How To Lose Your Mind Part 7

Practice Tip: How to Lose Your Mind Part 7

The third section of Gampopa’s text is titled Refining Thatness. Of course, thatness cannot be refined because there is nothing there to be refined. What can be refined is how thatness arises in experience. For this, Gampopa provides four instructions:

1. Groundwork,
2. Main matter,
3. Conclusion, and
4. How experiences arise. 

In the newsletter that went out at the end of March, I discussed the first point: how the groundwork for mahamudra is teacher-union practice, how the principal method in teacher-union practice is prayer, and how the cultivation of faith, devotion, and awe through prayer can lead to the joining of your mind with the mind of buddha, that is, your teacher’s mind. To review this, please go here.

We now turn to the main matter:

Consistently place mind without distraction and rest without affectation.

How do you place your mind this way? The Great Middle Way, Mahamudra, and Dzogchen traditions have countless instructions for this.

Here are a few:

"See the sky," it is said.

How do you see the sky?

Know that.

This instruction is from the Great Middle Way — the Perfection of Wisdom, to be precise. The instruction is to look at the sky, the whole sky, and see it. In the beginning, this is best practiced when there are no clouds in the sky. Later, clouds make no difference.

To see the whole sky, something inside you has to let go. For some people, that happens quite naturally. For others, it can take a while. In either case, how you see shifts. For a moment, or longer, how you experience (i.e., your mind) is undisturbed by possible distractions and you aren’t doing anything to experience things a certain way. This is to “place the mind without distraction and rest without affection.” For some people, the shift is dramatic and they have little difficulty in recognizing it. For others, it is quite subtle. At first they do not recognize it at all. Through repeated practice, perhaps with a little help from a teacher or colleague, they become aware of a difference, and then, usually, they are able to recognize the shift.

Be like a child visiting a cathedral for the first time.

This instruction is from the mahamudra tradition. The word cathedral here refers to a large space with a high vaulted ceiling and an architecture and/or other features that inspire awe — Gothic cathedrals, certainly, as well as a number of mosques, for example. A school gym is not out of the question. Yosemite Valley is a natural cathedral, as are some old forests, so old that the trees are tall and the forest floor is open with little or no undergrowth. When you enter such a space, the mind stops in awe and wonder. There is nothing to understand here. There is just awe and wonder. Bring that feeling to mind and rest. Sooner or later, something lets go inside and you are at rest, undisturbed, and not trying to do anything or experience anything in a special way. 

Don’t mull over the past.

Don’t entertain the future.

Don’t dwell on the present.

This instruction is one of the most common in the mahamudra tradition. The emphasis here is on not falling into distraction. It is a little different from the previous two instructions because, while it tells you what to do, it does so by describing a result. For this reason, people often have more difficulty with it. They try to stop thinking about the past, etc., but quickly end up in the territory of “don’t think of an elephant.” The previous two instructions may be more helpful in learning to recognize the shift. When you are able to drop into that shift at will, then this instruction takes you out of time.

Just as a bird when it flies

Leaves no trace in the sky.

As thoughts come and go,

Leave no trace — just so.

This instruction is from Longchenpa and I have taken the liberty to render it in English verse. At first it may appear to be an invitation to observe the operation of mind — thoughts coming and going without a trace. This can be beneficial, certainly, but you are still left as an observer. What happens if, like the bird, you leave no trace?

Tilopa’s Six Words

Tilopa’s Six Words are among the most famous of all mahamudra instructions. Going back to about the 10th century, they have guided countless practitioners to this empty, clear, immediate knowing.

Milarepa and Lady Paldarboom

This exchange between Milarepa and a noble lady is well worth attention. It points to a knowing that is not disturbed by the coming and going of thoughts or other movements of mind. I commented extensively on Milarepa's Song to Lady Paldarboom in Being Mahamudra 5 and Being Mahamudra 6.

As I wrote above, there are countless such instructions in the Indian and Tibetan traditions of direct awareness practice, and that does not include similar instructions from the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese traditions. How to place the mind is one of the simplest steps in mahamudra practice and, at the same time, one that many people find difficult.

