#and then they spring his actual daughter (''wITH WHOM??'' I imagine myself asking) on you and she's a goddamn MAGICIAN??

[kingdomoftyto]

Started AA4 and this intro must have been insane to go into blind. I've had enough stuff spoiled that I already know the gist of what happens with Phoenix's life over the course of the series, but if I'd gone straight from AA3 to this scruffy card shark with a beanie hat that says "PAPA" in big pink letters, I think I would have spontaneously combusted

[lilacslovers]

💎 Lilac x Gordie {Royalty + Royal Guard AU Fic} Chapter One | The Meeting 💎

aaa i’m so happy! i’ve finished a fic of the first meeting of my s/i and gordie in the royalty au <3

yes it does say chapter one but. idk if this a proper series, its possibly a figurative ‘lets start from chapter one !’ its also just. omg it’s just a chapter like. not even a drabble. just a whole chapter HSJSND

but i truly hope you guys enjoy this! :0 (fic is in the keep reading !! ^^)

•••

The dark oak-stained carriage rattled around Lilac with every prance of Rapidash transporting it, the tight space and cool, pillowy seats barely making up for the sheer cold she was moving into.

In her gloved hands lied a handwritten letter from the Royals in Circhester; a neat cursive paragraph requesting her and her other guard apprentices to protect their home. After all, they would need good protection to hide their most precious jewels in the family, and they required the best of the best. In a way, it flattered Lilac to know they wanted her to assist them.

She folded the letter back into her sac tied at her waist, cuddling into her cape in shock from the sudden Circhesterian chill; she wasn’t too far from the castle now, and wished that they could’ve made her Royal Guard uniform more cozy inside. Perhaps they considered this weather late spring or summer temperatures...

Off guard, the shrill of Rapidash’s cry as it finally came to a halt nearly catapulted her into the rock-hard wood in front of her. She gasped in relief to have caught herself in time, straightening herself to correct such unawareness.

A crunch came from the snow as she dropped down from her carriage, a bag with her necessities slinged over her armoured shoulder. Walking to the near entrance, she turned to the coachman.

“Brr, it’s quite cold around here! You better stay safe in that house, Lilac!” he said, smiling cheerfully.

“Thank you, coachman.” she replied, turning next to the Rapidash, stroking its soft mane.

“And thank you, Rapidash.” she grinned at the Pokémon, in which it whinnied gleefully in response.

Walking across the tiled road to Circhester Castle, the snowy bushes brushed up against her, gorgeously grown flowers to withstand the eternal cold peeked their heads out of the fluffy hedges. Already employed guards outside were gossiping to each other about the family; perhaps they were new guards, like herself. Lilac halted, gaining the attention of the two guards at the grand door they stood up against.

Lilac decided to break the tension between them.

“I am incredibly sorry to interrupt. I am Lilac. I am here to sign myself into the occupation of Guard. I have a letter from the castle itself if you were to want it-“

Before her quiet voice were to finish her sentence, the doors loudly creaked open, revealing the Queen herself; the entrance surprised all three of the guards, yet they all retained the same serious face to show their composure. The Queen gave Lilac a stern look...

“Oh!” came the cheery exclamation of the Queen Melony, holding her hand to her face. “Welcome, dear! I suppose you must be the new Indoor Guard, correct?”

“I- um,” Lilac mumbled, clearing her throat to free the words she had before being surprised. “Yes, your Majesty. I have brought your letter. It is an honour to work with you.”

“Come inside!” invited the Queen. “‘Tis warmer in here, after all! I’ll show you to your position here in the castle.”

“Ah, thank you, your Majesty.”

•••

The warmth of the castle quickly defrosted Lilac’s freezing arms, and the sudden relaxation couldn’t help but make her stare in wonder at the details within: the castle walls were extremely high, regal tapestries hung. Across the tapestries came multiple family portraits from popular artists, and looking closely at the painting would reveal details drawn ever so to-the-point, it made Lilac ponder how someone could even make such a realistic piece in a time limit...

“Oh, I must say,” the Queen began to state. “My children can be quite the troublemakers, hoho... My youngest, a daughter and three sons, I believe they sometimes choose whom they like to see more often, more with my sons, I think. But... my oldest...”

She stopped in her tracks, and so did Lilac.

“... Well, he’s heir to the Throne, now. He possibly cannot choose who he works with, hoho!”

“I see, your Majesty.” Lilac lightly smiled to match the emotion of the Queen’s conversation. “I shall wish the Prince congratulations on being first to the Throne.”

“Oh, he would simply love that,” the Queen chortled. “He is quite the sensible man. I do hope he is excited to rule... I’ve had quite the years around here.”

It was hard for Lilac to decipher who this Prince was; after all, the long generations of family portraits across the wall couldn’t help Lilac’s imagination at all.

Queen Melony pointed to a space by a door, where Lilac stationed herself onto.

“Perfect! Your routine will to be to guard at this area, as well as to watch the household members around here if needed.

You will also patrol around here with other guards around 12 to 1 o’clock PM. Is that understood?”

“Yes, your Majesty.” Lilac agreed, straightening herself stoically. The Queen promptly smiled, and as she went out of sight, another guard poked their head out from the corner.

“Psst, hey. New guard.” they squeaked.

Lilac made eye contact with the other new guard.

“Have you seen Prince Gordie yet?”

“Who?”

“Prince Gordie!” another guard peeped. “C’mon, ‘who?’ Like, the Prince that is, like, constantly just... around? And cool?”

“I really don’t mean to be out of the loop, but...” Lilac held her chin to think. “I haven’t heard anything about any Prince Gordie... All I heard back from my town was when the Queen of Circhester came to visit, and when she did, it was never a ‘visit’ visit, only a ‘come to check out the best carriages’ visit.”

“Oh my Arceus, the Prince...!” yet another guard joined the conversation. “He looked shortly at me once. I just... I felt so seen...”

Oh, brother. Lilac looked away, until the commotion of the group caught her attention once again.

“Ah, look, there he comes...!”

A man came from the depths of the hallway, and suddenly it felt like everything was going slower - or perhaps Lilac was imagining things...

The man had his soft hair tied into a well-kept short ponytatail, as well as his soft and cute lapis eyes kept relaxed and sensual.

He walked with such confidence only a prince could ever have, his cape drifting gently across the satin carpets below. A slight jingling sound came from his minimalistic, yet beautiful necklace around his collar, the pendant resting on his chest where his relaxed blouse shaped the area around such jewellery.

His shoes lightly skipped across the satin carpets to not make even one noise, yet his heels made an dull tap that satisfyingly echoed across the area.

Whatever decent vision Lilac had of the Prince completely went from her mind; the Prince of Circhester, in her eyes, was indeed quite more handsome than she thought.

The guards squealed in delight, making all sorts of gestures to make Prince Gordie look over.

“Gordie! Could you please have a quick discussion with us? We need to talk to you about something?”

... And suddenly, all light the Prince had in his eyes disappeared as soon as he looked at them.

“... Gordie?” his deep, muttering voice repeated, his eyebrows furrowed. Lilac could see the optimism drain from the group, herself shivering along with them even if not involved.

“Never, in all my life, have I heard a stranger call me only by my first name. From what I recall, my title here is ‘Prince Gordie of Circhester’. Is that correct?” his angered voice paused for a while to let the guards rapidly nod their heads, truly attempting to not get into trouble.

“Yes. Now, all I want to hear from you few now is to refer to me as ‘Prince Gordie’. If you cannot, then ‘your Highness’, but if you can’t even manage a formal tone with a prince, you shall expect to be evicted from this castle. Is that understood?”

The guards nodded once again, mumbling out a few ‘Understood, Prince Gordie’s out from their held breath.

“Now. Don’t you have some patrolling to do? It is, after all, 12 o’clock. Go.”

The guards scurried away slowly, cowering from the unfortunate interaction.

Lilac, afraid herself of getting into an altercation, began to steadily inch her way around one corner.

“Please wait.” the Prince interrupted in a much normal, albeit naturally deep tone. Lilac hastily straightened her back once again, turned to face him.

“I did not mean you, I apologise for any confusion.” he stated, grinning. “It’s not actually 12, I just wanted them to leave, hehe.”

“My complete mistake, your Highness.” Lilac replied. “That is quite a tactic to make somebody leave, it’s certainly impressive, your Highness.”

“Hm,” Prince Gordie hummed, taking his chin with one hand. “Tell me, what is your name?”

Lilac paused, finding herself quite confounded at his question; oftentimes, asking for a guard’s name would be informal, as was taught in training.

“Ah, um, if you want it, It’s Lilac, your Highness.”

“Lilac, eh?” Prince Gordie grinned to himself. “A fitting, lovely name for a lovely guard.”

Lilac’s heart struck from the compliment, trying not to show any emotion upon her face, but the Prince began to speak again.

“I must go. I have quite a lot of errands to do.” he sighed, flicking his hair away from his vision.

“But, I do hope to see you again... Lilac.”

Prince Gordie gave a wave as he walked back out of the corridor, Lilac waving goodbye at the same time. As soon as he went completely, she faced the brick wall, intensely pondering the peculiar conversation she had had...

Surely...? Surely, he wasn’t trying to get her into trouble...? But, why would he take interest of only getting her name? Perhaps he was... No, absolutely not, Princes don’t form relationships with their servants...!

Unless, Prince Gordie wanted to?

Nevertheless, Lilac herself had duties to do. But, as she began to walk away, she couldn’t help but think as she rested her palm on her blushing cheek...

[jawusa]

Goldie’s Adventures on the Moon - Day 3

Chapter 3: Is it love, when so easily said goodbye? 

Ever since Mom's passed away, I always woke up with tears. She used to wake me up for school in the mornings - something that not everyone would do. My mom was by far the best mom out there! But something was strange on that day, I wasn't thinking about Mom when I woke up. I wasn't thinking about how she used to cook pancakes with me in the mornings. I wasn't thinking about how we'd sometimes go hiking around town. I wasn't even thinking about how she'd read me to sleep when I was a little kid. On that day, I was actually thinking about... uhmm about that cute boy whom I met just two days ago? And I didn't wake up with tears, but with a stange feeling of joy! I actually woke up with a smile after such a long time of grieving! 

Dad, Rhett and I decided to go to the Lunar Zen Garden on that day! Actually, we went there... because my Dad's seen this place with Rhett yesterday while I was spending some time in Hua's clothier and they really wanted me to check that place out. They'd say it's the best place for me to find happiness! They'd tell me to toss a coin in that shrine thingy and wish something! At first, I didn't really approve of what I was supposed to do - but I guess, it really did some magic on me? Because of the things... which came about later on that day... that day was kinda strange, though!

But I really loved the garden, though! It was so beautifully decorated with those tiny bridges and canals... and those cherry trees! Oh my! I really had a great time raking the zen garden! It felt so relaxing - but forreal! 

Rhett came to check on me every now and then, but I kept on shooing him away... he just... couldn't see that I was trying to concentrate and find my inner peace? Sheesh! He was playing some mahjong - or what was that game called again? - with Dad and those natives. Sometimes they ask me whether I'd like to join them, but there was this guy I kinda thought looked weird with such a top hat and Asian looking clothing... some people know him as the Unsavory Charlatan - that name already scared me off! But Dad and Rhett were still going for the game... (btw, I couldn't take a picture of him, he'd avoid being on camera for some reason... but he was playing with those other natives on the other table!) 

Anyway, I was soo into medidating, that I completely forgot what was all around me. For one second, I even forgot where I was... I couldn't hear anything... I couldn't see anything... I couldn't even feel anything, not even the ground! It felt like I was levitating forreal! But... hold on, I felt something observing me from the other side... I felt something smiling at me... I felt... I felt something approaching me... I felt... I felt... I... "Hey, OMG you're Goldie! What a surprise to see you around here! How are things with you?" 

I... could literally just... GOSHH! Ground, pleasee, PLEASEE swallow me?! That was soo embarrassing... and when I looked around, I saw his friend (with whom he had played chess before... all the time?)! He was smiling at me... mischievously? "Hehe, I've seen you raking, then medidating..." "Ooh, so.. you've literally seen everything?" "Hey... you didn't do that bad... let's just... have this moment together!" *grabs hand OMG and then, YOU GUYS, he GRABBED my hand... OMG, I... I didn't even know what to say at that moment! At first I was afraid... I was petrified! 

"Goldie, I've been trying to say this to you ever since I've first met you... ever since I've first seen you, ... ever since Day 1, but uhmm..." 

"I think I have a crush on you, Goldie! Your eyes are so beautiful! I... I'm so into you, I can barely breathe! "Uhmm... Qiu, I..." "I've been waiting and waiting for you to make a move... before I make a move!"

And then, he really kissed my lips! OMG, that was my first kiss... and I'd never imagine it to be in a romantic zen garden... in outer space! They say you never forget your very first kiss, and now I can see why! Either way, it was lovely! "So, uhmm... now you know, how I feel towards you, Goldie!" "Awww, you're soo romantic! I think I have a crush on you, too! I was shy to tell you this as well... and actually, I didn't even know myself what was going on... because I've never been this shy before, I'm actually an outgoing girl, I never had to struggle to find the words and it's so strange... I couldn't even... " "Lemme hug you one last time, babe!" *Goldie blushes 

Dad and Rhett must have probably seen me when I had my first kiss... they smiled at me... my Dad even winked at me, but we didn't say any words. It was just this... awkward moment where nobody would talk... and all! I was getting hungry... and just asked my Dad whether we'd go for a dinner soon? Since it was already getting too late... he just nodded and kept on smiling... which was even WEIRDER than it was before!

Anyway, later on that day, we went to dine in a traditional tea house/restaurant! They didn't have my favorite hamburgers on their menu, but they had other fancy-looking meals... which I haven't heard of before! I couldn't really choose, because literally EVERYTHING seemed foreign to me! But I could remember ordering something... which looked like a salmon on the menu! Not that I tried it before, but it looked somewhat familiar to what I'm used to, so I went for it! The salmon was... good! Though, I wasn't sure, why Rhett decided to eat on a different table! Maybe he did that on purpose, so I could have some "daddy & daughter" time? I don't know... but Dad told me something... out of blue. All of sudden, he was like: "Girl, I'm so glad to see you happy again! I told you, you'd be happy after tossing a coin or two into that shrine..." At that moment, I understood why he kept insisting me on tossing that coin into that shrine thingy when we first arrived at the Lunar Zen Garden... 

By the time we finished our dinner, the sun still hadn't set yet, and Rhett insisted on visiting the spa & gym... he's heard that they have these hot springs, which he REALLY wanted to try out... I mean, I couldn't blame him! After all, I was curious to see what these moon geysirs were all about! Thankfully, we had a great time spending time together as a family! I just noticed how I missed that in the past, but for the first time after all of these years, I wish that Candy were here as well! Things were about to improve between I and Rhett, too! I was getting along with all of them! Back in my miserable days, I'd always reject Rhett - remember the "silly" attempts of him trying to talk to me through my childhood teddy bear... GOSH, he was trying to cheer me up and I acted like an idiot! "Uhmm, Rhett? I'd like to tell you something..." "What?" "Well, now that I think, I really appreciate all the effort you've done for me! Like... you know, to cheer me up with the teddy bear and all..." "Yeah, I remember... it was probably a bad idea. I thought it'd work since as a kid, it did..." "Well, I'm a teenager now..." "True." "But hey, at least you tried to cheer me up... and to tell the truth, it does cheer me up, now that I think you tried to do something for me! Thanks for that!" "You're welcome, but look behind you! Isn't that your new boyfriend?" 

I turned my head... and OMG, it was him indeed! It was Q! And when I looked upon him... he winked at me! "So, I bet you guys want some privacy, right?" "Daaad... I'm..." "I know what you mean, Goldie! I've felt this way many times when I had my first fling in the hot tub!" *winks at Qiu and Goldie 

It kinda felt bizarre when my Dad had to give away way too much info... and it made me feel very AWKWARD at that moment! Like FORREAL! They all were into something... all of these boys! I just couldn't... understand them! Q didn't even seem to be irritated or something... I just hope he does forget about what my Dad just decided to reveal? It was a steamy atmosphere, though... with him! But not just with him, I mean... it was literally steamy, what else would you expect at the hot springs? So... that "steamy" term applies well here! Either way... I really enjoyed this steamy moment with... uhm, him? As always, kinda... Dad and Rhett would tell me that they'd be "out for fun" again... like on the other days. They never really told me where they'd go, but it had always to do with nightlife venues... kinda? Anyway, I couldn't blame them anymore... I mean, I'm a grown-up girl now and I don't need their company all the time! As much as I wanted to be left "alone" with Q, I guess... they wanted to have some time off on their own, too! 

But... my, oh, my! Those dance moves! LOL! Even I could dance better... I mean, Rhett's got something still, but Dad, he really sucks at dancing! But he thinks he can dance, he can jive! But at least, he's having the time of his life! And I'm happy for him... and Rhett, too! In the past, I'd be mad at him for moving on too fast, but he's right! We can't be stuck in sorrow FOREVER! One day, we just... have to break free and be happy again!

