative level of learning, we do or do not do (sila parmita), but when integrated we naturally do all the time in a spontaneous unselfconscious activity (with occasional errors since it is not yet perfect until the mahasiddha stage).

I like this model because it is based on a pattern of psychological growth. It shows that getting flashes of sudden enlightenment (prajna parmita) in Zen Buddhism is only part of the process and why the way beyond sorrow in the 4th noble truth is the eightfold path which defines a new way of life. You enter the stream of this way of life and grow in a different direction. You renounce worldly success which has a very superficial terminus of growth and is too externally focused to really cultivate these inner virtues and usually does not value them. When one travels far down the parmitayana road, one can the world as being essentially very immature, raw, and unrefined, yet the seed of Buddha nature is still there. The Lotus arises from this mud and the mud has its place.

Essence of the Heart Sutra (version 17)

The Essence of the Heart Sutra
through Tenabah, copyright 2012

here and now,

I invite you to

directly contemplate,

feel, see into,

and intuit

the vast web

of interdependence

that all sentient beings

emerge from, arise within,

abide in, exist within,

change within,

and dissolve back into

by deeply feeling into

this vast interdependent field

directly feeling, seeing, and deeply intuiting

how everything arises

in dependence upon everything else

our hearts awaken to great compassion

and we flow within a wisdom

and cuts to the very root of all sorrow

and completely ends it

all experiences arise within this field

they cannot exist apart from this field

they always emerge dependent upon this field

they emerge from causes and conditions

within this field

and these causes and conditions

also depend upon all other causes and conditions

within this field

everything has a dependent existence

with everything within this field

we are all connected to each other

we are causes and conditions

in the lives of each other

we are experiences for each other

constantly interact with each other

through more than five senses

and more than five voices

this interaction changes each other

moment to moment

so that we are changing moment to moment

notice this and allow this

see if you can not resist this process

not tighten against what is always happening

let yourself pulse in and out of existence

in each moment

being born again and again in each moment

relax into this process

do not grasp or cling to anything

for security in this process

the process itself is enough to liberate you

rather than try to grasp things,

resist things, ignore things,

or obsess about things

for security, for identity,

for wisdom or for peace,

feel into not grasping, not resisting,

not ignoring, and not obsessing

about anything at all

deeply relax, let go,

and trust the process

that you are always in

always flow in the wisdom

that sees this

and the heart compassion

that feels this

rest in the interconnectedness

that we always emerge in

in the very connectedness

that allows you to hear these words

and feel what they mean

and rest in

what we share in common

deeply penetrating into

everything that exists

we notice that they are empty

of solid existence

that everything is changing

moment to moment

going deeper into each object

that we see, feel, hear, touch, and taste

we notice that they are made up

of smaller things

composed of living cells,

composed of the five elements,

composed of molecules,

composed of atoms,

composed of electrons, protons,

and neutrons,

composed of quarks, mesons,

and leptons,

composed of quantum particles of light,

composed of spinning vortexes of space,

emerging from an ever changing

tapestry of sacred moving geometry,

emerging from luminous, creative,

compassionate, wise living space

intimately and directly connected

to everything as it always appears

to every sentient being

through each of their multiple senses

experiencing everything

through every sentient being

everything experiencing everything

through every vantage point

of every sentient being

empty of solid existence

always changing

moment to moment

always dependent

on this luminous field

we are always one

with this field

we are always a part

of this field

this is our home

we can always relax here

and find peace here

beyond clinging and resisting

we can always rest here

beyond all the dramas of thought

that fearful mind can generate

we can always find peace here

our mental activity can always obscure

this simple truth

it can conjure through words

things that seem to exist

and make them real enough

to suffer endless painful and exciting dramas

which lead to fearing death and clinging to life

or wishing to die and fearing life

or it can create dramas

of not having what we want

and not wanting we have

or we can abide and feel how events

are always arising

flow with intuitive wisdom

and move across an eternal event horizon

an eternal present moment

poised between a supportive past and future

that in turn is also always changing

every sentient being

is composed of five conditions

consciousness, thought, emotion,

sensation, and body

which are in turn composed

of smaller conditions

which are in turn composed

of smaller conditions

until we see how we emerge

from everything that always

surrounds us

and from the luminous space

that everything always emerges from

you can call this luminous field

the supreme creator

god or goddess

but there is no god or goddess

except this field

and there is nothing outside this field

and that there are only sentient beings,

things, and experiences within this field

and nothing exists that does not depend

moment to moment on this field

resting in this field

trusting and abiding in this field

and even feeling yourself and others

as living expressions of this field,

is enough to end all sorrow,

heal all wounds, evolve every potential,

and celebrate life