Some common mistakes include:

1. Concentrating in order to exclude thoughts and other distractions. This almost never works because it creates tension and inevitably leads to suppression. Better is to learn to rest and let a deep relaxation pervade you. In that resting, thoughts may arise, but they do so without causing disturbance or distraction.
2. Creating or contriving a way of experience that may be like mahamudra but involves contorting how experience arises. This is the affected mind, the mind of affectation, an artificial peace and clarity dependent on some kind of contortion or contrivance that is not and cannot be self-sustaining.
3. Working at practice instead of letting practice work on you. Once you touch the empty clear knowing that the previous instructions bring out, practice moves from the metaphor of making a journey to the metaphor of a flower opening. How does a flower bloom? On its own time and in its own way. 
   
4. Your mind is how experience arises for you. Other than coming back to empty clear knowing whenever you fall into confusion, distraction, or reaction, there is nothing for you to do. The presence of empty clear knowing does the rest, in its own way, on its own time. It works on you in ways that you are unlikely to notice or be aware of. What it does and how it does it is not your business. Your task is to rest in that empty clear knowing, without distraction, without affectation, without working at something.

Basically, the trick is to throw yourself off a cliff and miss the ground as you come down. That’s all.

How to Lose Your Mind Part 6

 The third section of Gampopa’s instructions for mahamudra is about refining how thatness arises. The first of the four instructions in this section is about groundwork:

For groundwork, practice teacher-union with faith, devotion, and awe three times a day and three times at night.

This one sentence is a bit of a challenge for this newsletter. There are five topics here:

• Groundwork

• Teacher-union practice

• Prayer

• Faith, devotion, and awe

• Do you need an actual teacher

Groundwork

Many people regard groundwork as mere preliminaries to practice, that is, the stuff you have to do before you do the real stuff. This is an unfortunate misconception. Groundwork is what makes it possible for you to practice effectively. The more work you put into groundwork, the fewer problems and disruptions you are likely to encounter in your spiritual journey.

In mahamudra, many practitioners hold onto ideas about how mahamudra should be, how it should feel, what the experience should be, etc. When they sit and do nothing, they hold themselves a little apart from the practice. They are unwilling or unable to sit in the mess of confusion and reactivity they encounter and let the turmoil act on them. Often, they do not have the skills to recognize when they are distracted. Nor do they know how to move in the direction of balance when they are out of balance. Nor do they have the mental strength and stamina to maintain attention when reactive patterns come up.

Instead of experiencing direct awareness, they try to understand direct awareness conceptually. Instead of accepting what arises in practice, they strive for ideal states. Instead of meeting and resting in what does arise, they try to change or eliminate anything that does not fit their understanding of how practice should be or how practice works. As a result, they relate to practice as something that they do, thus reinforcing the sense of a separate self. They try to think through the practice and control what they experience. By holding onto a separate self and trying to control experience conceptually, they prevent the practice from working on them.

Groundwork properly done is quite ruthless. The rigor and demands of groundwork cut through expectations and efforts to control what you experience. Groundwork goes a long way to reducing, if not eliminating, such problems. It also creates conditions in you in which the practice itself may be able to flower.

Teacher-union practice

In teacher-union practice, you hold your teacher in mind and pray to him or to her. Your teacher is mahamudra. The living human being with whom you meet and talk is how you, at this point in your practice, experience mahamudra. This is a mythic way of speaking, a way of speaking that goes much deeper than a literal interpretation. Traditionally, to assist you here, when you practice teacher-union, you may think of your teacher as Vajradhara, Padmasambhava, Je Tsong Khapa, Machik Lapdrön, or any other figure who represents this understanding to you. Whether this figure is someone you have met or not, whether from the past or present, whether historical or mythic, whether male or female does not matter. What matters is that this figure, this presence, expresses for you what you yearn to know. You pray from there.

When you do teacher-union practice, all your teachers are present, all of them, from your earliest years to the present day — your mentors, your coaches, your trainers, anyone and everyone from whom you have learned something that meant something to you or something that has stayed with you and has helped bring you to where you are right now. Even if you do not think of them explicitly, sooner or later as you go deeper into this practice, they show up, and you melt in gratitude for how they helped you come to this point, whether they did so gently or harshly, wittingly or unwittingly, or intentionally or unintentionally.

Prayer

In the Tibetan tradition, there are several different kinds of prayer. In teacher-union practice, the word for prayer comes from the verb to throw seeds out — your requests are seeds that you are sowing in a field. There are hundreds of teacher-union prayers in the Tibetan tradition. Find one that speaks to you. Some are very short, a few syllables, a virtual mantra. Others are longer, up to six or even eight lines, each line freighted with meaning. 