If I were to choose which day my favourite day was on the moon... I guess, it'd be this one here? I just had my first kiss? OMG, how cool's that?! And did you hear what he said? He just confessed his feelings to me... and I could finally do as well! I WASN'T expecting ANY of this! This is soooo GREAT! OMG! I'm literally melting! Alright, enough is enough... lol! But I could literally be raving about him all day long! I felt SO flattered when he confessed his feelings... Oh, wait, I have to tell this Hua! And Virginia, my best friend back in Widespot, too! Maybe this would even encourage her to confess her feelings to Woddy, too! I mean, she's told me once that she's a crush on that Woody boy? Why did I forget that? HOW could I forget that?! They don't even know what just happened today! Hold on, dear diary, let me text to them real quick...

[sleepykittypaws]

J.J. Jamieson Interview

A writer, producer and former network executive, J.J. Jamieson, has produced movies for Hallmark Channel, including all three Graceland movies (Christmas at Graceland, Wedding at Graceland and Christmas at Graceland: Home for the Holidays), and is now working with Bounce TV, writing both their 2019 original, Greyson Family Christmas, and this year’s Marry Me This Christmas, starring Brandon Jay McLaren and Gabrielle Graham.

Ahead of Marry Me This Christmas’ December 6th debut on Bounce (also available On Demand in Canada on December 8th), Jamieson was kind enough to take the time to talk from his Santa Monica home about what makes Christmas moviemaking special, and how Bounce’s latest holiday entry came together despite a global pandemic.

Q: How did you get involved in moviemaking?

A: I’m originally from Princeton, N.J. and way back in the late 1800s (laughs), I joined NBC as a page and eventually became an assistant in the movies and miniseries department, as that just happened to be where there was an opening, and then stayed there for the better part of a decade, eventually becoming a creative executive.

When I left NBC, I moved out here [to California], because show business is what I felt like I should be doing, and this is where show business is. I became a producer and worked for a variety of different companies, and sometimes for myself, and because movies and miniseries were what I knew, I occasionally worked on TV movies including—much to the horror of my children—one called Spring Break Shark Attack (laughs). You gotta pay the bills, right?

But, whatever you’re doing, my goal as a producer is to always to do the best with what you’re handed. Sometimes that turns out better than others, but the work is always the work, and you have to find that something that makes every project special.

A: How do you go from producing Spring Break Shark Attack to Hallmark movies?

Q: A friend of mine, Michael Larkin, a very accomplished creative producer, was working with Hallmark and said they needed a producer, someone to be the network’s eyes and ears on the ground, for a movie (Wedding of Dreams), and he couldn’t do it, so he said if they were really desperate, they could hire me (laughs).

Hallmark makes so many movies a year, their executives can’t be on set for the, usually, six weeks it takes to make them—three to prep, three to film—and then the edit, so they need someone on set to make sure everything is in alignment with the aesthetics of Hallmark.

…So, I did one movie with them, and then three more movies after that.

Q: What’s different about working on a Hallmark movie?

A: I’ve worked on a lot of different types of TV shows and movies, and have never been involved in anything else where there’s this fantastic love of the genre. People just love these movies.

I was shooting something in Tennessee, and struck up a conversation with this cop who was just sitting in his car, blocking the street while we were shooting outside, and he asked what we were filming, and when I said it was a Hallmark movie, his response was, ‘Oh, I love Hallmark movies,’ and I was thinking, ‘Really? You do?’

But he was serious. He was a fan. I think there are just a wide variety of people that these movies appeal to. Much broader than most imagine.

I think there’s comfort in the fact that when you sit down to watch, you know what you’re going to get. You’re going to get a happy ending, you know it’s all going to work out, and ‘What’s wrong with that?,’ as my niece, who is also a fan, said to me once.

When I think about why Hallmark movies are so popular, I think of a conversation I had once with a friend of my wife’s, an MBA, a very accomplished woman, and she watches these movies. When I asked her, ‘What is it about Hallmark movies that you find so enrapturing, when there’s usually so little conflict?’ She said to me: I don’t need conflict. I’ve got enough stress with the kids, stress with my ex-husband, stress at the office…I don’t need more stress. I want to sit down and watch something devoid of stress that feels good for the soul.

I think that’s the key, and I think it’s what Hallmark has tapped into, and the competition to emulate that is just fanatical, particularly with the Christmas movies.

Q: What do you think of the explosion of Christmas movies across the dial?

A: People want to be in this game. When every other cable channel’s ratings were falling, Hallmark was the only one going up. They were doing something right. They had tapped into something. Which I think is why Lifetime wants to do the same thing. I don’t think they have quite captured it, yet, but there’s also Netflix, doing it in a little bit of a different way. And then all these other channels, too, what, a dozen now? More? Producing their own [holiday] movies.

I’m shocked there’s not a saturation in the market, actually, because they keep on trying to spin that same wheel, but the appetite is obviously there, and I think there’s room, especially when you’re trying to do something a little bit different.

Q: How did you go from producing, to writing and producing, or in the case of Marry Me This Christmas, just writing? Are you a producer who writes, or a writer who also happens to produce?

A: It’s really a very different skill set, writers tend to be more introverted, more comfortable in front of a computer screen, because that’s mostly what writing is, just you in front of your computer, creating a world. Producing is more a job of management, making sure everyone shares the same vision of what the network wants.

To be a producer, is to be a generalist, and I guess I’m a generalist. I’m not a musician, but I can have a conversation with a composer and know enough to talk about what elements of a score I think a scene needs. I’m not a director, but know enough to see a scene and say, ‘Let’s try one that’s less big,’ or whatever. I’m not a cinematographer, but I can see where we might want to try a few more lights, so we don’t lose the actor in a scene.

Being a producer is an incredibly humbling job. One of my favorite parts of being on set is the first day. It always reminds me why I came out to Hollywood to do this. You’re surrounded by a team of experts, all of whom are brilliant at their specific job—the hair stylists, the makeup artists, lighting, sound…Every single one of them knows more about their jobs than I ever will, and you feel humbled by that. It makes one appreciative of the collaborative aspect of this art form. It’s nobody’s movie. It’s not the writers, or the producer’s, or the executives’, or even the director’s or actors’—every movie is a product of everyone who worked on it, and it’s all our movie.

I had a good friend who went from being a creative producer to being a line producer (NOTE: a line producer’s role is usually to manage the budget and act as an on-set human resources department; someone who puts out the inevitable fires that come up during filming), and I asked him, ‘But don’t you miss the creative side?’ And he said to me, ‘It’s all filmmaking. We’re all filmmakers and it’s all essential.’ I thought that was a lovely sentiment, and a testament to the overall teamwork nature of filmmaking. The people signing the checks in accounting are just as important as anyone else, because you can’t make the movie without them.

So, to finally answer your question, I think I’m more of a producer that also writes. A producer who spent enough time working with writers to get story ideas made, so that the idea of writing things myself began to feel realistic. And, so far, my record of giving my ideas to other writers, versus just me writing my ideas myself, has a pretty good percentage of getting things into production. The way I look at it, at least this way I have no one to blame but myself if something doesn’t work.

Q: How did you get involved with Bounce TV? And, for those like me who didn’t know Bounce even existed until last year, can you share a little about the network?

A: Sure, and you’re definitely not alone. Bounce is a sizeable basic cable and broadcast network, based in Atlanta. They’re in 94 million homes. They’re not in all markets yet, but that’s part of their mission, to increase their penetration and increase awareness.

I got involved because a good friend of mine that’s a talented producer and former Turner executive, David Hudson, moved from Santa Monica to Atlanta to oversee original programming for Bounce. His background is more in unscripted programming, so when Bounce decided they wanted more TV movies, he reached out to me and the first thing he said was that he needed a holiday picture for that same year.

Greyson Family Christmas was originally Greyson Family Thanksgiving. He gave me the premise—a family lives next door to each other, one more conservative, one more liberal, and the daughter brings home her white boyfriend for the holidays—and he needed a script. Given that it was so specific, I thought it would be easier if I just wrote it, which I did, and then worked as a producer on set during the shoot in Baton Rouge.

Q: Greyson Family Christmas ended up being one of my personal favorite movies of last season, and one thing I liked is that it was a little bit different. It wasn’t just a broad comedy or a straightforward holiday rom-com with little conflict.

A: Thank you, and we did try to make it about more than silliness. We wanted it to be light and fun, but also to say a little something about some of the very real things we wanted to address about race and family.

And we got so incredibly lucky with our cast, who were just amazing. Part of the trick of making a movie that has a lower budget, is doing what you can afford to do, and doing it well. Not stretching beyond what that budget allows. And we were very aware of that during production. With that incredibly short schedule—we shot Greyson in 12 days—and tight budget, you have to be.

Look, I know you can’t please everyone with these movies. I mean, some people hate Dickens and Hemingway—and I’m not saying Greyson is that, but I was really pleased with how the movie turned out, and think we had a great group working on it to make that happen.

We didn’t have a ton of money for publicity beyond the promos that aired on Bounce—no billboards, or things like that—but the cast was great at promoting Greyson on social media, and even with the tight timeline and everything else, it ended up being the highest-rated original movie in the history of the network.

Whenever you make a movie, you try to make it the best you can, and how it performs is really out of your hands in a lot of ways, but it sure is nice when you haven’t let down your network, and it was doubly important for me, given my friendship and fondness for David Hudson, who my kids all call Uncle David.

Greyson Family Christmas will be re-airing this December, so I really hope even more people get a chance to discover it, because it really was a labor of love for me, and the network and, really, everyone involved.

[NOTE: Bounce currently has encore airings of Greyson Family Christmas scheduled for December 6th, 11th, 18th and 24th.]

A: The latest Bounce original holiday movie, Marry Me This Christmas, debuts on December 6th, which you also wrote. Tell us a little about the movie, and the process of filming it during a global pandemic.

Q: I didn’t produce this one, mostly due to COVID, [which is also why] it was shot in Canada.

Tonally we were trying to go for something more like a dramedy—some comedy, but some real bit of business going on in the story.

I actually wrote this one a couple of years ago, not as a Christmas movie originally, and the whole idea is born out of the one joke at the end at the end of the first act, where she comes in to the pastor and says, ‘I know we haven’t known each other long, but you’ve become really important to me, and this may sound crazy, but I really want you to marry me,’ and this guy who has had a huge crush on her is all excited and says ‘Yes, yes,’ and her response is, ‘Great, my fiancé will be thrilled.’

That’s the joke, and it’s silly. It’s a dad joke, really, but the whole movie was built out from there, and as silly as that idea is, we wanted to explore what would really happen if this young pastor fell in love with someone engaged to someone else. To try to make believable, and be about something.

Q: Was that inherent element of faith something that came from you, or a direction from the network?

A: This was all my own. I was raised Catholic, and grew up going to church every Sunday. My sons then went to Catholic School, so religion has kind of hung over my life like the cloud of dirt over Pigpen. (laughs) I mean, if I wasn’t going to hell before, I probably am for that line, right? (laughs, again)

Anyway, I really was interested in this notion of trying to be a good person playing against the other qualities of our human nature. Sometimes our hearts are drawn to do certain things—not bad or evil, just being human beings, not little boxes of saintliness. To me, the essence of the story was putting that around this character whose actual job it was to be a good guy, but on the other hand he’s also a man, wrestling with the nature of love, and finally coming around to a greater sense of understanding than he had at the beginning.

We are all supposed to act with a sense of service and self-sacrifice, but on the other hand, we’re not utterly devoid of self. To be a human, even a human in service of God or goodness, doesn’t mean you’re also not supposed to fall in love with that same, almost religious, fervor, which is what I hope he realizes at the end. And it’s all a lot more ambitious than that ‘ha, ha’ dad joke of the premise.

I hope this movie is for everyone, not just people of faith. That’s why I put in there that the best friend is an atheist. That a pastor and someone who doesn’t believe can still be friends. That [the non-believer] is still this supportive friend, and a good guy.

I was also very deliberate in that I didn’t want our pastor to pray for God’s help and receive it in a [direct] way. There’s a scene in the chapel with the Bible, and I wanted it to be very clear that you’re not going to just get the answer to your problems [divinely], you have to figure out those sorts of matters yourself.

Q: How did the pandemic effect production?

A: Well, COVID has trimmed the number of original productions at Bounce in 2020. The plan is to increase our original movie production, and that’s been at least temporarily waylaid by all the [fallout] from COVID, but we did want to have at least one new movie for the fourth quarter… and knowing how well last year’s original holiday movie did for them, there was definitely the sentiment of, ‘Let’s do another Christmas movie,’ so it was a conscious and deliberate effort to make that happen, despite the pandemic.

So, I reached out to a friend of a friend, Thomas Michael [of Fella Films], because Canada had lower COVID infections and a rich film community, and he became our partner and producer. There also [had to be] a little extra money for COVID protections, and [filming] took a few extra days just due to safety protocols for the cast and crew. Plus, our cast is entirely Canadian, due to restrictions.

David Hudson and I, working as a consultant for the network, were looking for holiday movies, or rom-coms we could spin into a holiday movie. We were even looking at stories to develop into full scripts, and we just weren’t finding what we’re looking for, so I said, ‘Look, this has been sitting on my shelf, it’s available, and I’m a cheap date.’ (laughs)

Q: Hallmark, in particular, has said casting Black actors in Canada is difficult, was that an issue you experienced?

A: I will say it was a question raised, because that’s not our usual production [location]. And working with Thomas Michael, we moved towards Ontario, because they do have a larger pool of Black Canadian actors, just because they have a larger Black population overall.

After some [research], we all felt very comfortable with the talent pool, and I think we once again got really lucky with our cast. These guys were just all really great. We did a read through, and I was just choked up by how good they all were.

They might not have the same name recognition of some of the actors in Greyson, like Stan Shaw or Robinne Lee, but they’re all working actors. Brandon Jay McLaren, our pastor, is working on the new Turner and Hooch series, and I worked with him on a TV pilot 10 years ago. Gabrielle Graham, our female lead, has been a regular on two Amazon Prime series, [The Expanse and 21 Thunder].

I really hope people will respond to them, because I think they did a great job with the characters.

Q: How did Marry Me This Christmas end up with Megan Follows, best known as Anne of Green Gables, directing?

A: Once we had the determination to do it in Canada, we began looking for a Canadian director, on a pretty tight timeline. Our producer had a [working] relationship with Megan, and she has been directing more and more. We reached out to her and she responded well to the material, and I think got what we wanted to do with it.

She and the cast were terrific. And I think we just got lucky it turned out as well it did, given all the circumstances.

Q: There was talk there might be a Greyson Family Christmas sequel, was that idea a casualty of COVID?

A: Unfortunately, yes. We had a story worked out for a wedding, but with COVID and the difficulty in production, the soonest we’d have been able to get it on the air was spring or summer 2021, and that’s a long time to wait for a sequel. But I like to think of Maya and Trent, and the rest of the Greyson family, living on happily, safely and healthily, nevertheless.

Q: Bounce is a network geared towards an African-American audience, does the fact you’re not Black come up when writing these stories?

A: Definitely. Especially in the first movie, Greyson, which really digs into more sensitive and deeper matters of race, having this white guy from New Jersey writing the movie was a little unusual, as I’ll be the first to admit.

I mean, when you’re telling a story, you are always putting yourself into characters unlike yourself—teenage kids, the 75-year-old grandmother—and trying to do it in a way that resonates and feels authentic. But, yes, I got help from people of color. Particularly for Greyson, where I was on set, the cast was extraordinarily helpful, making changes and making sure the voice was right.

I will say that where the characters in Greyson succeed, in respect to race, I give all the credit to the actors, who inhabited those characters and made them their own, and if anything feels a little off to an audience, I take the blame for those shortcomings.

In that movie, where I was a producer, and in my Hallmark movies too, I made an extra effort to hire and fill out our teams looking beyond the first resumes we received, because if Bounce can’t be supportive of the black filmmaking community, who can? We really did try to hire a crew that was reflective of America’s demographics.

For too long, in this industry primarily driven by white men who have the tendency to hire other white men, that wasn’t the case, so you have to be open to the person who has 7 credits but might not have had the same opportunities, versus someone who has 35 credits, and not just pick the default. To undo that unconscious bias. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of favoring people with longer resumes, instead of saying we need those diverse voices that are more reflective of society at large. It’s something I hope to keep working on, because I think it makes the final product better as a result.

Q: What do you hope viewers take away from Marry Me This Christmas?

A: As a filmmaker there’s always something fun anytime you have an idea in your head and it ends up on screen for other people to see, so I’m just excited for it to air and hope people like it.

Bounce wants to be in that arena, making holiday feel-good movies, but maybe doing something a little bit more. Yes, it’s a rom-com at Christmas, but I think it’s a little bit of an alternative to all those other kinds of movies, and you might get something you don’t expect. A little present under the tree you didn’t realize was there. I hope it brings just a little extra joy for the holiday.

