The great cosmic womb of spiritual safety - Now.
Initial refuge - How to find safety and stabilization "no matter what" for this and all future lives
The Image is of Padmasambhava “The Lotus-Born”
Oṃ Āḥ Hūṃ Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hūṃ (Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum)
Mantra: https://www.wildmind.org/mantras/figures/padmasambhava
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
You've doubtlessly heard and felt those lyrics from Leonard Cohen, many times. There is something entirely correct and illustrative in the last sentence from which we should launch.
Our pain, our howl, our curled up terror, and the release into gratefulness as we stretch out a wretched and quivering arm into the void and ask for help. That hallowed plea instantly turns into the ecstasy of a homecoming as the answer arrives "you are loved."
The Halleluja is not that we are loved by our mothers, our fathers, our world, but by the living cosmos that originates within us and from a projected exterior. That cosmos appears as subtle, perfect, and beyond name. It is the sweetest, most personal, and most all-encompassing love there could be. The divine voice of the dharmakaya, god, compassionate and all-encompassing consciousness opening our heart and flooding it with safety and the tear-producing truth that we are never alone, have never been alone.
The next part, the ache that says, "yes, there is light", but there is infinite darkness we pass through, and all of it must be illuminated.
Well, how do we illuminate it? We can re-incarnate for eons, gradually and exhaustingly illuminating our unconscious karmic seeds and confusion, slowly peeling away layers.
Or we can burn from the inside out, a supernova, our Buddha nature revealed and shinning out.
That is the lightning-fast path. We can do this in one lifetime. Even attempting and failing in one lifetime will bring tremendous and holy confidence. The diamond path where we become secure in an indestructible spiritual power and the soft but firm resolve. One that laughs into the void even as we wail. Even if we never find Vajrayana, we can find refuge.
We may (likely will!) still feel pain, jealously, anger, fear, etc after feeling spiritual truth. Even as we practice Lo-Jong or other mind and heart-healing work that converts our ignorant habits into awareness and opportunity - we are always stabilized in the realized truth of our pure radiant and empty nature. We are conscious and individuated, and we are entirely harmonic with all form beyond time and emptiness itself.
So! where to begin once we’ve received this cosmic invitation?
I believe this is the first step: Suppose we had cried out before and heard the response. Then it is time to remember that feeling—the cosmic womb. We are always safe. We are always loved.
We access this by admitting our confusion and our defilements, including self-pity, pride, etc., and we are specific! Get honest. This is not done to duplicate or demonstrate deference to an exterior diety. It is to truly cut through the ego defenses propping up our armored and useless habits and to access our primordial goodness and the forgiving and wise heart/mind.
After this- we hold our heart and emulate that divine, confident and perfect cosmic womb’s tone- the one that fills our heart. The one that fills any empty container.
We embody it. We conjure it. You can do this right now. We sit. We breathe. We re-emerge as the embodied beings we are. We feel it all; we watch the thoughts. We observe the mind, the state of being here on earth, in this realm- and we then decide! We become the determiner. We generate love and compassion and channel that cosmic womb. What did salvation feel like? Feel it again. Offer it to all.
In this way, we become the Christ conscious avatar, Tara, all Buddhas and Krishna, and all who have gone beyond all world systems for countless eons before us. They are with us. They are us. We are them. We are all.
This is a practice. The genetic, auric light body will expand, and we will start to acclimatize to our finer dimensional body. We begin to build our rainbow body potential.
Like this, we do our part to raise the energy of all samsaric beings.
Freedom.
Again.
Start again.
Josh Reichmann