Prayer of the New Saint

I evoke all those beings and sources of refuge who have ever loved me to come sit with me because it is now that I feel most alone. I evoke the Blessed Mother, the Sacred Father, the Spirits of Light, the essence of wisdom, my teachers and elders, the communities who have always caught me when I have fallen, the ancestors who have never stopped holding me, all the elements including the sacred earth who helped me to stand, and silence that wraps me in a space to be with my heart, and I call upon my own innate compassion.

To all those I have evoked, I offer my grief and what seems like my perpetual mourning in this body. I offer my fear, my numbness, and my inability to dream beyond shutting down. Most of all, I offer my fatigue. I am tired.

Today, precious earth, let me lie upon you and be reminded of my body and my heart. I want many things, but I need only one thing now: to give up to you what I cannot hold. I pray that I evolve past my belief that my pain is mine alone to carry. To my sources of refuge who have been evoked, you have taught me repeatedly that this is not the truth.

You have taught me that it is not my pain but our pain. You remind me that my worship of isolation is not conducive to my liberation. I want to be free, and so I offer to you what I struggle to hold right now knowing that you are only here to share this heaviness with me and to love me. . . .

Today, my precious sources of refuge, in your love, offer me rest. In your love, never abandon me. In your love, haunt all others who feel lonely and tired. Please continue to haunt me in this life, in death, and into all my lives to come until one day I become a source of refuge for other beings. Yet it is also my prayer to become a source of refuge for beings right now in this life. May I and all others in this realm and beyond be blessed forever. I dedicate this labor to my descendants who will one day lead me into my ancestorhood.

♦

Excerpted from The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors by Lama Rod Owens. October 2023; published by Sounds True.

Song of realization #1

First be okay

for no reason

let your heart loosen

and open naturally

just be in the river of love

let it flow

let it unfreeze the layers of

pain and sorrow that have permeated your being for so long

let it soften the hard parts

like crusty dough

let it feed

let it feed you

and just be

fed

Top 10 insights of 2023

1. "Trust the clarity"  from Song of Realization wrap up  .  I went on many meditation retreats this year. The fruit of these teachings has been a stronger understanding of what clarity is.  It's not illumination in itself,  but the recognition of illumination. But it's not something to strive for, anymore than we need to hold a flashlight to a candle. Just trust it and be in it.  

2. The practice of just going beyond.  That energy is not emptiness.  That we must keep going beyond and be vigilant for when we are conceptualizing.  Energy is important, but it's not the objective of meditation.  And it's easy to mistake energy for emptiness. 

3. Effortless is most easily achieved by staying with intention. This was from a Dharma Geek session with Cortland. He took us through breathing meditation and showed us how if we focussed less on breath and simply on the intention to be with breath, samatha was more more effortless.

4. Happy for no reason. I develop the truth body

5. Compassion is the antidote to empathy burnout, but also empathetic joy. I've been enjoying feeling empathetic joy to my guru and my yidam of late. 

6. Anytime Anywhere meditation is just about being with the default mind.  Being present with it. 

7. Vajra Dakini, I really feel the clarity behind my harmful emotions. 

8. After the new ice storm, I remembered that inspiration is easier to see in emptiness.

9. Because intense emotions are effortless we can leverage them to make awareness effortless.  Like waterskiing! 

10. No fundamental difference between sleep dreaming and awake dreaming.  When I see suffering in daily life, I can awaken into lucidity in the same way I would if I recognized it in a dream.