[dailyaudiobible]

03/07/2019 DAB Tranbscript

Numbers 8:1-9:23, Mark 13:14-37, Psalms 50:1-23, Proverbs 10:29-30

Today is the 7th day of March, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it's great to be here with you today like it is every day no matter what part of the week it is. But it's the end of another of our weeks together and they just…they just keep going by and then just keep going by until we complete our journey. So, it's is wonderful to be here around this Global Campfire bringing to a conclusion another of the weeks that we get to share together, and we’ll take the next step forward in the Scriptures. And we’ve been reading from the English Standard Version this week. And today numbers chapters 8 and 9.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for another week in Your word and we just keep marking the weeks and You just keep taking us deeper and we take to heart the words of the gospel of Mark today, “stay awake.” This seems to be the theme screaming out of the Gospels, “have eyes to see, stay away.” And we confess the slumber…the slumber of our lives, the way that we get so focused on whatever it is that's happening to make us uncomfortable. If we could just open our eyes, if we could just wake up and see the vastness of Your goodness and the eternal nature, the never ending-ness of it all and that we are in the middle of it, but that our vision is so narrowly focused that we can see, that we are just under the haze of life. We’re slumbering. Awaken us God that we might see You at work in this world in and among us, through us and all around us. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, certainly stay tuned and stay connected in any way that you can.

Check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop. It is stocked with resources that are for this journey, including our…our journal, including all of the writing…like the journaling stuff. Yeah, if you've come this far in the Scriptures and don't have a journal you might…you might want to grab one somewhere. Every time that the Lord speaks something to you that's meaningful for your life it's such a helpful thing to just kind of document that, to write that down so that you don't forget so that you can go back and be reminded. So, that…those…those resources are available in the Shop.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There's a link on the homepage and I thank you with all of my heart profoundly for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or if, you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, the little red button at the top or you can just dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi beautiful family this is Susan Schultz I’ve been a listener since 2012 but I don’t call in much but I have been the airport liaison for the More conference for seven years and I love you all so much and I pray for you all the time, especially the pilgrims and I love all my More ladies. Hi, I love you. Hope to see you all soon. But I just wanted to call to rejoice with Harold. I have learned through More conference and I even have a jacket that says it, “I can do hard things.” I started running at the ripe old age of 57 two…two summers ago and I have made it my goal to run a half marathon by my 60th birthday which is six 6/6/60. Hey Nora Lee, my other six 6/6/60 DABber. I know that what God has taught me through running is that I can do hard things and when I did my very first...the longest run I’ve ever done since my training started, I was listening to the DAB. It was an 11-mile run and I made it the whole way, but in the middle, I was rejoicing because Harold called in and said that he was saved, and I…I just couldn’t believe it. I mean it’s…we’ve been praying for him since January and I was so excited because my training started in January and he was training and I just…he’s been on my heart ever since. And, so, I just thank you all and love you all. And, so, thank you Jesus…

[singing starts] Have Your way Lord. Have Your way. Have Your way Lord. Have Your way. Have Your way Lord. Have your way. Have your way. Have your way. Someone needs you Lord now today. Someone needs you Lord now today. Someone needs you Lord now today. Have your way. Have your way. Someone’s crying Lord have your way. Someone’s crying Lord have your way. Someone’s crying Lord have your way. Have your way. Have your way [singing stops]. I’d like to ask for prayer for the family and friends of Caleb Mekins a 31-year-old minister who passed away in Ethiopia. This is Blessings Flow in Pennsylvania.

Hello Daily Audio Bible community this is Abiding in His Love from New York. It’s February 29th. This is my first-time calling in. I’ve been listening to the Daily Audio Bible on and off. Today I’m calling in…I actually struggle with calling in. I’ve been trying to call in but every time I put it off and I just want to reach out to the community to pray for myself as a parent for spiritual guidance in helping my daughter. She’s 12 years old and lately she’s been going through some tough times and struggle with self-defeating thoughts. Most days…her days are mostly overshadowed by just feeling oppressed. I know that’s not typical, that’s not of God and the Bible say that He came that we may have life and have it more abundantly. And I’m praying that over my daughter, that whatever spirit of oppression, depression or sadness or self-defeating thoughts, that those will be gone in the name of Jesus and for other parents who are struggling with adolescent children that may be going through the same thing, I pray dear God that we will use our weapon of praying to destroy whatever plans the devil has to destroy our children. So, I ask you guys to keep us in your prayer, to uplift us. My daughter is Kay. I thank you. God bless you.

Proud witness right here in this place it’s the light of God’s love all over my face all those who see me they ask me what’s up it’s the presence of God that’s filling my cup love overflowing in rivers and streams causing reflections visions and dreams dreams of the future reflections of the past visions and fulfillment of all that I’ve asked it could be a gesture a word or touch something so small can accomplish so much because it comes from you Father up in heaven above filling me with mercy wisdom and love helping me to be a blessing today to all those my Father whom you’ve sent my way someone who’s hurting someone in need yet all are desiring to somehow be freed so help us keep patient and do things your way help me dear Lord to have the right words to say someone’s confused about what they heard longing for the truth that comes only from your word there’s a powerful witness right here in this place it’s the light of your love all over my face

blindtony1016@gmail.com. Like to give a shout out to Brian, Jill, Max, China, China, Ezekiel and Christian, you know, the whole Hardin family. Thank you so much for this wonderful podcast for God’s Holy Spirit to flow. Keep it flowing y’all. And it was so nice hearing Jill’s voice again. I haven’t heard you in a long time. Sounds good.

Hello DAB listeners my name is Janice and I’m in Illinois. I’m here to report that I’m not just a DABber nor double DABber. I am a triple DABber. Because of a difficult trial I am going through right now I have many sleepless nights. So, instead of laying in my bed worrying and stewing over my troubles I listen to DABC and DAB for Kids and I let God’s words wash over me. I’ve been listening to Brian since the end of the first year of broadcasting DAB. China I was listening the year that you went to India with your dad. As a second-grade teacher in a Christian school I would use those DAB for Kids in my classroom. You were 11 years old. This year they are replaying that first year of DAB for kids. DABber’s, what a blessing it is to hear China and her dad teaching the Bible together. Then I listen to China, the grown-up. Oh my, what an incredible wisdom God has granted you China. So, I am a triple DABber and God’s word is carrying me through this, the most difficult time I’ve ever gone through. Thank, you China for obeying the Lord’s calling on your life. Thank you, Brian and Jill for bringing your children up at the feet of Jesus.

Hi this is Asia from Chicago it’s March 1st and I just heard Tony the Narrator or Tony the Narrator if you say it like him. Hey man. I’m so glad that you called in such a vulnerable spot. I just was really moved and heartbroken to hear you speaking and crying about your ex-wife and her boyfriend and it’s just so…I just can’t…I just…I can’t even fathom how hard marriage, loss, and divorce and marriage breakup could be. I…just this week had just a guy that he and I were talking and then we had a conversation and decided that we were gonna just be friends and it was so hard for me it was really sad. And I just can’t even imagine, I mean a hundredfold the anguish that you must be enduring right now, and I just want you to know that it’s okay to lament, it’s okay to grieve. It’s so hard. It’s not what we want. It’s never what we want, right? And we can do everything we can to distract ourselves. But I’m so proud of you for being brave and strong, for calling it like it is instead of, you know, putting a fake, a pseudo-silver lining over it. “Oh, it’s going to be fine, I’m good, Jesus is good.” Like those are all true things and it is good but brother, kudos to you for being strong and admitting when you are weak. And I’m here for you and I’m praying for you and I love you. This is Asia from Chicago.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Thoughts on Shiera Seastar?

There exist four characters from pre-canon, specifically Blackfyre-era that I’d call Complete Monsters, “the most depraved sort of villain utterly lacking in redeeming qualities”: Aerion Brightflame and Aegon IV the Unworthy (least controversially), Brynden Bloodraven Rivers (controversially for fandom, but after his actions in the Great Spring Sickness I consider him utterly reprehensible), and Shiera Seastar Waters. You might not think this label fits her compared to the other three legitimately cruel murderers, torturers, rapists, and tyrants, especially since we know so little about her, but as I explained in an earlier opinion piece, GRRM indicated she goaded her lovers into committing suicide, which for me puts her at the lowest of the low. I can’t imagine being so cruel as to prey on vulnerable people, make them depend upon me for emotional support, and then withdrawing that comfort when I got bored so these people would hurt themselves. I have severe triggers regarding clinical depression, abusive relationships, and suicide, so to see this character praised for being a “complicated, misunderstood woman” rather than a psychological sadist is utterly loathsome; it is for this reason why I tag my hate for Shiera, because she is a canonical female abuser and I wish people other than myself would realize this. However, I’ve talked enough about my opinion of Shiera as a horrible “person” in the earlier piece, so I might speak about the character’s lack of presence in the plot.

Shiera is a character I’m honestly confused exists, especially for this long (since before 2003). From GRRM’s perspective, the protagonist/most important of the “Great Bastards” is Bl00draven, the powerful and ruthless sorcerer who ruled Westeros for generations with an iron first only to re-emerge as Bran’s mentor come canon era. The actions of the other three revolve around him. Aegor is his magic-less “archenemy” who he has to oppose from taking over the kingdom (or else Aegor will…get rid of his authoritarian police state?). Daemon is the man he killed in battle, leading to his “cursed” reputation as a kinslayer, and the father of the other young men he also killed in his and Aegor’s bloody wars of…vengeance? You may think, as I have, why GRRM thought to split Daemon and Aegor into 2 characters. Surely it would make more sense (and be more historically accurate to the Jacobites, who lost none of their sons to battles with the Hanoverians; it’s also more accurate to the anti-hero GRRM may have based BR on, Elric of Melnibone in Michael Moorcock’s Elric Saga, whose rival was his cousin Yrkoon, the brother of his betrothed Cymoril) to have one rebel character oppose Brynden, lose, flee with his family to his wife’s home, and then emerge to fight another day alongside his sons. That would’ve tightened things up as well as make things more personal, since it would be Daemongor’s own children he was pushing for the throne rather than nephews (also it saves us from having to imagine Aegor/Calla and the trite Brynden/Shiera/Aegor love triangle). Frustratingly, I believe it’s to remove any moral ambiguity from the situation; Aegor can be the bitter, violent, opportunistic vengeance-obsessed rival who supposedly doesn’t care about the children he saw grow up, whereas Daemon can be the charming yet easily manipulated tragic hero dead before his time because of a sacrifice BR had to make. Merging Daemon and Aegor together would’ve made the resulting Daemongor character much too sympathetic and complex for GRRM’s precious antihero (of course, if you ask me, even apart they are loads more interesting and likable than a tyrannical egotist), for whom he constantly makes other characters OOC or less competent to give Bl00draven implausible victories.

As for Shiera, she is centered around Bl00draven to such an extent it’s honestly creepy. She is the only “Great Bastard” we don’t know the birth and death dates for (this is important for her negligible role in the narrative, since she may have been as young as 11 by the start of the Blackfyre Rebellion, making any “romantic” relationship she may’ve had with the 20 year old Bloodraven or 23 year old Aegor a clear case of pedophilia). While despite being supporting characters, Daemon and Aegor have interesting relationships apart from Bl00draven (notably with each other; but with Daena, Aegon IV, Quentyn Ball, Gormon Peake, Rohanne of Tyrosh and her 2 oldest children, Daenerys Targaryen, Da3ron II, Baelor Breakspear, even Eustace Osgrey and Maekar for Daemon; Barba and Bethany Bracken, both Lord Brackens, Lord Shawney, Torwyn Greyjoy, Haegon and Daemon III Blackfyre for Aegor), Shiera’s existence is more-or-less completely wrapped around Bl00draven; it is incredibly telling that Egg refers to her not as “the old king’s bastard daughter” or anything referring to their blood relation, but as “Lord Bl00draven’s paramour”. The only other named character she’s mentioned interacting with is Aegor Rivers (of course, in a romantic context), and the only significant action she took in-story is to “choose” Bl00draven over him (she never married him, though, so I’m honestly unsure what this entails); GRRM might do some window dressing about how beautiful or well-read or “dark” she is, but as it stands Shiera is a shallow Love Interest who, despite never “officially” marrying her lover, is so completely defined by him that even that is made all about his feelings (”it amused her more to make him jealous”). Her existence is made even less significant when Bl00draven reveals in aDwD that he never “loved” her at all according to his definition; that emotion is reserved for his ‘brother’, while he only ‘desired’ a woman who now haunts him, so her most important relationship isn’t even considered as important by the other person. You could merge Daemon and Aegor and still have the plot make sense, but you could take out Shiera entirely and absolutely nothing would be lost except Bl00draven no longer has a girlfriend (and not an average noblewoman; no, she has to be the most beautiful woman in history and an almost princess who is also a sorceress who maybe bathes in human blood because Seven forbid Bl00draven reveal actual depth to his character as someone who Just Wants to Be Normal despite his albinism in a sweet Bran/Meera parallel) and another reason to angst. Sure, Bl00draven has Shiera as a lover while Aegor doesn’t, but there are more political and personal reasons for Aegor’s resentment, and having it be over a love triangle is vastly cliche and a disservice to all three characters, as underdeveloped as one might be.

tl;dr Shiera is the epitome of a Shallow Love Interest and Distaff Counterpart to the Protagonist Bl00draven, which in other cases I’d like to see more developed, but her psychological sadism hits such a personal chord with me that I hate what little personality she has. I’m honestly glad she’s such a nonentity that I receive so few questions about her.

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/learn-about-the-dakinis-fierce-female-messengers-of-wisdom-in-tibetan-buddhism/

Learn About the Dakinis: Fierce Female Messengers of Wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism

Read the stories of the Dakini—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism to tap into your feminine power.

Chris Ensey

When I was eleven, I ran home on the last day of school and tore off my dress, literally popping the buttons off, feeling simultaneously guilty and liberated. I put on an old, torn pair of cutoff jean shorts, a white T-shirt, and blue Keds sneakers, and ran with my sister into the woods behind our old colonial New Hampshire house. We went to play in the brook burbling down the steep hill over the mossy rocks, through the evergreens and deciduous trees, the water colored rich red-brown by the tannins in the leaves of the maple trees. We would play and catch foot-long white suckerfish with our hands, and then put them back because we didn’t want to kill them.

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Sometimes we swam naked at night with friends at our summerhouse in the spring-fed lake 15 miles away, surrounded by pine, birch, spruce, and maple trees. I loved the feeling of the water caressing my skin like velvet, with the moon reflecting in the mirror-like lake. My sister and my friend Joanie and I would get on our ponies bareback and urge them into the lake until they were surging up and down with water rushing over our thighs and down the backs of the horses; they were swimming with us as we laughed, clinging onto their backs.

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When violent summer thunderstorms blew through, instead of staying in the old wooden house I would run and dance outside in the rain and thunder, scaring my mother. I liked to eat with my fingers, gnawing on pork chop bones and gulping down big glasses of milk, in a hurry to get back outside. I loved gnawing on bones. My mother would shake her head, saying in desperation, “Oh, darling, please, please eat with your fork! Heavens alive, I’m raising a barbarian!”

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Barbarian, I thought, that sounds great! I imagined women with long hair streaming out behind them, racing their horses over wide plains. I saw streaked sunrises on crisp mornings with no school, bones to gnaw on. This wildness was so much a part of me; I could never imagine living a life that didn’t allow for it.

But then I was a wife and a mother raising two young daughters, and that wild young barbarian seemed lifetimes away. Paul and I had been married for three years when we decided to move from Vashon Island back to Boulder, Colorado, and join Trungpa Rinpoche’s community. It was wonderful to be in a big, active community with many young parents. However, the strain of the early years, our inexperience, and our own individual growth led us to decide to separate and collaborate as co-parents.

In 1978, I had been a single mother for several years when I met an Italian filmmaker, Costanzo Allione, who was directing a film on the Beat poets of Naropa University. He interviewed me because I was Allen Ginsberg’s meditation instructor, and Allen, whom I had met when I was a nun in 1972, introduced me to Costanzo. In the spring of 1979, we were married in Boulder while he was finishing his film, which was called Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds, and soon thereafter we moved to Italy. I got pregnant that summer while we were living in a trailer in an Italian campground on the ocean near Rome, and that fall we moved into a drafty summer villa in the Alban Hills near the town of Velletri.

When I was six months pregnant, my belly measured the size of a nine-months pregnant woman’s, so they did an ultrasound and discovered I was pregnant with twins. By this time I knew that my husband was a drug addict and unfaithful. I couldn’t speak the native language and felt completely isolated. In March of 1980, I gave birth to twins, Chiara and Costanzo; they were a little early, but each weighed over five pounds. I buckled down to nursing two babies, caring for my other two daughters, and dealing with my husband’s addiction, erratic mood swings, and physical abuse, which started during my pregnancy when he began to hit me.

My feelings of overwhelm and anxiety increased daily, and I began to wonder about how my life as a mother and a Western woman really connected with my Buddhist spirituality. How had things ended up like this? How had I lost that wild, independent girl and left my life as a nun, ending up in Italy with an abusive husband? It seemed that by choosing to disrobe, I had lost my path, and myself.