Pray to touch what you yearn to touch. Pray to see what you yearn to see. Pray to know what you yearn to know. Pray to be in a way that you are not. In sowing a field with these requests, you are reaching out to what you do not know. You are praying to form a connection, however tenuous, with something that is beyond your touch, beyond your knowing, beyond your being. When you pray, let yourself feel the yearning burning in your heart and mind. Feel it burn and burn, even to the point that it moves you to tears, Let yourself feel this fire until you know that it cannot be put out, even if you wanted to put it out.

When you pray this way, you may encounter anger, fear, pride, greed, frustration, depression, darkness, helplessness, abandonment, and oblivion — everything under the sun, under the moon, under the stars, and everything upon which no light has ever shone. It is just you and your teacher, and your teacher’s silence is deafening. You see that you, yourself, are responsible for whatever arises. You, yourself, have to meet it, however you can. At the same time, you may encounter bliss beyond conception, gratitude beyond expression, and peace beyond expectation, waves upon waves that leave you gasping for breath. You have no say in what arises, no control at all. Yet a feeling of connection begins to form. To what you have no idea. It leaves you utterly speechless in awe and wonder. Everything, good or bad, that you thought you knew or understood falls away and you are left naked and alone in a vastness of devastating unknowing.

At the end of your practice session, feel the presence of your teacher, the presence of mahamudra, dissolving into you. The body, mind, and heart of mahamudra join with your body, mind, and heart — pure clear water pouring into pure clear water — and there you rest.

Faith, devotion, and awe

As Gampopa wrote earlier, faith, devotion, and awe are the genesis of mahamudra. I have chosen these three words to translate the Tibetan phrase dad pa dang mos gus (pron. dä pa dang mö gü). 

Faith is the willingness to open to whatever arises in our lives. We develop faith through prayer and practice. As our practice or prayer deepens, we uncover an increasing capacity to live in this willingness.

Devotion is constancy in the care, respect, and precision we bring to what arises — whether it is bowing when we enter a temple, how we wash dishes or speak with someone, or how we attend to what we and others are feeling. As a student, I attend to my teachers with devotion. As a teacher, I attend in a similar way to my students with devotion. Like faith, devotion develops through practice, particularly when we have intimations of possibilities or a door opens unexpectedly.

Awe is the feeling of being intimately connected to someone or something infinitely greater than we are. It, too, develops through practice, deepening as we engage mystery more and more fully.

With these descriptions, it becomes clear, I think, why Gampopa writes that faith, devotion, and awe are the genesis of mahamudra.

Do you need an actual teacher?

Maybe it is just a generational thing, but it seems to me that this question comes up more frequently than it used to. Perhaps it is partly due to the wealth of material now available on the web. People find teachings that speak to them, and put together a practice portfolio of their own, drawing on the vast riches of teachings in a way that was virtually impossible before the web was developed.

Maybe this works, but I don’t know. What I do know is that if we look at any other discipline, playing a musical instrument, say, or martial arts, or the practice of medicine, the question of needing a teacher rarely, if ever, comes up. Further, no matter how talented a person may be in music, say, they are going to be a better musician if they study with a teacher. Why would spiritual practice be different?

That being said, it can be hard to find a good teacher. Then there are all the accretions of tradition. They can be wonderfully helpful on the one hand, and they can also be difficult to work through on the other.

Teacher-union practice in particular is fraught with misunderstandings. Many people no longer know what it means to have a religious or spiritual relationship with a living person, with a teacher. Psychological and cultural differences are other sources of confusion, and translation issues abound.  In other words, the potential causes of confusion are many and profuse, and the problems that arise from that confusion can be long-lasting and difficult to remedy. It is for this reason that I have tried to spell out the various aspects of this practice as clearly as possible.

Teacher-union practice is not for everyone. No practice is. But if you choose to pursue it, you will almost certainly find that the stripping away of assumptions, expectations, and projections that inevitably takes place in the practice of prayer leaves you well prepared for mahamudra practice, as do the shifts into opening (faith), engagement (devotion), and what lies beyond words (awe). 

