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    • Four Benefits of the Love on Every Breath Meditation

      An excerpt from Love on Every Breath by Lama Palden Drolma

      At this time, when our human family is facing many challenges, it is more important than ever that we find peace and sustenance in our hearts. In the new book Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain into Joy, author Lama Palden Drolma introduces a profound, ancient meditation that has been practiced in isolated mountain retreats in the Himalayas for centuries, which is now available to the modern world.

      In the standard Tonglen, the meditator simply breathes in the suffering of others and then breathes out love and compassion to them, but this approach does not always work well for Westerners, who often find it difficult to get past the ego’s roadblocks. That is why Lama Palden prefers to teach the more user-friendly “Love on Every Breath” variation to Westerners, which comes from the Shangpa lineage of two enlightened women.

      We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from the book.

      Love on Every Breath is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana meditation from the Shangpa lineage that combines breath, awareness, imagination, and an energetic transformation process. The meditation brings all these components together in a powerful way in order to open our hearts, to reveal and cultivate our kindness, love, compassion, and wisdom. In Tibetan, this is called the Extraordinary Tonglen, since it uses special techniques of Vajrayana to transform suffering. The Tibetan word tonglen is composed of two words — tong means “giving or sending,” and len means “receiving or taking.” First, we open ourselves to receive and feel the suffering of ourselves and others, breathing it into our heart center. This is the “taking.” The suffering is then instantaneously and effortlessly liberated in the heart and transformed by a special method into unconditional love. At this point, on the out-breath, love and healing energy are sent back out to whomever you are doing the meditation for at the moment, whether yourself or another. This is the “sending.”

      The primary purpose of the Love on Every Breath meditation is to cultivate our love and compassion, to transform and liberate our heart. When we come from a place of love, everything shifts for us.

      The Love on Every Breath meditation is not an exotic Himalayan practice, but it is something that emerges out of us spontaneously and naturally. It is inherent in us to want to remove suffering — others’ or our own. The problem for many children (and adults) is that we absorb the suffering of others, and then it stagnates inside of us. Love on Every Breath gives a way for the suffering to be liberated in the body and the psyche and emerge as compassion. There is a felt sense as this happens.

      Four Benefits of the Meditation

      I see four major benefits of the Love on Every Breath meditation. First, it can crack open the hard shell of our ego-clinging.
      Ego-clinging is our grasping onto the self that we think we are, but which isn’t actually there. Our sense of self is simply a collection of our perceptions, feelings, thoughts, memories, and consciousness; in part, it arises from the fact that we have a body. Clinging to this separates us from others, puts us first, and blocks our capacity to realize our true nature of wisdom and love. In cracking open our hard shell of self-importance and self-protection, Love on Every Breath allows our natural love and compassion to both be uncovered and grow. It allows our inherent wisdom to shine through. Letting go of ego-clinging is a process that needs to happen again and again. Then we can learn to take loving care of ourselves from a place of increased freedom.

      All authentic gurus and teachers give guidance in order for their students to access their own innate wisdom. This is for the sole purpose of helping students awaken. It is not about the teacher. They are not in the business of being an autocrat. Teachers who have the style of a dictator are usually getting their ego’s needs met in an unhealthy way by having students idealize them and follow their every command.

      Second, Love on Every Breath gives us a process to engage in when we are aware of suffering. It empowers us to transform our experience of the world, of others, and of ourselves. It empowers us to move from feeling overwhelmed or afflicted by suffering to a place of agency. It gives us something to do even when, on an external level, there may be no action to take. In highly developed meditators, and sometimes spontaneously with any of us, the Love on Every Breath meditation can have a significant effect on those people we are sending love to, in terms of alleviating their suffering and shifting their experience to one of being loved. In any case, when we let go of our fixed ideas of other people, the space that is freed up allows for new possibilities to emerge. Our relationships often improve and outcomes are better.

      Third, instead of clinging to a fixated ego perspective, we can learn to love ourselves and others more deeply, to have compassion for ourselves and one another. A fresh, open space is created in our mind for the people we know. This shifts our relationships. We stop projecting the past onto others. Then enhanced skillfulness and effectiveness emerge in our words and actions.

      Fourth, in shifting away from ego contraction, opening more deeply to love and compassion, and letting go of clinging to our negativity and fear, we can connect with our innate awakened mind, our innate buddha nature. This gives us a deeper sense of our fundamental or basic goodness. This is incredibly healing. We begin to realize that we are not our insecurities, we are not our unwholesome habit patterns, and we are not our neuroses. As we come to more clearly know our natural goodness, we can face and take responsibility for our shadow side, our unconscious material that sometimes acts out or erupts, since we know that is not who we are at our core. Then we can work more consciously and skillfully with our shadow material.