Then two months later, on June 1, 1980, I woke up from a night of broken sleep and stumbled into the room where Chiara and her brother Costanzo were sleeping. I nursed him first because he was crying, and then turned to her. She seemed very quiet. When I picked her up, I immediately knew: she felt stiff and light. I remembered the similar feeling from my childhood, picking up my small marmalade colored kitten that had been hit by a car and crawled under a bush to die. Around Chiara’s mouth and nose was purple bruising where blood had pooled; her eyes were closed, but her beautiful, soft amber hair was the same and she still smelled sweet. Her tiny body was there, but she was gone. Chiara had died of sudden infant death syndrome.

See also Relieve Anxiety with a Simple 30-Second Practice

The Buddhist stupa of Swayambhu in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

Bikalpa Pokhrel

The Dakini Spirit

Following Chiara’s death came what I can only call a descent. I was filled with confusion, loss, and grief. Buffeted by raw, intense emotions, I felt more than ever that I desperately needed some female guidance. I needed to turn somewhere: to women’s stories, to women teachers, to anything that would guide me as a mother, living this life of motherhood—to connect me to my own experience as a woman and as a serious Buddhist practitioner on the path. I needed the stories of dakinis—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism. But I really didn’t know where to turn. I looked into all kinds of resources, but I couldn’t find my answers.

At some point in my search, the realization came to me: I have to find them myself. I have to find their stories. I needed to research the life stories of the Buddhist women of the past and see if I could discover some thread, some key that would help unlock the answers about the dakinis and guide me through this passage. If I could find the dakinis, I would find my spiritual role models—I could see how they did it. I could see how they made the connections between mother, wife, and woman . . . how they integrated spirituality with everyday life challenges.

About a year later, I was in California doing a retreat with my teacher, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, who was teaching a practice called Chöd that involved invoking the presence of one of the great female masters of Tibetan Buddhism, Machig Labdrön. And in this practice there is an invocation, in which you visualize her as a young, dancing, 16-year-old white dakini. So there I was doing this practice with him, and for some reason that night he kept repeating it. We must have done it for several hours. Then during the section of the practice where we invoked Machig Labdrön, I suddenly had the vision of another female form emerging out of the darkness.

See also 10 Best Women-Only Yoga Retreats Around the World

What I saw behind her was a cemetery from which she was emerging. She was old, with long, pendulous breasts that had fed many babies; golden skin; and gray hair that was streaming out. She was staring intensely at me, like an invitation and a challenge. At the same time, there was incredible compassion in her eyes. I was shocked because this woman wasn’t what I was supposed to be seeing. Yet there she was, approaching very close to me, her long hair flowing, and looking at me so intensely. Finally, at the end of this practice, I went up to my teacher and said, “Does Machig Labdrön ever appear in any other forms?”

He looked at me and said, “Yes.” He didn’t say any more.

I went to bed that night and had a dream in which I was trying to get back to Swayambhu Hill in Nepal, where I’d lived as a nun, and I felt an incredible sense of urgency. I had to get back there and it wasn’t clear why; at the same time, there were all kinds of obstacles. A war was going on, and I struggled through many barriers to finally reach the hill, but the dream didn’t complete itself. I woke up still not knowing why I was trying to return.

The next night I had the same dream. It was slightly different, and the set of obstacles changed, but the urgency to get back to Swayambhu was just as strong. Then on the third night, I had the same dream again. It is really unusual to have the same dream again and again and again, and I finally realized that the dreams were trying to tell me I had to go back to Swayambhu; they were sending me a message. I spoke to my teacher about the dreams and asked, “Does this seem like maybe I should actually go there?”

He thought about it for a while; again, he simply answered, “Yes.”

I decided to return to Nepal, to Swayambhu, to find the stories of women teachers. It took several months of planning and arrangements, a key part being to seek out the biographies of the great female Buddhist teachers. I would use the trip to go back to the source and find those yogini stories and role models I so desperately needed. I went alone, leaving my children in the care of my husband and his parents. It was an emotional and difficult decision, since I had never been away from my children, but there was a deep calling within me that I had to honor and trust.

See also 7 Things I Learned About Women from Doing Yoga

Back in Nepal, I found myself walking up the very same staircase, one step after another, up the Swayambhu Hill, which I had first climbed in 1967. Now it was 1982, and I was the mother of three. When I emerged at the top, a dear friend of mine was there to greet me, Gyalwa, a monk I had known since my first visit. It was as though he was expecting me. I told him I was looking for the stories of women, and he said, “Oh, the life stories of dakinis. Okay, come back in a few days.”

And so I did. When I returned, I went into his room in the basement of the monastery, and he had a huge Tibetan book in front of him, which was the life story of Machig Labdrön, who’d founded the Chöd practice and had emerged to me as a wild, gray-haired dakini in my vision in California. What evolved out of that was research, and eventually the birth of my book Women of Wisdom, which tells my story and provides the translation of six biographies of Tibetan teachers who were embodiments of great dakinis. The book was my link to the dakinis, and it also showed me, from the tremendous response the book received, that there was a real need—a longing­—for the stories of great women teachers. It was a beautiful affirmation of the need for the sacred feminine.

Learn how to step into your feminine power.

Brooke Lark

Coming Out of the Dark

During the process of writing Women of Wisdom, I had to do research on the history of the feminine in Buddhism. What I discovered was that for the first thousand years in Buddhism, there were few representations of the sacred feminine, although there were women in the Buddhist sangha (community) as nuns and lay householder devotees, and the Buddha’s wife and the stepmother who raised him had a somewhat elevated status. But there were no female buddhas and no feminine principles, and certainly no dakinis. It was not until the traditional Mahayana Buddhist teachings joined with the Tantric teachings and developed into Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism in the eighth century, that we began to see the feminine emerge with a larger role.

See also Tantra Rising

Before we continue, I want to distinguish here between neo-Tantra and more traditional Tantric Buddhism. Most people these days who see the word Tantra think about neo-Tantra, which has developed in the West as a form of sacred sexuality derived from, but deviating significantly from, traditional Buddhist or Hindu Tantra. Neo-Tantra offers a view of sexuality that contrasts with the repressive attitude toward sexuality as nonspiritual and profane.

Buddhist Tantra, also known as Vajrayana (Indestructible Vehicle), is much more complex than neo-Tantra and embedded in meditation, deity yoga, and mandalas—it is yoga with an emphasis on the necessity of a spiritual teacher and transmission. I will use the words Tantra and Vajrayana interchangeably throughout this book. Tantra uses the creative act of visualization, sound, and hand gestures (mudras) to engage our whole being in the process of meditation. It is a practice of complete engagement and embodiment of our whole being. And within Buddhist Tantra, often sexuality is used as a meta-phor for the union of wisdom and skillful means. Although sexual practice methods exist, Buddhist Tantra is a rich and complex spiritual path with a long history, whereas neo-Tantra is an extraction from traditional Tantric sexual practices with some additions that have nothing to do with it. So here when I say Tantra or Vajrayana, I am referring not to neo-Tantra but to traditional Buddhist Tantra.

Tantric Buddhism arose in India during the Pala Empire, whose kings ruled India primarily between the eighth and eleventh centuries. Remember that Buddhism had already existed for more than a thousand years by this time, so Vajrayana was a late development in the history of Buddhism. The union of Buddhism and Tantra was considered to be in many ways the crown jewel of the Pala period.

Although the origins of Buddhist Tantra are still being debated by scholars, it seems that it arose out of very ancient pre-Aryan roots represented in Shaktism and Saivism combining with Mahayana Buddhism. Though there is still scholarly debate about the origins of Vajrayana, Tibetans say it was practiced and taught by the Buddha. If we look at the Pala period, we find a situation where the Buddhist monks have been going along for more than a thousand years, and they have become very intellectually astute, developing various schools of sophisticated philosophy, Buddhist universities, and a whole culture connected to Buddhism that is very strong and alive. But at this point the monks have also become involved with politics, and have begun to own land and animals and to receive jewels and other riches as gifts from wealthy patrons. They also have become rather isolated from the lay community, living a sort of elite, intellectual, and rather exclusive existence.

The Tantric revolution—and it was a revolution in the sense that it was a major turning point—took place within that context. When the Tantric teachings joined Buddhism, we see the entrance of the lay community, people who were working in the everyday world, doing ordinary jobs and raising children. They might come from any walk of life: jewelers, farmers, shopkeepers, royalty, cobblers, blacksmiths, wood gatherers, to name a few. They worked in various kinds of occupations, including housewives. They were not monks who had isolated themselves from worldly life, and their spiritual practice reflected their experiences. There are many early tales, called the Siddha Stories, of people who lived and worked in ordinary situations, and who by turning their life experiences into a spiritual practice achieved enlightenment.

See also Tantric Breathing Practice to Merge Shiva and Shakti and Achieve Oneness

There are also some stories of enlightened women practitioners and teachers in early Buddhism. We see a blossoming of women gurus, and also the presence of female Buddhas and, of course, the dakinis. In many stories, these women taught the intellectual monks in a very direct, juicy way by uniting spirituality with sexuality; they taught based on using, rather than renouncing, the senses. Their teachings took the learned monks out of the monastery into real life with all its rawness, which is why several of the Tantric stories begin with a monk in a monastic university who has a visitation from a woman that drives him out in search of something beyond the monastic walls.

Tantric Buddhism has a genre of literature called “praise of women,” in which the virtues of women are extolled. From the Candamaharosana Tantra: “When one speaks of the virtues of women, they surpass those of all living beings. Wherever one finds tenderness or protectiveness, it is in the minds of women. They provide sustenance to friends and strangers alike. A woman who is like that is as glorious as Vajrayogini herself.”

There is no precedent for this in Buddhist literature, but in Buddhist Tantric texts, writings urge respect for women, and stories about the negative results of failing to recognize the spiritual qualities of women are present. And in fact, in Buddhist Tantra, the fourteenth root of downfall is the failure to recognize all women as the embodiment of wisdom.

In the Tantric period, there was a movement abolishing barriers to women’s participation and progress on the spiritual path, offering a vital alternative to the monastic universities and ascetic traditions. In this movement, one finds women of all castes, from queens and princesses to outcasts, artisans, winemakers, pig herders, courtesans, and housewives.

For us today, this is important as we are looking for female models of spirituality that integrate and empower women, because most of us will not pursue a monastic life, yet many of us have deep spiritual longings. Previously excluded from teaching men or holding positions of leadership, women—for whom it was even questioned whether they could reach enlightenment—were now pioneering, teaching, and assuming leadership roles, shaping and inspiring a revolutionary movement. There were no institutional barriers preventing women from excelling in this tradition. There was no religious law or priestly caste defining their participation.

See also Tap the Power of Tantra: A Sequence for Self-Trust

Dakini Symbols

Another important part of the Tantric practice is the use of symbols surrounding and being held by the deities. The first and probably most commonly associated symbol of the dakini is what’s called the trigug in Tibetan, the kartari in Sanskrit, and in English, “the hooked knife.” This is a crescent-shaped knife with a hook on the end of the blade and a handle that is ornamented with different symbols. It’s modeled from the Indian butcher’s knife and sometimes called a “chopper.” The hook on the end of the blade is called the “hook of compassion.” It’s the hook that pulls sentient beings out of the ocean of suffering. The blade cuts through self-clinging, and through the dualistic split into the great bliss. The cutting edge of the knife is representative of the cutting quality of wisdom, the wisdom that cuts through self-deception. To me it is a powerful symbol of the wise feminine, because I find that often women tend to hang on too long and not cut through what needs to be cut through. We may hang on to relationships that are unhealthy, instead of ending what needs to be ended. The hooked knife is held in the dakini’s raised right hand; she must grasp this power and be ready to strike. The blade is the shape of the crescent moon, and the time of the month associated with the dakini is ten days after the full moon, when the waning moon appears as a crescent at dawn; this is the twenty-fifth day of the lunar cycle and is called Dakini Day in the Tibetan calendar. When I come out early on those days and it is still dark, I look up and see the crescent moon; it always reminds me of the dakini’s knife.

The other thing about the dakinis is that they are dancing. So this is an expression when all bodily movements become the expression of enlightened mind. All activities express awakening. Dance is also an expression of inner ecstasy. The dakini has her right leg raised and her left leg extended. The raised right leg symbolizes absolute truth. The extended left leg rests on the ground, symbolizing the relative truth, the truth about being in the world, the conventional truth. She’s also naked, so what does that mean? She symbolizes naked awareness­—the unadorned truth, free from deception. And she is standing on a corpse, which symbolizes that she has overcome self-clinging; the corpse represents the ego. She has overcome her own ego.

The dakini also wears bone jewelry, gathered from the charnel-ground bones and carved into ornaments: She wears anklets, a belt like an apron around her waist, necklaces, armbands, and bracelets. Each one of these has various meanings, but the essential meaning of all the bone ornaments is to remind us of renunciation and impermanence. She’s going beyond convention; fear of death has become an ornament to wear. We think of jewels as gold or silver or something pretty, but she’s taken that which is considered repulsive and turned it into an ornament. This is the transformation of the obstructed patterns into wisdom, taking what we fear and expressing it as an ornament.

See also Decoding Sutra 2.16: Prevent Future Pain from Manifesting

The dakinis tend to push us through blockages. They appear during challenging, crucial moments when we might be stymied in our lives; perhaps we don’t know what to do next and we are in transition. Maybe an obstacle has arisen and we can’t figure out how to get around or get through—then the dakinis will guide us. If in some way we’re stuck, the dakinis will appear and open the way, push us through; sometimes the energy needs to be forceful, and that’s when the wrathful manifestation of a dakini appears. Another important aspect of the dakini’s feminine energy is how they cut through notions of pure and impure, clean and unclean, what you should do and shouldn’t do; they break open the shell of those conventional structures into an embrace of all life in which all experience is seen as sacred.

Practicing Tibetan Buddhism more deeply, I came to realize that the dakinis are the undomesticated female energies—spiritual and erotic, ecstatic and wise, playful and profound, fierce and peaceful—that are beyond the grasp of the conceptual mind. There is a place for our whole feminine being, in all its guises, to be present.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author

Lama Tsultrim Allione is the founder and resident teacher of Tara Mandala, a retreat center located outside of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. She is the best-selling author of Women of Wisdom and Feeding Your Demons. Recognized in Tibet as the reincarnation of a renowned eleventh-century Tibetan yogini, she is one of the only female lamas in the world today. Learn more at taramandala.org.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.

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[lachalatte]

A Firefly Shines on Summer

           The sun shines bright and through the glass of my class. It leads me to enjoy the beautiful panorama. The poppies which planted on the schoolyard of Westminster School were blooming. Surely it happened because this season was going in mid spring.

           “It was a bright, breezy day.” I muttered. Then, someone patted my shoulder. I turned to the source of sound. The pretty girl stands up in front of me.

           “Rick, do you want this marshmallows? Daddy brought me it and I can’t spend it all.” She said with her cute smile and handed me a packet of mashmallows.

           “Yep, thanks.” I replied. I take a marshmallow and continue my reverie.

           Oops, maybe I forget to introduce myself. Ok, my name is Richardo Carpenter, but some people call me Rick. A girl who gave me marshmallow was my stepsister, Lianne Kidy but I called her Lynn. Yeah, my daddy and my mommy had divorced when I was 5 years old and I prefer to stay with my daddy than my mommy. Actually, the problem was because of my mom’s dissatisfaction about my dad’s job which was about a technician who worked inside while my mom worked at the biggest company in London as secretary. Certainly my mom’s salary was more than my dad’s. So, she decided to leave us and married with another man. It made my dad’s broken heart. But he tried to move on and he fallen in love again with a widow who came from Wales and has one daughter. Finally, my dad got married with her. She becomes my stepmother and also her daughter becomes my stepsister. Precisely, Lynn is my older step sister because Lynn was 7 years old at that time. My stepmother really loves my dad. It doesn’t matter with my dad’s job because it’s usual for her. Because of she came from Wales, a country which the family life require for women work outside of the home and men stay at home, precisely she choose my dad as her husband. Anyway, my stepmother is a reporter. She had ever interviewed David Beckham, my favorite footballer.

           “Rick, this is your book. Thanks!” Lynn returned my notebook that she borrowed yesterday.

           Lynn is my classmate now. It’s not common because I’m younger than her. It happened because I had selected class acceleration so that’s why I could be Lynn’s classmate. Most of my friends said that I’m genius. Lynn often borrowed my notebook because something that I write on it is easy to understand. Furthermore, I can take care of Lynn anytime. So, I am in the 2nd grade of Senior High School at 15 years old and Lynn is 17 years old. It seems that Lynn loves me as her little brother and so do I because when I was with her several times ago, I understood about what’s the meaning of love. Yeah, I have found my love.