How To Lose Your Mind Part 5

 I continue to find this little text by Gampopa quite amazing. To do it justice, I am constantly polishing the translation while I write these commentaries. This polishing has resulted in more changes to the translation on the website, some of them quite subtle. 

These mahamudra instructions dovetail beautifully with the Diamond Sutra. I strongly urge you to make regular reading of the sutra part of your mahamudra practice. My translation of the Diamond Sutra, This Unexpected Jewel, is ideal. I translated it to be easy to read aloud, as several of the reviews on Amazon have corroborated. I’d love to hear about your experience of joining the practice of mahamudra as Gampopa teaches it with reading the Diamond Sutra. Please email me at ken@unfetteredmind.org about your experience and please consider posting a review on Amazon, too.

The second section of How to Lose Your Mind is “Pointing out how it comes to be.” These are essentially pointing out instructions, as the commentary below makes clear.

We have already looked at the first and second points, that faith, devotion, and awe are the genesis of mahamudra and that excellent teachers are conditions for mahamudra. Let’s now look at the last three points in this section. 

Although mahamudra has no method, this unaffected mind is a method.

Although mahamudra has no path, this undistracted mind is a path.

Although mahamudra has no result, this freeing of mind in empty experience is the result.

Together, they form a practice unit, a three-legged stool so to speak. If one is missing, practice falls apart.

The first part of each sentence is about how mahamudra is. Mahamudra has no method, no path, and no result. In other words, mahamudra is not something that is fabricated. It is just there. Nor is it something you arrive at. It is already there.  Nor does it become something through your practice. These are the three legs of the stool I mentioned above. 

The second part of each sentence points out how you come to be mahamudra, that is, how you actually lose your mind. For this, there is a method, there is a path, and there is a result.

In developing clear stable attention, you are working at something. At the very least, you are working at developing the ability to rest clear and present. In the development of insight, you are working at looking, looking until you can actually see nothing. Then you learn how to rest in the looking and look in the resting, bringing these two together.

At some point, a subtle shift takes place. It may be initiated by a feeling of deep faith or devotion, by awe, or by compassion. It may be initiated by a pointing out instruction from a teacher. It may be initiated by a chance occurrence when you are doing nothing in particular. In this shift, at least for a moment, you are nothing, or, if you prefer, you are not a thing. Maybe it lasts more than a moment. For today, the important point is that there is a shift. 

You may not experience the shift as a shift per se. You may quietly and undramatically become aware of a quality that you had not known was there. It may be a clarity of unfathomable depth, a peace in which thoughts are like sparks of light, or a feeling of well-being in which all physical and emotional tensions subside on their own, or some combination of these. It may be right at the limit of awareness, a possibility lurking behind clouds that your awareness does not quite penetrate, hiding in the ordinary activity of mind, or intimated in the eruption of strong reactions.

Once this kind of experience insinuates itself into your practice, how you practice needs to change. It needs to move from cultivating qualities and capabilities to becoming accustomed to what is already there. It moves from the metaphor of a path or journey to, possibly, the metaphor of recognizing a room that you have always been in, but forgotten.

As you practice, if and when that quality or qualities arise, don’t do anything. As my teacher used to say, “Just recognize and rest.” Just recognize what is happening, and rest there. This simple instruction is profoundly important. It is the key to gradually becoming accustomed to what the shift is revealing.

Here is where the three instructions come into play. 

In the moment of recognition of that shift, whether it arises explicitly or through intimation, there is almost always an urge to bring it out more vividly, or hold onto it, or to make it happen again. 

Do not do anything. Anything you might do to enhance the experience is an affectation, trying to make something special or different by adding something that is neither needed or called for. Rest in the unaffected mind. Not doing anything is the method. Don’t try to make the mind unaffected. That really does not work. It’s a contradiction in terms. The way to practice is to let things be just as they are, however wonderful, however horrible.

It is also quite common to feel that you are getting somewhere in your practice. You are experiencing intimations of clarity, peace, emptiness, well-being, etc. And you have a method, the unaffected mind. You are on the path! But mahamudra has no path. You are not going anywhere because there is nowhere to go. Again, do nothing. Just recognize what is happening, and rest. 

A third impulse it to turn these shifts and intimations into evidence that you, precious you, are not only getting somewhere, you now know the destination. You have turned mahamudra into a result, something you can achieve.