      Lama Palden Drolma is the author of Love on Every Breath. A licensed psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and coach, she has studied Buddhism in the Himalayas with some of the most preeminent Tibetan masters of the twentieth century. Following a traditional three-year retreat under his guidance, Kalu Rinpoche authorized her to become one of the first Western lamas. She subsequently founded the Sukhasiddhi Foundation, a Tibetan Buddhist teaching center in Fairfax, California. Visit her online at www.lamapalden.org.

      Excerpted from the book Love on Every Breath. Copyright ©2019 by Lama Palden Drolma. Printed with permission from New World Library.

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    • Double Vision: Spiritual Significance of Hot Hands

      helpinghands

      My hands are often noticeably hot. In fact, you can actually feel the heat radiating from them. This happens usually more than twice a day. Is this possibly a spiritual thing? It seems to have started in the past few years. The heat can be felt by anyone, and is not related to my body temperature. The rest of my body (including the tops of my hands) can be cool or warm, but the palms of my hands will be very, very hot, actually radiating heat to the point that if I put my hands an inch or so above someone else’s, they can they feel it. Is there a spiritual connection here? Thanks!

      Tamica (a Virgo)

      Dreamchaser:

      Tamica, I am constantly reminded via this column that human beings are often completely blind when it comes to their own lives. I wonder what you might say if a friend asked you this question about her hands. I think you would say, “Girl, you are a healer!”

      There is a spiritual aspect to hot hands. Every healer I know has very warm hands. When they want to use them to heal, their hands become even hotter. To test this theory, the next time something hurts you, put your hands on that part of your body and concentrate on fixing it. You will feel your hands start to heat up, and I bet the pain is reduced.

      I wish I knew how old you are. (Readers, please include your full birth date when asking questions.) You said it started in the last few years, and I know that you hit an evolutionary level (spiritually speaking) at that time. It naturally happens to women in their thirties. We can ignore it or deny it, but it is still there. It is an awakening of sorts. At that time, our gifts will start to show themselves, if we have not seen them clearly already. That is basically what happened to you a few years back, Tamica. You had an “awakening.”

      I suggest you read books on the practice of Reiki in researching all types of healing. Learn all you can about your newfound gift. There is a reason we receive gifts, and why they start to manifest. You need to find out why you have hot hands.  I used to date a man who had hot hands that he rarely used. When I had an ache or a pain, I would ask him to heal me, and he would put his hands on me. Unless he was asked, however, he would never use the gift. I was on the receiving end of his power, and I know how much he had. I always thought it was a shame that he did not become more familiar with this gift of his. I think we all should be exploring ways to put our gifts to use.

      At the risk of sounding very “new age,” we are entering into new spiritual dimensions which influence human behavior. In the future, I fully expect to see a shift away from modern medicine to the “old ways.” You will fall into that category and become a doctor of sorts, but you have to accept the job. Do the research. Learn what you have to learn.

      I wish you even more power from within.

      *****

      Astrea:

      The uses of magic differ with every individual. Heat has always meant healing to me. I think you’re lucky to feel it come from your spirit through your hands. Harness this power for good, and you’ll live in a better world.

      Your guides are showing you that you need to be healing people physically and spiritually. These guides are giving you signs that you have an especially strong healing gift. Unfortunately, your guides aren’t showing you what technique you should be using to make this work for you and others in the most efficient way. Guides are like that: Often giving us half of the information we actually need so that we end up having to figure things out for ourselves.

      There is no shortcut to enlightened use of healing power, Virgo, so you’re out of luck there. Good thing you Virgos are so patient.

      You will find a way to use your powerful healing talent for the light. This doesn’t mean you have to rush out and become a medical doctor. There are several other legitimate avenues you can explore to learn how to use your gift. To control any gift takes lots of practice. First, you have to pay attention to all aspects of the signs you’re shown.

      Pay closer attention to details such as when, where, how, with whom, and why this happens to you. Get a little memo book that will fit in your pocket or purse and write those questions with a space between them on each page of the book.  Every time this heat manifests, answer those questions and go to the next page. Keep enough ahead in the question pages so that you don’t have to fill in the questions on the spot, and can just write down the answers quickly. Keep this notebook for a month, preferably from one full moon to the next full moon. Don’t go back over what you have written for an additional month, but meditate and pray for enlightenment during the next 28 days.

      On the following night of the waning full moon (you’re 60 days into this exercise now), read over the month you started your records. All will be revealed to you in that reading, and you’ll know where your healing path lies. You can then choose from the forms available to you to study, find a mentor, or develop skills to use this for yourself in your own way. Start with the next full moon to begin to process your miraculous gift.

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