             The bell is ringing. The sounds startled me and woke me from my reverie. Now is 12.00 am and surely the break time is enough. Then, a guy who wears a shirt comes to my class. He is my teacher who teaches about chemistry. His name is Stephen Munkler, but I and also all students called him Mr. Steve. He is the youngest teacher in Westminster School. He is 22 years old. He is the best alumnus of the bachelor degree in University of Westminster and also alumnus of the master degree in University of Cambridge. He explains about the lesson. He occasionally smiles at Lynn and also me. Furthermore, Steve is our childhood friend. Our first meeting was in Sherwood Forest since 10 years ago. I and Lynn were playing darts at that time. When I threw a dart, it missed stuck in the tree. Steve took the dart for us and we introduced ourselves. Since then we make a friendship until now.

           “Rick, Mr. Steve asked me to answer the question. Can you help me?” My desk friend whispered to me.

           “What is the question?” I asked.

           “What is the name of (NH4)3PO4 ?” he continued. I whisper my answer to him.

“Ammonium Phosphate, Sir!” He answered the question loudly.

“Exactly! Your answer is perfect, Rick!” Mr. Steve complimented me. I think he knew the person who has answered his question. I grin.

           Now, it’s time for lunch. I choose legumes and afternoon tea for my lunch. I spend my lunch time at the canteen. Suddenly, a guy comes to me.

           “Do my homework now!” He shouted me. He puts some books on my desk.

           “I don’t have time for doing your homework. Sorry, I can’t.” I replied and bring my food and beverage to another table.

           But, the guy prevents me to go and then he hits me until I can’t move. He will hit me again but Lynn comes to me. As I thought, Lynn was hit by him and she falls on the floor. Then, Mr. Steve and The Principal of Westminster School come to us. The principal punished the mischievous guy. Meanwhile, Mr. Steve and I accompany Lynn to health room.

           “Take care of Lynn.” He said to me.

           “Sure.” I promised.

Then, he leaves us. I treat Lynn’s cheek which full of bruises, and so she does.

“What a nice guy he is!” Lynn said enthusiastically.

“I think so.” I replied.

“Yeah, that’s the reason why I crazy about him since we met at the Sherwood Forest. I think I really loved him. Kyaaa...” She said.

“W-what?” I gave response to her statement. I’m shocked. I didn’t expect!

“Ugh, I let the chance slip, unfortunately. Don’t tell to the others, Rick! Keep the secret, please!” Lynn begged me.

I nod and agree to keep Lynn’s secret. I don’t know why my heart’s broken. It’s hurt me a lot! How about Steve? Does he love Lynn likes she loves him too? I couldn’t think clearly. I can’t imagine about it. My brain was controlled by this pain.

Recently, I am lost an idea to make something that I must do. This morning, my dad comes to my room with a smile.

“Congratulation, Rick! You are choosen to participate in a student exchange to Indonesia this summer.” He said enthusiastically.

“What? How can it happened?” I’m confused. But actually I’m happy to hear that.

“Mr. Steve recommended you to the principal and then he approved it.” Lynn who came behind of the door explained about how can it happened.

“We will have a party to celebrate this good news. What do you think, Rick?” My stepmother suggested.

“I think it isn’t necessary. But thanks for think about it.” I replied with a smile.

“Oh, what happened with you Rick? Do you have some problems? We will help you to solve it together.” My stepmother calmed me.

“No problem. I’m just tired.” I lied.

“Just take a rest!” They said. Then, they leave me alone in my room.

“Hm... maybe if I take the choice to participate in a student exchange, it helps me to make my pain disappear.” I thought.

The end of spring is coming. I feel the different atmosphere in this night. Tomorrow, I must go to the airport to flights to Indonesia. Therefore, I want spend this end of season in England. I go to Sherwood Forest, the place where I express my feelings. I want to tell what I feel now. I don’t know to whom I want to tell, maybe the atmosphere understand what I feel.

I stand up under the tree which was surrounded by the fireflies. The fireflies shine bright like a diamond and fly to me. I catch one of them and then release it.

“Hey, do you know the place where the fireflies cry? They’re somewhere in the branches of this darkening forest. It seems you assumed that I’m your little brother. Even if I’m the only one daydreaming about you, you wouldn’t hear it. It’s a sad story, isn’t it?” I shouted.

           I see the darts plastered on the trunk of tree. I take it and threw the dart. I missed it but I do it reapetedly. My eyes looking straight for a darts.

           “Before the season finishes, I will go and fly somewhere. Just you being here beside me is painful. It’s a fleeting love.” I continued my words loudly.

           I’ve lost my way, the forest of my heart. I wonder, at least turn your face this way. But, I just can’t tell you about it because...

           “Hi, Bro! What are you doing here?” Someone’s voice really startled me. I turned to the source of sound. Oh, he is Steve!

           “Ah, Sir. I just want to play for a several times here.” I answered. It’s just an alibi.

           “Oh. You want to say goodbye to this place, right?” He guessed.

           “Exactly. It gets quiets if I’m not here. I’ve heard a thing said. The fireflies... the distant sky... But, tomorrow that you always think is lonely will be different to today. Isn’t it?” I guessed about what does he think about.

           “Hahaha... Yes, of course I and also Lynn will be lonely in this forest without you.” Steve justified.

           “Stop! Don’t talk about Lynn!” I thought. However, I just wry smile to hear that.

           “Err... about Lynn... Umm... I just want you to know that I love her.” He said.

           His words totally startled me. I just wanted you to discover a small thing, an unrequited love, I thought. But my hopes were disappeared since he told that he loves another one.  Steve and Lynn love each other but they don’t realize it and I accidentally break their relationship.

           “But I can’t tell her because I think she was falling in love with another guy.” He continued his words.

           “No! You’re wrong! Lynn really loves you too, Steve!” I thought. But I can’t throw my voice because I don’t know what I want to say. Afterwards, I hear the cicada’s voice and it helps me to say something.

           “A firefly which can’t throw the voice is more pathetic than a cicada. And you look like the firefly, Sir.” I said without looking at him.

           “What does it mean?” He asked.

           “It means that if the fireflies fall in love, then they will be silent because they can’t do anything. It’s different from the cicadas. They can tell their feelings to their love because they can threw their voice.” I tried to give a quote for him.

           “You must tell Lynn about it, I mean. I’m sure that she loves you too.” I suggested.

           Then, I decide to go home because I must prepare some things that I want to bring for tomorrow. Steve doesn’t know that his words hurt me a lot. And yeah, actually my feelings are different from my words. I’m a coward with the affection defense.

           1 month later...

           I study in Indonesia and now I’m spending my holiday in a small island in Indonesia. I really enjoy the summer. My handphone is rang. I got one e-mail from Lynn.

           I and Steve are spending our holiday in Wales. Enjoy your holiday in Indonesia, Rick! I read the email and see the picture that she sent for me.

           I guess that they go to Snowdonia National Park, the biggest park in Wales. They make a special relationship since 3 weeks ago and I was happy to hear that good news. I’m smile, not a fake smile. I swear! I don’t know when the pain was disappear. Yeah, my love for Steve, a forbidden love, was disappear. 

            I’m so happy to spend my holiday here. This is because I can move on from my heartbreak. It just like a firefly which shines bright and fly away on summer. I feel free without my love. Yeah, maybe love is never quick enough and I’m incomplete in the middle. But I’m sure that I’ll be born anew with another love. 

[davidjjohnston3]

- [leaving afghanistan / babylon / republiqua americana / my brother's former kind or X-type / michael byungju kim] 

All I have are novel-ideas.  I don't finish anything anymore.  I only ever finished "Hot Pursuit" but the ending was like "All That Is."  A new faith.  They decided to stay married to their spouses like in "South of the Border West of the Sun."  I remember Professor Coiro at Rutgers whose friend had a wedding ceremony where they quoted "Paradise Lost" - "with wandering steps."  Like getting married is the same as being exiled from Eden?  The first marriage occurred within Eden.  We read "Rain" by Billy Collins which I can't even find on the internet anymore.  When you start saying you're a Christian or you care about young people they want to run you to death.  Teachers burn out all the time.  The point is that the selfless will discover God's plan for themselves but I never had thought problem; I understand that being generous is selfish.  Other people have a slave-mentality - in past I thought... I understood women... Executing understandings is tiring... I feel like the Grand Inquisitor... Can you go to Heaven if you have ideas of Heaven on Earth?  

- What is the poor in spirit?- I don't know.  I thought it was people who talked with their hands.  People who would give up authority - no.  But people who looked forward to things.  Have you seen "A Millionaire's First Love?"  People to whom 5 dollars... It is technically people who realize their dependency on God.  I reflected that in this age Christianity attracts people as it's intellectually satisfying whereas in the past people wanted emotional or physical comfort or consolation; many Christians still think people need to be soothed but if anything the problem with America today is everything is soothing from fentanyl to comfort-animals to videogames to Jordan B. Peterson's tone of voice.  But only Christianity can put it all together and only a few people have, Tim Keller, John Piper.  "Blue" - intelligent relation.  I got taken to task on 4chan for comparing Minju from IZ*ONE to the planet Solaris a super-sentient being that evolved towards generalization or what I would call "neo-foundation" or "distality."  Some lesbians think they're telepathic but the manifestation of language-invention / -neogenesis as well as actual awareness shared across super-vast distances is undeniable.  Houellebecq wrote about this but I cannot recommend you read him either unless you want to learn how to contemn women and smash them and see how stupid and weak and needy and desperate they are.  I waged a private war against everyone.  Even if I limited my means or freedom of action.

It seemed as though at Cafe Centraal they were always talking about blockchain / cybersecurity but it was pozzed to be in Milwaukee at all.  There were always real and unreal objects in a certain kind of human mind but when the real objects were meals or drinks they always disappeared.   When the present always became the past - when action became history or record only - then the future could tend to subside as well.  

- This was why I wanted to be pure as well.  Those who are pure... but I reflected that the ones who want to have something or be something are those who live in the future, or those who dream something at least.  

Thinking about cultivating a woman - “nurturing” - as though and all along his whole and main and only problem had been that he’d imagined his future wife to be “established, super-girl-woman” and as though he’d only have to dote on his daughter and carefully train his son, while she was doing yoga in the home-office or training her upper shoulder-muscles and neck-line(?).

Maybe he had seen a movie when he was extremely young, or it was in the air, this “heroine spirit” or it might have been the Protestant - Methodist, Episcopalian - churches.

He remembered writing a letter to _ _ _ at UWM with the hips, the flats.  She was not his type but he was her type.  They approached him at BN, “What are you reading, what’s it about.”  Vulgarly he was like “Slick” from Sinfest; precisely, as tohugh to say, “He looked on her with the Robin Williams-esque love of a man who is not quite 6′0 looking on a woman who wants for a man to be 6′0 and is sometimes sad she is 5′7 and sometimes not.”  It was the last time that he had felt any kind of spiritual(?) lust and after that he only wanted satisfaction or to get married someday, say, after cherishing a woman for a long time or if and/or only if corrollary to establishing a career.  

Clear water by a grassy precipice.  Ducks gather, rabbits.  Sometimes people would sit.

A mistake not to bear his Cross of Lorraine to the end - because he was dealing with dangerous idiots.  

“What should I write, what should I do, la la la fuck me, why am I asking you.  Aye elbereth gilthoniel, aniron, don’t cross that bridge, don’t answer that question, intent insidious.”

“What would you do if you caught a fish today?”

“Teach it to fish,”

“Should I laugh at that?”

“For years I grew my hair really long because it is shameful for a man to have long hair,”

The problem with Milwaukee Babylon was everything was policed, and privacy itself was a spectacle.  

In America once you began to talk of “soul” or “inner life.”  “Fuck me or praise God, in actual fact fuck God and praise me, they should make a TV series!”

Everyone in the mental hospital was talking about Seinfeld; they were talking about “cunts unite poetry.”  

The water glistened and glistered.  He remembered reading “Butterfield” or was it “Appointment in Gomorra” and Jessica Jung in black silk, inner thigh where the girl stabbed herself, that muscle that hurt when you skated, Eternity, also Meaning, or more like Gravity / cathexis / destiny.

It was all imprecise.  The point was people were linked but not always nailed together or handcuffed; nor did they know everything about each other.

“I was driving around Madison and listening to ‘Waiting for the Siren’s Call.’  I don’t know why in retrospect I tried to cheer myself up about the whole world when I could’ve kept in hot pursuit of one white home, so to speak.  Then I read ‘Sentimental Education’ as a challenge to myself and after that I didn’t care about challenging literature because blessed are the poor in spirit even when they spy on all reality in spring trenchies and silver dresses.  I didn’t see the point in being epic when I felt that little people, other than Obama, would rule the world.  I should’ve borne in mind that Biden’s Irish-French, is he not?  I should’ve realized that when I set out to amuse myself like ‘get Asian girlfriend ignore frat-party’ or ‘studying sub-Arctic country on tropical island paradise’ it’s not really self-mockery and God is also a comedian to an extent though Man’s existence tragic.  Have you ever seen ‘The Place Promised in our Early Days?’  In past the Midwest fielded Heaven summers and lunular autumns.  The teenagers would all unite around braziers - seniors I imagined.  But when Sayuri is just soaking up love I guess - it’s not the same as old people in sun, a memory of warmth or blessing like an Ozu film with old people on park benches, ‘ii-no.’  Young people dream on beaches.  In Ocean Grove I dreamed of Russia, St. Basel’s.  The rest is between me and God but I reflect now that my first love in a way was ‘not even Stegner’ but Herriott, things bright and beautiful, Creation, or the healing of sick Creatino which is Redemption but rather pre-Redemption which is the physician, but why be the physician when you can be the Lion of Judah or the Paraclete, and in a world so desperate for any kind of grandeur?”

[memorylang]

The Driven New Year | #49 | January 2021

I’d been waiting to share this new story till I got the news. I felt so delighted that day that, on my walk home from the DMV (since I’d borrowed another’s sedan to take my road test), I went live on Facebook to share. I’d spent much of January mentally and physically training for that, which I prayed would be my final road test. I felt magnificently relieved as I thanked God and friends that I’d passed at last. In today’s blog story, I recount the road to my driver’s licensure and adventures preceding it! 

From New Year’s Day 

I’d last written to you from Reno, where I’d rung in the New Year among a small gathering of friends, old and new. That Week 44 (Jan. 1–7), I resumed writing my book memoir chapters, seeking to complete a selection before the month’s end. Because, prior, my father had brought from Vegas to Reno the treadmill that I had been using last summer, now during mornings I’d ascend the treadmill once more. 

I concluded the week by relearning with help from YouTube how to sew, by mending an old blue flannel that I’d damaged, by starting to watch Pixar’s “Soul” through Disney+ with my sister, her caring boyfriend and our friend and then by joining Dad on the road back to Vegas. 

Upon returning to Vegas, I reunited our other sister and met her boyfriend for the first time. He knew witty things about franchises that I enjoyed and was fun to talk to. That Week 45 (Jan. 8–15), I pushed through to finish writing the memoir chapter trilogy I’d resumed in Reno, continued in the Blue Lions story on my sister’s copy of “Fire Emblem: Three Houses,” trimmed more fronds from the palm trees and began a massive clean-up project of the bedroom that had become mine. 

Filipina Adventures

That Friday, Jan. 15, my sister and her boyfriend took off, but she’d said that she’d return before her birthday, Jan. 25. That day, Dad had also visited from Reno. So that evening, he and I visited my stepfamily’s house, to help. 

At my stepfamily’s, we wheeled an old fridge from the back porch to the front to be taken and replaced. We also picked a great deal of calamondin from Tita’s tree after dark, which reminded me of childhood memories picking produce in our backyard garden while living in Indiana. Tita and my stepsisters would ask if we were coming in, but Dad would still have me out there working with him. 

That evening, I also got to meet my baby step-nephew! He was just over a month old, so he was perhaps the youngest infant I’d met since my youngest brother (born in 2OOI). I enjoyed talking to his parents, who’d told me about their past month in transition. 

Saturday night, I had a check-in call with an old friend from high school with whom I’d grown close through our experiences as community service-loving Nevada honors undergraduates. She too is Filipina and liked how I’ve really started to embrace the culture since meeting my stepmom. My friend also answered some cultural questions for me, clarifying names like “calamansi” for the tiny citruses that Papa and I had picked from Tita’s fruit tree and the name “pandesal” for the tasty cream-filled “Filipino rolls” that Tita had bought me. I didn’t know that my friend was actually born in the Philippines, but we admitted that the topic hadn’t come up before. Turns out that my friend had even studied Latin in high school because hers had a specialty for classics. I love how checking in with ol’ friends reveals to me how much I’ve grown, too.

“New World, New You�� Challenge

Thursday, Jan. 21, the morning after Inauguration, kicked off a new virtual adventure. One random YouTube moment, I’d noticed an ad that Tony Robbins would be hosting live online trainings. At that time, I was feeling a post-holiday motivation slump. So, I hopped into TR’s Facebook group and introduced myself, my challenges and my goals. I felt amazed by his international audience. 

For those five days, I’d committed to tuning in every morning at 11 a.m. for motivational talks in light of both the pandemic and new year. I felt surprised to find that in those course of those days, I’d go on Facebook Live my first time and many times more. Folks were right. I needed to break through hold-ups to embrace capabilities. I remembered the importance of habits. 