This is where the third instruction comes into play. Mahamudra has no result. As long as there is any sense of you apart from what arises in experience, you have not lost your mind. Again, do nothing. Let these thoughts be. Just recognize what is happening, and rest.

These three instructions point out what gets in the way of your being mahamudra. You cannot do anything about the arising of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. That is life, and, in the end, that is all that life is. 

What you can do is stop mucking things up. 

Don’t make what you experience into something else. 

Don’t make what you experience into signs of progress. 

Don’t make what you experience a destination.

In other words, don’t panic.

How To Lose Your Mind Part 4

 Translation is just hard, particularly when the two languages are in unrelated language families. Something felt off with my previous translation and I have just consumed a couple of hours revising it to:

While mahamudra is not dependent on conditions, teachers are conditions for mahamudra.

Part of the reason I prefer this translation is that it more easily allows some of the points I want to make in this commentary.

Let’s begin by recalling that in this section, the first part of the sentence describes how mahamudra is, while the second part of the sentence describes how it comes into being.

Mahamudra just is. It doesn’t go in or out of being. When I say “how it comes into being,” it would be more correct to say “how we come to experience it.” The first and second parts of each sentence in this section should be understood this way.

Now, what does this mean, teachers are conditions for mahamudra?

Please note that I translate this sentence without definite articles and in the plural.
“The teacher is the condition for mahamudra” is unduly restrictive. “Teachers are the condition for mahamudra” is less but still unduly restrictive.

Remember also that when it is said that mahamudra can only be received from a teacher who has also received this transmission, the unspoken message is that what was once discovered can never be discovered again. This is just not true.

Teachers do not cause mahamudra, nor are they the source or genesis of mahamudra. 

How, then, are teachers conditions for mahamudra? 

Broadly speaking, teachers perform one or more of these five functions: 

1. help the student remove what gets in the way, 

2. help the student see the right direction and move that way,

3. point out the nature of mahamudra when the student is ready, 

4. help the student stabilize their experience and understanding, and 

5. confirm the student’s experience if needed.

The first is essentially purification. It may take many forms, from purification practices such as Vajrayasattva meditation to the physical hardships Milarepa had to endure building a tower for Marpa. Purification may take place through the trials and demands of life itself or through the deliberate engagement of certain practices. It is not about achieving a state of purity, but coming to the understanding that nothing else in life is worthwhile, or, to put it another way, to recognize and commit to what calls the student to spiritual practice. 

In the Tibetan tradition, the second point, orientation, is usually developed through philosophical investigation, using logic to eliminate any other way of directing effort and attention. For example, verses 9 – 14 in Aspirations for Mahamudra present one way that mahamudra philosophy is formulated. While this approach works for some people, there are many other ways to come to what, in the dzogchen tradition, is called the view. Prayer and faith provide another way and the cultivation of the four immeasurables as I present them in Chapter 7 of Wake Up to Your Life is another. The development and exercise of compassion through service or the exercise of attention and awareness in art, music, crafts, or athletics are also possible paths. Part of the teacher’s role here is to ensure that the student is being shaped by these practices in a way that prepares them for mahamudra and not losing their way in, say, the intricacy of logic, the demands of service, the aesthetics of music, or the competitiveness of sports.

The third point refers to the traditional pointing out instructions, but pointing out can be done formally or informally, by using established methods, by using whatever is available in the moment, by drawing on energy transformation, or by creating conditions in which the student’s mind stops. The point is for the student to let go of beliefs and belief structures and simply fall open, if only for a moment. This may also happen through resonance, startle or surprise, physical, emotional, or cognitive exhaustion, confusion, and so on.

The fourth point, stabilization, applies when the student has experienced mahamudra but their experience is susceptible to distraction, decay, or corruption. For instance, in the Ganges Mahamudra, Tilopa speaks to Naropa very differently from when Naropa was experiencing one hardship after another in following Tilopa’s demands.

The fifth point comes into play when the student experiences a shift, perhaps on their own without any explicit pointing out, yet cannot take it in or does not recognize or appreciate its significance. The four faults of mind nature from the Shangpa tradition come to mind:

Too close — you don’t see it.

Too deep — you don’t fathom it.

Too simple — you don’t believe it.

Too fine — you don’t accept it.

A good teacher can do much to help the student have confidence in their experience without lapsing into pride or any other feeling of specialness.