as it unfolds moment to moment

forever

entering into the wisdom that sees this

and the love that feels this

flowing with this wisdom

feeling this flow

loving everything that arises with us

there is no longer any path

or any purpose other than this

all enlightened goals have been attained

or will naturally emerge when the time is right

we become enlightened beings

through abiding and flowing

in this heart wisdom

we fulfill all spiritual teachings

through abiding and flowing

in this heart wisdom

we enter into deep loving community

through abiding and flowing

in this heart wisdom

we wake up together

by sharing with each other

through this heart wisdom

we trust that everything

is always unfolding perfectly

every ethical precept

with its ideals, right behavior,

and exceptions

is fulfilled by flowing

in this heart wisdom

and this heart wisdom

is the natural common sense

that we always have

when we abide

in the loving luminous energy

that permeates all events

and unites them

we do not need to grasp

even this heart wisdom

we do not have to be afraid

of losing what is already a part of us

and what will always be there

in our deepest feeling for everything

we can always feel it

beyond the all the dramas

of our fearful thinking mind

when we enter

into the direct immediate experience

of what is happening now

and by consciously breathing

feeling the electromagnetic heart pulse

of our living bodies

that is always in this field

and always riding this field

inside all the fearful dramas

of thinking mind

is a cast of seemingly solid things

and people

who have been assigned roles

by the thinking mind

who follow rules of reality

defined by the thinking mind

and who move in rigid lines

of cause, effect, and choice

defined by the thinking mind

this mass of thought

is united by an ego structure

a sense of self and personality

defined by the thinking mind

the drama and the ego

arise in dependence upon each other

within the thinking mind

and cause all the pain that we feel

the ego that appears in these dramas

is not real, is completely delusional,

and is based on fearful clinging

to its own imaginary survival

let it die completely

and you will notice it is a fiction

and flashes into nonexistence

between each moment

and disappears whenever our minds

become deeply quiet of thinking

whenever we are deeply touched

by the beauty of nature

the fantastic shimmering of the auroras

the sunrise over the mountains

the sunset of the ocean

the majestic thunderstorms

the shooting stars light up the night sky

the gentle warm tropical rain touching our faces

the ego is gone

and only appears to exist again

when we start thinking

simply notice that this thought of self

is not real, not solid,

is always changing

and always subject

to causes and conditions

flashes into and out of existence

moment to moment

and is nothing more than a thought

and you are free

from this delusion

and then it becomes

an empty symbol

that you can use

in your words with each other

when you are expressing

intuitive wisdom

and communing with each other

simply notice how your mind

makes it more real than it really is

when you say

“i feel sad”

notice how sadness

arises in awareness

without any self attached to it

when you say

“i feel angry”

notice how anger

arises in awareness

without any self attached to it

when you say

“i feel afraid”

notice how fear arises

in awareness

without any self attached to it

notice how all emotions

arise in dependence

on consciousness, thought,

sensation, and body

and all the interactions

of the present moment

and interactions

with past memory

and future imagination

and a visualization

of interactions of

everyone with everyone

notice how your experience

is already always changing

and let it continue to change

relax into loving everyone

including yourself

and including

your friends, strangers, and enemies

wake up

to all the sentient beings

that co-arise with you

your spontaneous community

who is journeying with you now

a community that is constantly changing

new beings coming in

old beings going out

some returning and some not

take refuge in this

do not recoil

from the associations

that are happening now

know that until your natural love

arises for them

that they cannot really leave

but instead have become

a haunting fiction in your mind

a reactive thought seed

that can trigger

anger, fear, or sadness

until peacefully resolved

within intuitive wisdom

you can always enter

into this deep intuitive wisdom

this profound and complete wisdom

that ends all sorrow

and finds all joy

by chanting in the thinking mind

and speaking voice

until cleansed of all other thoughts

and entering into the silence

where this wisdom is obvious

this simple repetition

that embodies the full meaning

of all these words:

I am letting go,

I am letting go,

with every inhale

I let go of resistance,

with every exhale

I let go of clinging,

I really let go

of all resistance,

I really let go

of all clinging,

I totally let go

of all resistance

to anything,

I totally let go

of all clinging

to anything,

I let go of

all resistance

to others,

I let go of

all clinging to self,

I let go of

all resistance to thinking,

I let go of

all clinging to thinking,

I let go of

all resistance to feeling,

I let go of

all clinging to feeling,

I let go of

all resistance to sensation,

I let go of

all clinging to sensation,

I awaken to this present moment

as it arises right now,

I feel into this present moment

as it arises right now,

I breathe and flow with

this present moment

as it arises right now,

I relax into the warm luminous space

that has always supported me

I rest in the warm peace of luminous space

that is always there for me

I open up to the vast interdependence

of this luminous space

that includes everything and everyone

and radiate the love that is natural to me

and feel the joy of being

so shall it always be

Bardo Clear Light Tenabah c2012

Parallel posted on Facebook and replicated here:

When a sentient being ejects his or her consciousness from the body, whether the ejection is through skilled clear intention (phowa) or through passive allowance, he or she meets a radiant clear light. This radiant energy permeates the universe of form, everything arises from this energy, abides in this energy, returns to this energy, and is an expression of this energy. It appears for three days after ejection. If a sentient being recognizes this radiant energy as his or her home, her true identity, and abides there, then such a being can rest there and integrate this state. If the being tries to grasp and hold on to the bliss, then he or she spirals downward vibrationally, entering the realm of the peaceful guides, who try to help the being return back home. Failing this, the sentient being spirals downward to the wrathful guides who confront the being with his or her issues, reflecting them back so that he or she can return back home. Failing this, the sentient being enters the realm of the "fifty two peaceful and forty eight wrathful guides" (the realm of the psychotherapists who navigate the complexities of the ego to unravel the knots of confusion) in order to help this being back home. Failing this, the sentient being enters the "subbardo of seeking rebirth", sees a landscape appear with spinning vortexes of light where lovers are in deep communion with each other and are creating a place of entry into a world. The being is propelled by a vibrational karma that is essentially "like attracts like", pulling him or her into a rebirth situation. Intermediate beings are admonished to "turn toward the light" to halt the karmaic momentum that is propelling him or her to rebirth. Failing this, the being is admonished to seek rebirth in a family where the dharma is strong, then failing this to seek rebirth in a family that is healthy and prosperous, and then failing this to seek a birth in the human realm...

"So each of us in this human form failed all the way to the human realm?"

Most humans are not really trying to go for the highest rebirth possible in the bardo and just go where ever their karma leads them. It usually does lead back to the human realm in a rebirth much like the last one that they had. Karma is mainly repetition. If a person improves a little each lifetime, it gets better and better with each rebirth. A person can also "work hard" to get an inferior rebirth by not listening to the voice of conscience. Usually a person does not get a worse rebirth unless they ignore their conscience when it is screaming at them. But sometimes people do dull this voice and it cannot warn them. Unfortunately, a lot of addictions function in this manner.

In the Bardo Thodol, whose title translates as "Liberation through Hearing", there is the intention of supporting a "conscious crossing" to use the bardo to reach the highest state possible by the opportunity that presents itself at the time of death (ejection). From this viewpoint, a person can "fail" to reach and sustain those highest levels. But according to the teaching, every effort that one makes has a positive effect. Even if you reach and touch those states for some moments it creates some good karma that helps the human rebirth be better, happier, more loving, clearer, more creative, and wiser. Those moments become resources stored in the subconscious mind (the alaya vijnana) that can still pull a person upwards through the choices and challenges of "the bardo of ordinary life".

According to one of the Ksitigarba Sutras, there is more than one power that determines rebirth, there is "majestic power" and "karmaic power". The latter feels like an undertow that pulls one into and through experiences. The former feels like a conscious choice, motivated by compassion, viewed by the wisdom of knowing the consequences the choice will make, and with the support of skillful means (creativity) manifesting as "dharma power". It is a power that grows through practice and effort. It feels like free choice, a concentration on a pure loving thought which has the faith and confidence to naturally manifest itself, because no opposing thought rises from the subconscious mind to block it or bend it. Many higher beings choose to incarnate out of compassion for this world, to help elevate humankind and the animal worlds, to feed hungry ghosts, and give peace to the tormented souls of demons. These beings do not fail to be reborn in the human realm, but succeed in coming here.

In practice, even if one is choosing to return to the human realm, it is better to still aim for the highest rebirth possible in the bardo. It burns away the most karma, and once one is reborn in those higher realms to then choose to be reborn in the human realm on Earth. This way one will know that one is not here by the force of karma alone.

There is a third path besides aiming, willing, and practicing to attain the highest rebirth possible, or consciously choosing rebirth on Earth to perform loving service. This is to let the blessing power of a gracious Buddha or Dakini simply carry you into the Clear Light and allow you to make your home there. It involves a loving, trustful surrender into their care, especially as the grace fire burns away all the karma that blocks this from manifesting. You "chant through" this process in the faith that these beings will bring you there. It usually involves resolving some trust and control issues to be able to do, hence multiple chants are needed to establish this sincerity. The "sign of accomplishment" is seeing Suhkavati in some lucid dreams, with its beautiful pools of water, the meditators floating in the sky on lotuses, the buildings with no roofs on them because the weather is pleasant there, and where even the birds sing songs about the dharma ("all is transitory, let go, let go"). There are parts of Earth that are like this also, every world of sorrow as some islands of higher consciousness in them. Native Americans often go to these places during vision quests (going to those places is like taking a bardo voyage if approached with the right consciousness).

I am posting this partly as a kind of prep for the Chod Rite, to name the basic environment of practice, since the bardo is not merely something that exists after death, but operates in the background of daily human life, shaping events by synchronicity. During death, one veil is removed, and what is possible to see now is easier to see.