Among the topics of a talk, we discussed the importance of different kinds of inner perspectives, nicknamed, the “Warrior,” “Magician,” “Lover” and “Sovereign.” These reminded me of a technique I’d learned years ago in interpersonal group therapy, about imagining ourselves as multiple selves instead of one. I liked these, because in life sometimes we need to put on our “grrr” face but other times ought to have more fun, can experience full gratitude and can look at the bigger picture. In this sense, I remembered the phases of water analogy that I’d heard in Mongolia, fall 2OI9. 

Road Back to Driving

Amid the “New World, New You” Challenge, I’d also had my first driving lesson with a training school. Prior to that Sunday, I’d only driven once lately, with my sister, around the Vegas neighborhood. Prior to that, I hadn’t driven for nearly two years, since spring 2OI9, before I’d graduated college. 

Having failed my road test in Reno nearly half a dozen times between 2OI7 and 2OI8, I hadn’t felt the most confident in my abilities to pass. I’d gotten and renewed permits throughout my undergrad. I’d trained with friend after friend and with siblings, too. 

That said, many people had told me that Reno’s streets were narrower and its tests from the Reno-Galletti DMV were harder than those in Carson City and in Vegas. I’d also been practicing on trucks, so people had suggested that I try smaller vehicles. All my siblings had passed in Vegas, after all. 

With so many failures, I wondered if I felt residual challenges from knowing that Mom had failed her road test multiple times... and that a careless driver had killed my mother. I wonder whether my failures related to how I identify with Mom. That 2OI7 in China had made me feel in some moments as though I was retracing her steps. My faults resembled her faults. But I am not her. 

Furthermore, my concerns for the environment didn’t motivate me much to drive when I knew that doing so contributes more to carbon emissions. My overabundance of caution on the road seemed to compound in hesitancy at the wheel. Still, learning to drive is part of life. 

Ultimately, since my plan was to be in Mongolia from 2OI9 to 2O2I then in China from 2O2I to 2O24, getting a U.S. license hadn’t persisted as a key need—till the pandemic returned me to America. 

Another Approach

Back in Reno, spring 2OI9, after I’d failed my test for the fourth or fifth time, the lady behind the desk recommended me for driving school. I felt ashamed. None of my siblings had to go to driving school. I hadn’t heard of anybody who did. 

A year and a half later, at Thanksgiving with my stepfamily, my stepmom had mentioned that at least one of her daughters had attended driving school to get licensed. Later, my LA sister had mentioned that some of her friends did driving schools, too. So, I felt less worried about trying it.

And though I’d worried a bit about the cost, my youngest sister had pointed out that by going through the driving school, I wouldn’t need to drive nearly as many hours as she and our siblings had driven prior to their taking their road tests. So, I foot the bill, taking solace that I was at least contributing to the economy. 

As added plusses, if I figure this out how to get this license, then I wouldn’t have to renew my permit every year. My youngest brother also mentioned that in the coming years self-driving cars will be mainstream enough that I might not have to drive much, anyway. So this was a mere trial of adulthood, then. 

After having passed in December my written test to renew my permit, I readied for the road. On the Friday, Jan. 8, 2O2I, that I returned to Vegas from Reno, I followed up with a driving school that Tita had recommended. The school scheduled me for the month’s end. 

First Lesson

Sun., Jan. 24 came my first lesson. The instructor had arrived at my house’s driveway in a white sedan that had tags identifying it as a student vehicle. As soon as he got out and greeted me, he had me sit in the unfamiliar vehicle going through the motions that a tester would expect. If I’d any moment’s hesitation, the instructor clarified and, regarding safety, admonished. 

As I hit the road, the instructor commented on my mistakes and offered strategies to key details. He assured me that many of my issues would vanish as I get used to my vehicle. Unfortunately, I’d always been driving different cars, he explained. That’s why I don’t know things instinctively. But when I have my own car someday, he spoke with certainty, then I’d understand these well. 

I think of my driving instructor as a coach. He gives me very clear advice and answers all my questions. I love instructors who don't tire from my questions.

When I asked about the rules for how our hands must always be on the wheel, he described that I am driving a machine that is capable of killing. This is, in fact my view of cars, too. He'd later describe how if I'm rear-ended, then having only one hand on the wheel could cause me to swerve and potentially kill someone. I decide to withhold that my mother was killed by an inattentive driver.

Since I’d take my test in under two weeks, the instructor suggested that we practice more together. Although he usually has a couple days off per week, the COVID situation has had him working overtime. So he invited me to reach out if I wanted to practice. Realizing how much I gained from our first two hours, I agreed to take him up on his offer. He recommended that I practice more with my sister, too, so I committed to that as well. 

Life in Transition

The next night, Mon., Jan. 25, was my LA sister’s birthday, so she and her roommate had come to Vegas that weekend. Later that week, they would return to LA, so I got in one more practice with my sister. She offered more pointers and said that I’d improved. 

Jan. 25 was also the end of TR’s “New World, New You” Challenge and the Catholic Feast Day commemorating the conversion of St. Paul, my confirmation saint. To honor the confluence of events, I concluded writing in journal that I’d been keeping since picking it up January 2OI9 in Taiwan and began writing in a journal that I’d received from my sister as a Christmas 2OI9 gift when I’d visited Vegas from Peace Corps service in Mongolia. 

After my sister and her friend returned to LA, Thurs., Jan. 28, I finished listening to the “Kafka on the Shore” (Murakami, 2OO5) audiobook while cutting more palm fronds and archiving my belongings from boxes to bins in our garage. I marked each day with stretches, morning walks and journaling my gratitude and goals. I felt committed to making 2O2I my year. 

Second Lesson 

Lesson 2 rolled around on the First of February. Having finished the audiobook to which I'd been listening since late last year, I decided to resume watching “Daredevil” Season 3, a Netflix series that I’d intermittently followed over the past five years. As a reward for continuing my morning walks and to get pumped to take on the day’s driving, I saw an episode right before leaving the house. 

By my second driving lesson, I felt more confident with what I knew and didn’t know. But this time, an unfamiliar white sedan sat at the curb. I waved my hand, and the driver stepped out, indeed my coach. The other vehicle was in the shop but would be ready before my test. 

This time we went straight to mirror adjustment. Before we hit the road, I asked about how many wheel rotations this vehicle would need for me to make a full turn. Coach stepped out to confirm the count for me as I turned the wheel. Then we hit the road.

As I drove more smoothly this time, Coach recounted fascinating stories from his life. Some tales reminded me of “Daredevil” episodes. He too came from a Catholic family, and the experiences that brought him from Texas to LA to Vegas were remarkable. By our final lesson, I’d insisted that he ought to record these someday, in writing or audio. 

As for my driving, whenever I had particular issues, Coach had stories. His decades of students have exposed him to plenty. He mentioned one who had driven perfectly during her lessons but had to take her test 17 times before she passed, because of her nerves. But I felt empowered realizing that no matter how many times I try, I too will pass. 

On to the End

On a morning walk between my driving lessons, I recalled a takeaway that I’d felt while seeing in November with my sister “The Guru” episode from “The Last Airbender.” The protagonist, called the Avatar, struggles to control or 'bend' fire, after having failed before. The guru thus tells him, “You will never find balance if you deny this part of your life. You are the Avatar and, therefore, you are a firebender.” I connected this to how in the U.S., driving in many parts of the nation for people of many income levels is a necessary part of life. I am a 21st-century American and, therefore, I am a driver. 

By my second lesson’s end, Coach said that I could probably pass my test just barely. I decided that I’d rather do more than pass, and I want to ensure that I pass. So, I continued with my lessons, feeling reaffirmed to build habits that will help me feel at peace in the most scenarios. Two lessons remained. 

At Last

The morning of road test, February 4, 2O2I, I’d coincidentally, after having read the Book of Psalms daily for nearly five months, reached Psalm 150, the final. I’d prayed too that morning a whole rosary, feeling called to it. And, I prayed for peace, gazing at the palms that I’d cut for so long. 

Three hours later, I got out of the car as my examiner, with his face shield and mask still on, read from his clipboard his notes from my test. He gave the uncomfortably familiar litany of points that I hadn’t noticed on the drive. As he gave my feedback, Coach walked up to hear how I did. 

I worried that my clarifying questions to my examiner would sound as though protesting. I didn’t want to sound defensive, instead wanting to understand clearly. People in the past had mistaken my clarifying questions as defensiveness. Plus, Coach had told me stories about former students who’d failed after protesting and accidentally pointing out areas where they should have lost points. Coach advised me before not to overthink things. 

The tester was quite serious about the points that he was making. He added that I was ‘lucky’ that other drivers on the road paused for me that they did. I wondered whether to lump luck under divine intervention. My tester noted that I still need more practice. But, barring these, he’s passed me with “high marks.” 

I gasped. 

I looked at the tester and back at my coach. Coach grinning, clarified with the instructor that I passed and congratulated me. Coach had commented, partially teasing me, that I’d received the same advice during our lessons. 

Since Coach was wearing gloves, I accepted his handshake over our usual fistbump. I offered to write a great review on Yelp if he could text me the link. Then we said farewell. I accompanied my examiner back inside the DMV and started texting people my news. 

At last, I’d earned my license.

Triumphant Return

Coach was already gone, since he’d had another appointment to keep on the other side of town. Rather than take an Uber home, I decided to walk. Perhaps I might be walking less in the future. I enjoyed time to reflect. 

On my walk back, along the roads on which I’d driven, I bought groceries at a local Smith’s and through Pokémon GO caught a Suicune. I’d recall a quote that a high school counselor once told me, “You know how to spell ‘freedom?’ C-A-R.” Despite this, I still prefer public transportation. 

I prefer sharing Earth’s resources and having a chance to feel as part of a community. When I’d come alone to Taiwan back in December 2OI8, riding the metro gave me some semblance of community. In the COVID-19 pandemic, I cherish community more than ever. Walking connects me to places, too. 

To My Future

My siblings were proud of me. Oldest Brother and his girlfriend came over and played Taboo with our sister and me. Papa reached out to warn me not to drive till he got me on the insurance, but he seemed proud of me, too. Tita and my stepfamily over our group chat encouraged me to drive Dad’s ‘classic’ truck that’s been sitting here. 

I felt craving celebratory pancakes with my sister, but she didn’t feel like cooking. So, the next morning, she took me to IHOP instead. I tried this crème brûlée flavor and had leftovers enough to last me three days! 

With February upon us, many holidays come. (If only the Chiefs had won last night’s Super Bowl!) Well, my next blog stories will cover more official holidays. 

Having secured my license, finished experiencing “Kafka on the Shore,” wrapped up much of the yard work and taken care of bringing my belongings into bins, I’ve in my first month completed many of my 2O2I goals. Now, I get to dream bigger. The best is yet to come. 

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me :)

[youmightfindyourself]

That woman Estelle,'" the note reads, "'is partly the reason why George Sharp and I are separated today.' Dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper, hotel bar, Wilmington RR, 9:45 a.m. August Monday morning."

Since the note is in my notebook, it presumably has some meaning to me. I study it for a long while. At first I have only the most general notion of what I was doing on an August Monday morning in the bar of the hotel across from the Pennsylvania Railroad station in Wilmington, Delaware (waiting for a train? missing one? 1960? 1961? why Wilmington?), but I do remember being there. The woman in the dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper had come down from her room for a beer, and the bartender had heard before the reason why George Sharp and she were separated today. "Sure," he said, and went on mopping the floor. "You told me." At the other end of the bar is a girl. She is talking, pointedly, not to the man beside her but to a cat lying in the triangle of sunlight cast through the open door. She is wearing a plaid silk dress from Peck & Peck, and the hem is coming down.

Here is what it is: the girl has been on the Eastern Shore, and now she is going back to the city, leaving the man beside her, and all she can see ahead are the viscous summer sidewalks and the 3 a.m. long-distance calls that will make her lie awake and then sleep drugged through all the steaming mornings left in August (1960? 1961?). Because she must go directly from the train to lunch in New York, she wishes that she had a safety pin for the hem of the plaid silk dress, and she also wishes that she could forget about the hem and the lunch and stay in the cool bar that smells of disinfectant and malt and make friends with the woman in the crepe-de-Chine wrapper. She is afflicted by a little self- pity, and she wants to compare Estelles. That is what that was all about.

Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts. She returned the tablet to me a few years ago; the first entry is an account of a woman who believed herself to be freezing to death in the Arctic night, only to find, when day broke, that she had stumbled onto the Sahara Desert, where she would die of the heat before lunch. I have no idea what turn of a five-year-old's mind could have prompted so insistently "ironic" and exotic a story, but it does reveal a certain predilection for the extreme which has dogged me into adult life; perhaps if I were analytically inclined I would find it a truer story than any I might have told about Donald Johnson's birthday party or the day my cousin Brenda put Kitty Litter in the aquarium.

So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which I sometimes envy but do not possess. At no point have I ever been able successfully to keep a diary; my approach to daily life ranges from the grossly negligent to the merely absent, and on those few occasions when I have tried dutifully to record a day's events, boredom has so overcome me that the results are mysterious at best. What is this business about "shopping, typing piece, dinner with E, depressed"? Shopping for what? Typing what piece? Who is E? Was this "E" depressed, or was I depressed? Who cares?

In fact I have abandoned altogether that kind of pointless entry; instead I tell what some would call lies. "That's simply not true," the members of my family frequently tell me when they come up against my memory of a shared event. "The party was not for you, the spider was not a black widow, it wasn't that way at all." Very likely they are right, for not only have I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters. The cracked crab that I recall having for lunch the day my father came home from Detroit in 1945 must certainly be embroidery, worked into the day's pattern to lend verisimilitude; I was ten years old and would not now remember the cracked crab. The day's events did not turn on cracked crab. And yet it is precisely that fictitious crab that makes me see the afternoon all over again, a home movie run all too often, the father bearing gifts, the child weeping, an exercise in family love and guilt. Or that is what it was to me. Similarly, perhaps it never did snow that August in Vermont; perhaps there never were flurries in the night wind, and maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as we pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did snow.

How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook. I sometimes delude myself about why I keep a notebook, imagine that some thrifty virtue derives from preserving everything observed. See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write - on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there: dialogue overheard in hotels and elevators and at the hat-check counter in Pavillon (one middle-aged man shows his hat check to another and says, "That's my old football number"); impressions of Bettina Aptheker and Benjamin Sonnenberg and Teddy ("Mr. Acapulco") Stauffer; careful aperçus about tennis bums and failed fashion models and Greek shipping heiresses, one of whom taught me a significant lesson (a lesson I could have learned from F. Scott Fitzgerald, but perhaps we all must meet the very rich for ourselves) by asking, when I arrived to interview her in her orchid-filled sitting room on the second day of a paralyzing New York blizzard, whether It was snowing outside.

I imagine, in other words, that the notebook is about other people. But of course it is not. I have no real business with what one stranger said to another at the hat-check, counter in Pavillon; in fact I suspect that the line "That's' my old football number" touched not my own imagination at all, but merely some memory of something once read, probably "The Eighty-Yard Run." Nor is my concern with a woman in a dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper in a Wilmington bar. My stake is always, of course, in the unmentioned girl in the plaid silk dress. Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.

It is a difficult point to admit. We are brought up in the ethic that others, any others, all others, are by definition more interesting than ourselves; taught to be diffident, just this side of self-effacing. ("You're the least important person in the room and don't forget it," Jessica Mitford's governess would hiss in her ear on the advent of any social occasion; I copied that into my notebook because it is only recently that I have been able to enter a room without hearing some such phrase in my inner ear.) Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast, dwell upon self, interrupt with memories of beach picnics and favorite Liberty lawn dresses and the rainbow trout in a creek near Colorado Springs. The rest of us are expected, rightly, to affect absorption in other people's favorite dresses, other people's trout.

And so we do. But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable "I." We are not talking here about the kind of notebook that is patently for public consumption, a structural conceit for binding together a series of graceful pensees; we are talking about something private, about bits of the mind's string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its maker.

And sometimes even the maker has difficulty with the meaning. There does not seem to be, for example, any point in my knowing for the rest of my life that, during 1964, 720 tons of soot fell on every square mile of New York City, yet there it is in my notebook, labeled "FACT". Nor do I really need to remember that Ambrose Bierce liked to spell Leland Stanford's name "£eland $tanford" or that "smart women almost always wear black in Cuba," a fashion hint without much potential for practical application. And does not the relevance of these notes seem marginal at best?:

In the basement museum of the Inyo County Courthouse in Independence, California, sign pinned to a mandarin coat: "This MANDARIN COAT was often worn by Mrs. Minnie S. Brooks when giving lectures on her TEAPOT COLLECTION."