A teacher must also be attuned to where the student is. For instance, if a teacher does not recognize problems that get in a student’s way, no amount of pointing-out instructions are going to help. In fact, untimely pointing-out instructions often exacerbate problems. Similarly, if a teacher does not recognize that a student has experienced a shift into mind nature but cannot take it in, the student may never develop the confidence to stand in their own knowing. 

Do note that some teachers are especially helpful on certain points, and may not be helpful on others. Because relatively few teachers are capable in all five, you may find it necessary to work with different teachers at different stages of practice.

Are teachers necessary, then? One only has to look at other disciplines to answer that question. Can people learn to play a musical instrument by themselves? Sometimes, but even the most talented musicians usually benefit from studying under a teacher who is both capable and suitable. Ditto for artists and athletes.

More could be said about how teachers are conditions for mahamudra, but this is probably enough. Just make sure that your teacher has visited the ruler of the universe at least once.

How To Lose Your Mind Part 3

 In the last two newsletters I discussed how mahamudra is:

1. Mahamudra has no genesis,

2. Mahamudra has no causes,

3. Mahamudra has no method,

4. Mahamudra has no path, and

5. Mahamudra has no result.

I also described a way of taking in these five points, taking them in to body, speech, and mind in such a way that each of them changes something in you. That change makes mahamudra practice more accessible.

Now we turn to the second section of Gampopa’s instructions. How does mahamudra come into being? Of course, some philosophers will jump all over me for posing such a question, but this is a practice text and we are faced with a simple fact. We may know about mahamudra, but we do not know mahamudra. How do we bring knowing mahamudra into being? 

Here, Gampopa makes five more points:

1. Although mahamudra has no genesis, faith, devotion, and awe are its genesis.

2. Although mahamudra has no causes, excellent teachers are its causes.

3. Although mahamudra has no method, this unaffected mind is its method.

4. Although mahamudra has no path, this undistracted mind is its path.

5. Although mahamudra has no result, this mind freed in pure being is its result.

It seems that Gampopa is negating what he wrote in the first section. This kind of negation is not unusual in Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist practice. Often, what seems to be a direct negation indicates a shift, either of perspective or of level. If we do not recognize the shift in perspective, or, as is often the case, if we have not experienced the shift in the level of attention, awareness, or presence, then we cannot understand what is written. The best we can do is come up with an intellectual interpretation, and that is not much help. Most of the time, we are left puzzled or disconcerted by the apparent contradiction. The Diamond Sutra is filled with these kinds of negations. For instance, see §22.

In this text Gampopa is kind: he presents the negation and then tells us what the shift is — a shift in perspective from what mahamudra is to how mahamudra comes into being. Please note, Gampopa is not writing about what life is. He is writing about how we experience life. Today, we look at the first point: faith, devotion, and awe are its genesis

Why faith, devotion, and awe? 

All of these, if cultivated deeply, leave you speechless, each in its own way. To put it another way, faith, devotion, and awe temper you in both heart and mind, just as fire, folding, and quenching temper steel.

How to cultivate faith, devotion, and awe? 

In the end, I have found only one way that feels true in both practice and result. There are others, no doubt, but I cannot write about what I don’t know.

I go to why I was drawn to spiritual practice in the first place. I go back to the beginning. Why am I doing this? If the answer comes in words, I use those words to pose another question that uses the word why. For example, let’s say the first answer is “I wanted to become enlightened?” Then I ask “Why?” Now I have to go deeper. I repeat this questioning until I cannot go any further. 

For a long time, the answer that I eventually came to was “Because I wanted to know that I knew something.” When I asked, “Why? again, my mind stopped. There was a palpable and powerful feeling for which I had no words. Yet in that stopping I felt a willingness to meet, open, and learn from whatever I encountered on this path, that is, I felt faith. I also felt a deep quiet passion that would keep me connected with my teachers and see me through whatever difficulties I encountered, that is, I felt devotion. And I felt awe, that feeling of being intimately connected with something that is infinitely greater than me.

I have practiced this way for many years. Now and then, the answer just before my heart and mind stop changes or shifts, but the next “Why?” still puts me straight into a profound unknowing where faith, devotion, and awe quietly grow stronger and deeper.

This is how I cultivate these three qualities. How do you get to the Total Perspective Vortex? Write to me (ken@unfetteredmind.org) and let me know.