All-Encompassing Wisdom

I started my practice with the Dakini Families with the Buddha family. If you did not read my last blog, I recently read Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim. I spent a week focusing on the meditation and connecting with the white Dakini. I went so far as purchasing some white shirts and going bra less (read the book, you will understand). The Buddha family is the center of the Mandala and I am so freaking grateful it was the first family I started this practice with.

Lama Tsultrim Allione talks about how everyone has an exit family. Which is when things get tough, this is the family that shows up to get you out of a situation. I didn’t realize it until 2 weeks after I was working on the Buddha family that this is my exit family. Confrontation is very hard for me and I tend to want to hide away from the problem rather than just take care of it. If my partner and I are having a hard conversation, I tend to take a blanket to, literally and emotionally, cover myself. When I recognized that, it was profound. He pointed out that was hiding in the middle of that discussion and we were able to have a quick side discussion where I told him that he was right and I thanked him for pointing it out. I don’t want to hide, especially from him. Especially because each hard conversation allows us to get to know each other more and grow closer.

I realized just now that every hard conversation with have with another person, not just a significant other, we have an opportunity to build a strong bond with them. We also have an opportunity to learn more about ourselves. So figuring out what my exit family is, has allowed me to stop reacting so I can fully listen and then respond.

And I connect with the Buddha family in more ways than it being my exit out of difficult situations. For years and years and years, I always wondered why I just couldn’t get things done. There were things I wanted to do but would procrastinate or I would get into a depression and push things off. It is one thing to take a day of rest which I love to do and need it at times but it was another to put things off and have a heavy sadness within. Even my book has been put to the side so many times and I enjoy writing it and want to finish it. My house can get messier than I like and I would ask myself “why can’t I just clean it?” When I was in school homework was the worse even if it was my favorite subject. It took so much energy to do anything at times.

And then it all came to light when I read that the encumbered pattern for the Buddha Family is ignorance (spaciness, depression, procrastination, denial and dissociation). Everything that I have been trying to work through was laid out in front of me and the author gave me a way to break those old patterns. The first time that I spoke the family’s seed syllable, BAM, I had an immediate reaction. A tingling feeling when up and down my arms and into my toes and there was a release of tension from my core. This reaction was small. It took me about four days of doing the meditation before I really felt the spaciousness and allow the spaciness to leave. I felt so productive during the next few days. There was a freedom from within that was so powerful and relieving.

The meditation helped so much that when I stopped doing the Buddha family mediation so I could focus on the Vajra family, the productivity stopped. I did one day of the Vajra family meditation and then stopped for three days, did it again and then stopped all together. It was quite amazing when I realized what an impact the white Dakini had on me. So yesterday when I started the Vajra family meditation again, I did the Buddha family meditation first.

Being able to connect with the White Dakini has released me from an internal bondage that was keeping me from accomplishing the things I have been wanting to. I have started drawing and painting again. I am reading more. Slowly my house is getting organized, cleaned, and kept clean. I am at peace with myself more now than I have ever been and I see the world around me clearer.

When I first read about the family she talks about how the wisdom is an all-encompassing wisdom. I didn’t understand it at first but now I do. Now I get it. I feel it. My mornings now start with the discipline of getting up every morning, lighting a candle at the alter, doing the Buddha family meditation, and then yoga. There is more that I want to add onto this routine but for now this is my start to a more disciplined life and there for more freedom.

It sounds funny how discipline and freedom go hand in hand. By being disciplined in my meditation practice I have freedom from being weighed down by the thoughts in my brain that hold me back and cause suffering. By being disciplined in my yoga practice, I have freedom from physical pain so I can do all of the activities that I want to. By being disciplined with my diet, I freedom from pain, fatigue and all of the other symptoms of a quiet and invisible disease. “Discipline brings freedom” is currently on the mirror in my bathroom to remind me why I am focusing on discipline right now.

Discipline brings freedom and freedom brings peace and with peace I can feel a joy that is everlasting. A joy that does not come from anything external but from deep within.

And don’t forget to read Wisdom Rising by Lama Tsultrim Allione. I want to hear about your journey into the mandala.