Redhead getting out of car in front of Beverly Wilshire Hotel, chinchilla stole, Vuitton bags with tags reading:

MRS LOU FOX HOTEL SAHARA VEGAS

Well, perhaps not entirely marginal. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Minnie S. Brooks and her MANDARIN COAT pull me back into my own childhood, for although I never knew Mrs. Brooks and did not visit Inyo County until I was thirty, I grew up in just such a world, in houses cluttered with Indian relics and bits of gold ore and ambergris and the souvenirs my Aunt Mercy Farnsworth brought back from the Orient. It is a long way from that world to Mrs. Lou Fox's world, where we all live now, and is it not just as well to remember that? Might not Mrs. Minnie S. Brooks help me to remember what I am? Might not Mrs. Lou Fox help me to remember what I am not?

But sometimes the point is harder to discern. What exactly did I have in mind when I noted down that it cost the father of someone I know $650 a month to light the place on the Hudson in which he lived before the Crash? What use was I planning to make of this line by Jimmy Hoffa: "I may have my faults, but being wrong ain't one of them"? And although I think it interesting to know where the girls who travel with the Syndicate have their hair done when they find themselves on the West Coast, will I ever make suitable use of it? Might I not be better off just passing it on to John O'Hara? What is a recipe for sauerkraut doing in my notebook? What kind of magpie keeps this notebook? "He was born the night the Titanic went down." That seems a nice enough line, and I even recall who said it, but is it not really a better line in life than it could ever be in fiction?

But of course that is exactly it: not that I should ever use the line, but that I should remember the woman who said it and the afternoon I heard it. We were on her terrace by the sea, and we were finishing the wine left from lunch, trying to get what sun there was, a California winter sun. The woman whose husband was born the night the Titanic went down wanted to rent her house, wanted to go back to her children in Paris. I remember wishing that I could afford the house, which cost $1,000 a month. "Someday you will," she said lazily. "Someday it all comes." There in the sun on her terrace it seemed easy to believe in someday, but later I had a low-grade afternoon hangover and ran over a black snake on the way to the supermarket and was flooded with inexplicable fear when I heard the checkout clerk explaining to the man ahead of me why she was finally divorcing her husband. "He left me no choice," she said over and over as she the punched the register. "He has a little seven-month-old baby by her, he left me no choice." I would like to believe that my dread then was for the human condition, but of course it was for me, because I wanted a baby and did not then have one and because I wanted to own the house that cost $1,000 a month to rent and because I had a hangover.

It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one's self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing "How High the Moon" on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could even improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.

It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you. "So what's new in the whiskey business?" What could that possibly mean to you? To me it means a blonde in a Pucci bathing suit sitting with a couple of fat men by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Another man approaches, and they all regard one another in silence for a while. "So what's new in the whiskey business?" one of the fat men finally says by way of welcome, and the blonde stands up, arches one foot and dips it in the pool looking all the while at the cabana where Baby Pignatari is talking on the telephone. That is all there is to that, except that several years later I saw the blonde coming out of Saks Fifth Avenue in New York with her California complexion and a voluminous mink coat. In the harsh wind that day she looked old and irrevocably tired to me, and even the skins in the mink coat were not worked the way they were doing them that year, not the way she would have wanted them done, and there is the point of the story. For a while after that I did not like to look in the mirror, and my eyes would skim the newspapers and pick out only the deaths, the cancer victims, the premature coronaries, the suicides, and I stopped riding the Lexington Avenue IRT because I noticed for the first time that all the strangers I had seen for years - the man with the seeing-eye dog, the spinster who read the classified pages every day, the fat girl who always got off with me at Grand Central - looked older than they once had.

It all comes back. Even that recipe for sauerkraut: even that brings it back. I was on Fire Island when I first made that sauerkraut, and it was raining, and we drank a lot of bourbon and ate the sauerkraut and went to bed at ten, and I listened to the rain and the Atlantic and felt safe. I made the sauerkraut again last night and it did not make me feel any safer, but that is, as they say, another story.

[hellas-himself]

My ACOTAR review aka I can't believe I ever liked Tamlin.

I want to start this off by saying that I’ve read A Court of Thorns and Roses before. I read it close to the beginning of my journey in healing. Seeing a therapist and coming to learn that I have PTSD (in addition to depression and anxiety). I’m a survivor of abuse. I’ve been abused as a child, and as well as a teen and an adult. The very first time I read ACOTAR, I was completely crazy about Tamlin. I looked at him, how he behaved. At how Feyre responded to him and I saw LOVE. I laughed at his forced attempts to compliment her. I swooned and fell as Feyre did. I was Feyre. A Court of Wings and Ruin is coming to us soon, and the light of my life, Caitlin, asked if I would join her in rereading ACOTAR and ACOMAF (which I will begin tonight and also write a review for) with her. I was over the moon! Of course, I would. Caitlin brought me to this world of Fae, of love and passion, of feeling. Of PTSD (ACOMAF I cannot wait for you). Of learning to catch the warning signs, of learning what true love was. Caitlin, I would totally go Under the Mountain for you. The very first time I read ACOTAR and ACOMAF, I didn’t review them. I merely went on an emotional rant and left it at that. But this series is so important to me, especially as an abuse survivor, that I felt that when I read it again, I wanted to take notes. I wanted to write about what it made me feel. I wanted to have something real to show myself that I’ve learned. That I have come so far. And also, I wanted to give this series a review/better written rant that it deserved. I don’t do this usually, so I’m going in order from page one until the very last. Going by my notes. I won’t be jumbling things together. So, you’re getting my thoughts as I read the book, not the after thoughts. * The first thing I noticed while jumping back into the world of Prythian was that it was as if I had never read ACOMAF. The emotions were raw. And I spent a lot of it frustrated and angry. I looked at Feyre and saw the girl I used to be, and still sometimes feel that I am. I wanted to defend Feyre, protect her. Because no one else did. And that was something I related to and it broke my heart. I hated Papa Archeron from the get. I could not, as a parent, as a girl who grew up without a father, I could not fathom how selfish this man was. IS (but let that be discussed elsewhere). I noted how in the beginning, Feyre capitalized the F in father, how important this man was/is to her. How he played a role in her dream of marrying off her sisters and living alone with him, taking care of him, and being able to afford some paints. Feyre at the beginning of this book, and to the very end, was me. The girl I had been before I had Dany (my daughter). I continued to internally scream LET FEYRE PAINT. Let the girl live. And I noticed how quickly Feyre let go of the capitalized F once she came home and had to do everything for her father, for her sisters. I have multiple notes that are ONLY “I HATE PAPA ARCHERON”, “I CANNOT STAND HIM”, “WTF SIR”. Cutting wood, cooking, skinning the animals, buying households needs all fell to Feyre and it made me so angry. My heart did make leaps when I read her describe the dresser she shared with Nesta and Elain. Fire for Nesta, flowers for Elain and a night sky for Feyre. I do honestly believe this is foreshadowing to their futures, and I think it’s been discussed in depth what those theories are. For me, Nesta’s fire is not only to whom she’ll love (I cannot wait for ACOMAF to meet you again, you cocky bastard), but to who she is. What she is capable of. I hated Nesta the first time around. I resented her, I projected my resentment of people I know who made me feel the way Nesta made Feyre feel towards her. I mean, Nesta’s voice was Feyre’s inner voice of negativity!! Elain, sweet, sweet Elain. She’s not ignorant. She’s not quiet and docile. She has a green thumb and I do think it foreshadowed what we came to learn in ACOMAF. But I also felt in rereading the story, in regards to the dresser, that Elain would play a role in Feyre’s growth (which she did). And I also think, in the future, Elain is going to play a role in the rebirth of their world post-Hybern. The night sky for Feyre- COME ON. It was there from the start and this time around, I was giddy. Like how did we all miss this! And naturally, my ACOMAF knowing heart recoiled when Feyre is forced to go off into Prythian for killing a Fae male in wolf form (Andras, as we come to learn). “You go somewhere new- and you make a name for yourself.” -Papa Archeron, page 41 When I read this, I immediately thought of ACOMAF. Somewhere new, and the new names Feyre comes to obtain. So naturally, I was happy. Whether or not this is foreshadowing, it is to me. Literally, my notes on this were: VELARIS?????? CURSE-BREAKER???????? Lol honestly, just lol On page 45, Feyre is struggling with feeling smug at the thought of her family struggling without her (a thought I have felt more than I want to admit) and the agony of imagining her father suffering to beg for them. But worse than those things, was imagining what Nesta would do for Elain. This stood out to me because one, as someone who was responsible for others at the expense of myself, I completely understood Feyre. I smiled when she thought about them suffering without her, because I was there before and sometimes, still feel that way. I also knew the guilt she felt, something I still fight with. Her conflicting emotions mirrored mine at various points in my life. And it connected me further to her. And Nesta, well, I’ve come to understand her, too. And I love her. I’m not going to bother mentioning every detail of Tamlin and his poor attempts at making Feyre feel at home. However, I will mention how quickly Feyre went from calling him her captor to her savior (page 51). It made me remember how the person who had abused me had me confused as to what they were to me. And in that moment, I felt that this was what Feyre was dealing with. Tamlin manipulated her from the start. Yes, this is a take on Beauty and the Beast. Yes, the bargain between Tamlin and Feyre is a play on Belle’s bargain and the Beast to save her dad. But Tamlin didn’t become her abuser. From reading this again, he always was. From the moment Tamlin broke into her cottage and brought her to the Spring Court, he was manipulating her. On page 54, Tamlin mentions to Lucien that Feyre lived in a hovel- Yes, he is right. Yes, Feyre thinks he’s being an ass and making her feel bad for where she came from in comparison to his grand estate. But Tamlin knew she could hear him. This, to me, was one of his first attempts to show that he understood her. A way in. Tamlin, when telling Feyre about how he was taking care of her family, used that knowledge to threaten her to keep her from running. He also kept her bound to the chair with magic 😊 Feyre felt trapped. But also wondered if she could finally think for herself. Between the bargain with Tam and the thought of being freed of her family, Feyre is finally able to think about herself. This kind of freedom is scary to someone who has been so selfless and has had to ignore their own happiness and needs for the sakes of others. Feyre is too damn good for all of them, and that is probably the only thing I will ever agree on with her father. “Honestly, I’m impressed- and flattered you think I have that kind of sway with Tamlin.” -Lucien, page 85 I thought this was important because prior to rereading this, I still considered Tamlin and Lucien to be best buds. In this particular scene, Feyre wants to try to get Lucien to plead her case to Tam. So yeah, they’re friends… But Tam is a bad friend. The toxic friend we’ve all had at one point in life who scares us into staying. I’ve had my fair share of Tamlins- both platonic and romantic- and it is very hard to cut them loose. Lucien breaks my heart, and I was shocked reading this line because I thought he did have Tamlin’s ear like that. When Lucien tells her how he ‘got that scar’ (page 88), Feyre asks him if Tamlin was the one to do it. Feyre has seen enough of Tamlin’s “moods” to already imagine he would hurt his friend that way. The guy might not be human, he growls and bares his claws and talons when he’s mad- but human abusers do the same thing in their own way. And I couldn’t stop thinking about that… Not to mention how many years Lucien’s been living with Tam. My poor fox. On page 90, when the Bogge comes to Feyre and Lucien, Feyre tries to think of pleasant things. Hot bread and full bellies (my baby, I know that feel all too well), but the one that got me was “A starry, unclouded night sky, peaceful and glittering and endless”. THAT’S VELARIS. I mean, Come on. I got so excited- my notebook is actually an embarrassment. Now, at this point, I was reading in the car. I lost my pen. I was cramped in the back seat. So I don’t have notes from page 90 to 118. But here, I decided to open my phone and take notes that way. Why? Because Feyre tells Tam that she doesn’t trust him. He quickly gets all jealous and tries to bring up her time spent with Lucien and my baby says LUCIEN DOESN’T PRETEND TO BE ANYTHING BUT WHAT HE IS. Which is the truth. Even fearing Amarantha, Lucien is as open as he can be with Feyre. Yes, he wants her gone in the beginning, but he’s honest. Lucien is an asshole, and I love him. But to the point, Tamlin once again brings out the worst in Feyre’s already poor self-esteem, the way she thinks about herself. And it’s Nesta’s voice she hears in her head. I’m so glad she walked away from him. Lucien gives Feyre the instructions to go after the Suriel. Maybe he wanted her dead, maybe he really overestimated her. Or maybe, I think Lucien saw that Feyre could in fact succeed. I think he came to believe Feyre would break the curse, whereas Tamlin never did. Honestly. But to the point. We finally meet Suri and we get that line “…stay with the High Lord, and live to see everything righted.” Nothing in this line or in the ones prior, indicate the Suriel is speaking of Tamlin. None of it is romantic. So I do think the Suriel meant for her to stay with Tamlin to live long enough to get to where she really needed to be. AT RHYS’ SIDE. IN VELARIS. SAVING THE GODDAMN WORLD. After the business with the Suriel and the naga, Tamlin and Feyre talk it over at dinner. He gets so mad about what she’s done, he ends up cutting his own face. Dude’s reactions are just… I sat there already tired of him. “I’d start shouting, but I think today was punishment enough.” TAMLIN. I swear to God. (Pg. 142, btw) When they discuss her family, and he tells her that her family is foolish for not realizing how amazing she is (my words, not his but that’s the gist of what he’s saying)- he is not lying. But this is also part of his manipulation of her. And maybe, the worst part is, he meant it. The rest of my notes is me basically saying things in bold, most of which is I CANNOT BELIEVE I SHIPPED THIS TRASH. It kills me because they start to joke around with each other. Open up. You start to feel for him as Feyre does. When she laughs, you’re so happy. It’s such a conflicting situation. Feyre mentions her dreams on page 148. A pale, faceless woman with blood red nails splitting her open. I am going to say that this is her dreaming with Amarantha, because of her bond. I didn’t notice it the first time around. Any time a tiny clue about Rhys and the Night Court comes up, I am ecstatic. Even one so morbid as this. Between pages 148 and 183, I didn’t really care about Feyre and Tam getting close. I mean, yes, I love the world she finally can see once he takes the glamour off. And yes, I still was happy to see them all laughing together. Being this very unlikely trio. But what mattered the most to me was her relationship with Lucien. I never shipped them as a romance. But they are my first favorite BROTP of this series. I enjoy their banter. Their sarcasm. I suppose I’ll leave my BROTP goals for them for my ACOMAF review. Is there at Lucien and Feyre tag? On page 183, we have our first example of the actual bond. Feyre feels a string pulling her away from the manor. WE FINALLY MEET OUR FUCKING NIGHT TRIUMPHANT. MY HEART DID LEAPS IN MY CHEST. I WANTED TO SCREAM. “THERE YOU ARE. I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU.” YES BABY SO HAVE I. I was looking forward to falling in love with Rhys all over again and this was just the start. Insert fifty heart eyes emojis here. Let me preface this next random bit to say that Calanmai and its celebratory orgy would be cool had it not in essence been Tam’s night to assault some “willing” Fae female because “the magic takes over” and he has “no control”. No honey, that is not hot. It’s not sexy. The fact that Feyre felt like a disobedient child for “going against him” just tossed me back to when I was in an abusive relationship and that was how I felt. It’s not romantic. It’s not cute. Lucien and Tamlin both explain the Rite as assault. Tamlin says he does not need to be held accountable if Feyre won’t follow orders. This is such rapist mentality I seriously wanted to hit myself for ever finding the Fire Night scene between them sexy. And the insane part it, your abuser can still get you hot and heavy. They can play with your senses and it confuses you. This is why reading this again or even just reading ACOMAF after this is scary to see how blind we all were to this. I spent a lot of time in disbelief that I had ever found Tamlin’s treatment of her normal or attractive. It’s disgusting. Another thing about Tamlin that bothered me is that out of all her paintings, he wanted the one of her forest. “This was your life,” is what he says to her. The first time around, I thought this was such a sweet gesture, to want that of all the paintings. But it reminded me a lot of my exes. Wanting the most personal of my belongings for themselves. It just… bothered me. A lot. Lucien and Tam’s explanation of the Night Court just made me laugh. My ACOMAF loving heart just made this so funny because we all know what the Night Court really is about. Feyre is sent to her room after Rhys makes his appearance in the Spring Court. She makes many mentions of Tamlin’s rage. The roaring, the breaking of things. The fact that she didn’t think there would be a dining room left. This is such abusive bullshit. And once upon a time, I thought this behavior was normal. I hate that at this phase, Feyre still thinks herself a coward. Feyre is such a resilient, brave woman. But we’ll get to that. Tamlin fucking didn’t give Feyre a chance to tell him she loved him. Let’s get that out of the way. He was days away from breaking the curse, and he sends her away. And yes, I know this is going off how the Beast let Belle go home even though the curse was close to coming to an end, leaving him like a beast forever. But it still caused me frustration that this High Lord is a coward. And selfish. But then I suppose if not for that, Feyre would never have learned how truly goddamn strong she is. And how absolutely useless he is. She wouldn’t have seen the changes in herself and her sisters, or seen that Alis and Lucien- AND RHYS- had her back. I am so glad in a way that Feyre went back. She got to open up to her sisters. Nesta and Elain did not apologize, but we got to see how they felt. We finally got to see a glimpse of their side of things, which let me tell you, was sorely needed. Nesta stopped being the voice in Feyre’s head that spat nasty things at her. I love that Nesta was immune to Tamlin’s shit. It makes me wonder what kind of future she will have and what role she will play in ACOWAR. I love that her sisters helped her return to Tamlin, even if I can’t stand Tamlin, to save him. To save the world. It showed such a big change in them. The first time around, I thought it was so out of character, so fast. But reading it again, it was perfect. I still hate their dad. This is a lot of my notes during the chapters with Feyre back in the human realm. And now, the most frustrating of all. Under the Mountain. Feyre was willing to die for Tam. She makes note of this before Alis escorts her to the cave. She thinks it often. She ACTS on that thought. And he did nothing. First, let me get Alis and her rules out of the way. 1.Don’t drink the wine: Feyre drinks the wine Rhys gives her. 2.Don’t make deals with anyone unless your life depends on it: her life depended on it and she made a deal with Rhys. 3.Don’t trust a soul: She trusted Lucien and Rhys. Feyre says many times UtM that she stopped hoping for Tam. She trusted herself and her love for him. Not actually him. That really got me good this time around. Feyre got jumped before Tamlin and Amarantha. He didn’t even flinch. Lucien was deathly afraid of Amarantha. This is noted throughout ACOTAR. And yet, he defied her to help Feyre. He fixed her nose. He cried out to her during her trial with the Middengard Worm. He refused to say her name when Amarantha demanded it of him. Foxy boy would have died for her, okay? No one can tell me otherwise. And what did Tamlin do? NADA. Sure, he pleaded on Lucien’s behalf, and whipped him. But what did he really do? NOTHING. Rhys’ way of helping Feyre sucked. But UtM, what else could he have done without killing his people in the process? Without endangering Feyre further? He played his role and played it well. He saved her. Kept her sane. He was an ass, there is no denying it. But he helped her. He fought for her. And I know I’m getting ahead of myself. But we all know who apologized for their behavior. We all know who also LIVED UP TO THEIR APOLOGY. Anyway, it broke my heart that Feyre was afraid of Tamlin’s reaction to her tattoo, the symbol of her bargain with Rhys. She loved him and still was afraid of him. And I felt her pain, because I knew that fear all too well. She was dying and Rhys healed her. He made sure she ate well. He made sure no one touched her. No more insufferable chores. I don’t even want to imagine what Amarantha did to him for helping Feyre. I know this has been touched upon before, but do you know how much I love that Feyre stood practically naked before Amarantha but wore a crown on her head. She wore Rhys’ diadem, not even knowing what it meant. But Amarantha did. I love that Rhys bet on her. I love that he believed she would survive, just like Lucien did. He was bold in his help for her, in the best way he could, without revealing the true Rhysand to the world. Without endangering the City of Starlight and his loved ones. Lucien tells Feyre that Rhys having her dressed that way is to get a rise out of Tam. And Feyre asks if it worked. And it doesn’t work. Tamlin doesn’t act. Doesn’t react. And when he says that Tamlin is hiding his emotions from Amarantha, honestly, I don’t even think he believes that. Here is Lucien, sneaking in to bring her a cloak to stay warm. Such a small gesture, but still more than Tamlin does for her. Rhys comes to pay her a visit and starts to open up to her. Feyre feels his sadness. Another clue to their bond. I DIED. I had not noticed that the first time around! He also used their bond to help her survive the second trial, saving her and Lucien in the process. He guided her out of the room, helping her to stay strong until she got to her room. Rhys kept her together. Tam did nothing. I could say that thousands of times and I don’t think I could get tired of saying it. On page 370, she says the third trial will kill her. I laughed. Bitch, it did. On 373, she hears music. Even the first time I read this, I knew this music was not from anywhere we had been yet in the story. I didn’t understand, but it was so special. So important in bringing her back. It brought her to “...a palace in the sky, a hall of alabaster and moonstone, where all that was lovely and kind and fantastic dwelled in peace.” Then she says “Everything I wanted was there- the one I loved was there-“ Yes, the one I love is there too, babe. This was not the Spring Court. This is not Tamlin. This is the Night Court, the Inner Circle. This is Rhys and Feyre. And she didn’t know it. Then of course, we come to the night before her final trial. Tamlin finally gets some courage to approach her. To fuck. If I sighed any longer, my lungs will collapse. My eyes will roll out of my head. I can’t. I just can’t with this guy. From 381-385, Rhys and Feyre talk. She finds herself opening up to him, unable to stay quiet. She comes alive around him. And I think he came alive around her, too. So at last, the final trial. This was so emotionally taxing. So heart breaking. This task was abhorrent, and Amarantha is a fucking devil. And Feyre did it. She did it for Tamlin and his world. For Lucien. Alis and her boys. For her own world. As much as I can’t stand Tamlin, it still shocked me when he was revealed as the last Fae for Feyre to kill. Realizing the truth of the curse was so mind boggling. He had a heart of stone. This curse was so well done, it surprised me so much. I remembered laughing at the masks and then realizing why they were necessary. Feyre fulfilled every need to end that curse and Tamlin fucking let her go before she could say she loved him. And when she realized what the riddle meant, repeating it backwards to herself. Oh my god. I was left speechless. Just like the first time. And naturally, Amarantha was never going to let Feyre live. Tamlin watched while Rhys still kept fighting no matter what Amarantha did to him. Yes, Tam was hurt. But so was Rhys. When Feyre dies, and we see her through Rhys’ eyes, it was just… I couldn’t deal. I remember the first time around how wild this was, and I had to read it twice to understand that Rhys was part of her. She says that Tamlin looked at her, “at us”, meaning there was a piece of her in Rhys, too. It was just… too much. Feyre came back because Rhys moved the High Lords to save her. And she still felt undeserving. She is so amazing. So brave. So loyal. She deserves every good thing in the world. And on page 412, Rhys realizes that she’s his mate. INTERNAL SCREAMING. You know, after she follows the string that tethers them together. And then she goes home with Tamlin, still shoving all her pain down. And it’s like WHY BABE WHY. I didn’t second guess it the first time. But this time, I couldn’t ignore every time she mentioned dealing with it another time. My heart broke for her. * Reading this again was hard. And I honestly can’t wait to jump into ACOMAF. Feyre’s journey isn’t over, just like mine isn’t over either. I know this wasn’t the best review, but I’m glad I wrote this out. This series means the world to me. I know this wasn't the greatest and it looks nothing like how I wrote from my laptop to mobile Tumblr but. Whatever. It's out there. I feel better.

[chocolate-brownies]

How to Step Into Your Feminine Power with the Wisdom of the Dakinis

How to Step Into Your Feminine Power with the Wisdom of the Dakinis:

Lama Tsultrim Allione—one of the first American woman ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun— shares what she’s learned about love, life, and liberty while researching dakinis, or fierce female messengers of wisdom.

Read the stories of the Dakini—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism to tap into your feminine power.

When I was eleven, I ran home on the last day of school and tore off my dress, literally popping the buttons off, feeling simultaneously guilty and liberated. I put on an old, torn pair of cutoff jean shorts, a white T-shirt, and blue Keds sneakers, and ran with my sister into the woods behind our old colonial New Hampshire house. We went to play in the brook burbling down the steep hill over the mossy rocks, through the evergreens and deciduous trees, the water colored rich red-brown by the tannins in the leaves of the maple trees. We would play and catch foot-long white suckerfish with our hands, and then put them back because we didn’t want to kill them.

Sometimes we swam naked at night with friends at our summerhouse in the spring-fed lake 15 miles away, surrounded by pine, birch, spruce, and maple trees. I loved the feeling of the water caressing my skin like velvet, with the moon reflecting in the mirror-like lake. My sister and my friend Joanie and I would get on our ponies bareback and urge them into the lake until they were surging up and down with water rushing over our thighs and down the backs of the horses; they were swimming with us as we laughed, clinging onto their backs.

When violent summer thunderstorms blew through, instead of staying in the old wooden house I would run and dance outside in the rain and thunder, scaring my mother. I liked to eat with my fingers, gnawing on pork chop bones and gulping down big glasses of milk, in a hurry to get back outside. I loved gnawing on bones. My mother would shake her head, saying in desperation, “Oh, darling, please, please eat with your fork! Heavens alive, I’m raising a barbarian!”

See also This 7-Pose Home Practice Harnesses the Power of Touch

Barbarian, I thought, that sounds great! I imagined women with long hair streaming out behind them, racing their horses over wide plains. I saw streaked sunrises on crisp mornings with no school, bones to gnaw on. This wildness was so much a part of me; I could never imagine living a life that didn’t allow for it.

But then I was a wife and a mother raising two young daughters, and that wild young barbarian seemed lifetimes away. Paul and I had been married for three years when we decided to move from Vashon Island back to Boulder, Colorado, and join Trungpa Rinpoche’s community. It was wonderful to be in a big, active community with many young parents. However, the strain of the early years, our inexperience, and our own individual growth led us to decide to separate and collaborate as co-parents.

In 1978, I had been a single mother for several years when I met an Italian filmmaker, Costanzo Allione, who was directing a film on the Beat poets of Naropa University. He interviewed me because I was Allen Ginsberg’s meditation instructor, and Allen, whom I had met when I was a nun in 1972, introduced me to Costanzo. In the spring of 1979, we were married in Boulder while he was finishing his film, which was called Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds, and soon thereafter we moved to Italy. I got pregnant that summer while we were living in a trailer in an Italian campground on the ocean near Rome, and that fall we moved into a drafty summer villa in the Alban Hills near the town of Velletri.

When I was six months pregnant, my belly measured the size of a nine-months pregnant woman’s, so they did an ultrasound and discovered I was pregnant with twins. By this time I knew that my husband was a drug addict and unfaithful. I couldn’t speak the native language and felt completely isolated. In March of 1980, I gave birth to twins, Chiara and Costanzo; they were a little early, but each weighed over five pounds. I buckled down to nursing two babies, caring for my other two daughters, and dealing with my husband’s addiction, erratic mood swings, and physical abuse, which started during my pregnancy when he began to hit me.

My feelings of overwhelm and anxiety increased daily, and I began to wonder about how my life as a mother and a Western woman really connected with my Buddhist spirituality. How had things ended up like this? How had I lost that wild, independent girl and left my life as a nun, ending up in Italy with an abusive husband? It seemed that by choosing to disrobe, I had lost my path, and myself.

Then two months later, on June 1, 1980, I woke up from a night of broken sleep and stumbled into the room where Chiara and her brother Costanzo were sleeping. I nursed him first because he was crying, and then turned to her. She seemed very quiet. When I picked her up, I immediately knew: she felt stiff and light. I remembered the similar feeling from my childhood, picking up my small marmalade colored kitten that had been hit by a car and crawled under a bush to die. Around Chiara’s mouth and nose was purple bruising where blood had pooled; her eyes were closed, but her beautiful, soft amber hair was the same and she still smelled sweet. Her tiny body was there, but she was gone. Chiara had died of sudden infant death syndrome.

See also Relieve Anxiety with a Simple 30-Second Practice

The Buddhist stupa of Swayambhu in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

The Dakini Spirit

Following Chiara’s death came what I can only call a descent. I was filled with confusion, loss, and grief. Buffeted by raw, intense emotions, I felt more than ever that I desperately needed some female guidance. I needed to turn somewhere: to women’s stories, to women teachers, to anything that would guide me as a mother, living this life of motherhood—to connect me to my own experience as a woman and as a serious Buddhist practitioner on the path. I needed the stories of dakinis—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism. But I really didn’t know where to turn. I looked into all kinds of resources, but I couldn’t find my answers.

At some point in my search, the realization came to me: I have to find them myself. I have to find their stories. I needed to research the life stories of the Buddhist women of the past and see if I could discover some thread, some key that would help unlock the answers about the dakinis and guide me through this passage. If I could find the dakinis, I would find my spiritual role models—I could see how they did it. I could see how they made the connections between mother, wife, and woman … how they integrated spirituality with everyday life challenges.

About a year later, I was in California doing a retreat with my teacher, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, who was teaching a practice called Chöd that involved invoking the presence of one of the great female masters of Tibetan Buddhism, Machig Labdrön. And in this practice there is an invocation, in which you visualize her as a young, dancing, 16-year-old white dakini. So there I was doing this practice with him, and for some reason that night he kept repeating it. We must have done it for several hours. Then during the section of the practice where we invoked Machig Labdrön, I suddenly had the vision of another female form emerging out of the darkness.

See also 10 Best Women-Only Yoga Retreats Around the World

What I saw behind her was a cemetery from which she was emerging. She was old, with long, pendulous breasts that had fed many babies; golden skin; and gray hair that was streaming out. She was staring intensely at me, like an invitation and a challenge. At the same time, there was incredible compassion in her eyes. I was shocked because this woman wasn’t what I was supposed to be seeing. Yet there she was, approaching very close to me, her long hair flowing, and looking at me so intensely. Finally, at the end of this practice, I went up to my teacher and said, “Does Machig Labdrön ever appear in any other forms?”

He looked at me and said, “Yes.” He didn’t say any more.

I went to bed that night and had a dream in which I was trying to get back to Swayambhu Hill in Nepal, where I’d lived as a nun, and I felt an incredible sense of urgency. I had to get back there and it wasn’t clear why; at the same time, there were all kinds of obstacles. A war was going on, and I struggled through many barriers to finally reach the hill, but the dream didn’t complete itself. I woke up still not knowing why I was trying to return.

The next night I had the same dream. It was slightly different, and the set of obstacles changed, but the urgency to get back to Swayambhu was just as strong. Then on the third night, I had the same dream again. It is really unusual to have the same dream again and again and again, and I finally realized that the dreams were trying to tell me I had to go back to Swayambhu; they were sending me a message. I spoke to my teacher about the dreams and asked, “Does this seem like maybe I should actually go there?”

He thought about it for a while; again, he simply answered, “Yes.”

I decided to return to Nepal, to Swayambhu, to find the stories of women teachers. It took several months of planning and arrangements, a key part being to seek out the biographies of the great female Buddhist teachers. I would use the trip to go back to the source and find those yogini stories and role models I so desperately needed. I went alone, leaving my children in the care of my husband and his parents. It was an emotional and difficult decision, since I had never been away from my children, but there was a deep calling within me that I had to honor and trust.

See also 7 Things I Learned About Women from Doing Yoga

Back in Nepal, I found myself walking up the very same staircase, one step after another, up the Swayambhu Hill, which I had first climbed in 1967. Now it was 1982, and I was the mother of three. When I emerged at the top, a dear friend of mine was there to greet me, Gyalwa, a monk I had known since my first visit. It was as though he was expecting me. I told him I was looking for the stories of women, and he said, “Oh, the life stories of dakinis. Okay, come back in a few days.”

And so I did. When I returned, I went into his room in the basement of the monastery, and he had a huge Tibetan book in front of him, which was the life story of Machig Labdrön, who’d founded the Chöd practice and had emerged to me as a wild, gray-haired dakini in my vision in California. What evolved out of that was research, and eventually the birth of my book Women of Wisdom, which tells my story and provides the translation of six biographies of Tibetan teachers who were embodiments of great dakinis. The book was my link to the dakinis, and it also showed me, from the tremendous response the book received, that there was a real need—a longing­—for the stories of great women teachers. It was a beautiful affirmation of the need for the sacred feminine.

Learn how to step into your feminine power.

Coming Out of the Dark

During the process of writing Women of Wisdom, I had to do research on the history of the feminine in Buddhism. What I discovered was that for the first thousand years in Buddhism, there were few representations of the sacred feminine, although there were women in the Buddhist sangha (community) as nuns and lay householder devotees, and the Buddha’s wife and the stepmother who raised him had a somewhat elevated status. But there were no female buddhas and no feminine principles, and certainly no dakinis. It was not until the traditional Mahayana Buddhist teachings joined with the Tantric teachings and developed into Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism in the eighth century, that we began to see the feminine emerge with a larger role.

See also Tantra Rising

Before we continue, I want to distinguish here between neo-Tantra and more traditional Tantric Buddhism. Most people these days who see the word Tantra think about neo-Tantra, which has developed in the West as a form of sacred sexuality derived from, but deviating significantly from, traditional Buddhist or Hindu Tantra. Neo-Tantra offers a view of sexuality that contrasts with the repressive attitude toward sexuality as nonspiritual and profane.

Buddhist Tantra, also known as Vajrayana (Indestructible Vehicle), is much more complex than neo-Tantra and embedded in meditation, deity yoga, and mandalas—it is yoga with an emphasis on the necessity of a spiritual teacher and transmission. I will use the words Tantra and Vajrayana interchangeably throughout this book. Tantra uses the creative act of visualization, sound, and hand gestures (mudras) to engage our whole being in the process of meditation. It is a practice of complete engagement and embodiment of our whole being. And within Buddhist Tantra, often sexuality is used as a meta-phor for the union of wisdom and skillful means. Although sexual practice methods exist, Buddhist Tantra is a rich and complex spiritual path with a long history, whereas neo-Tantra is an extraction from traditional Tantric sexual practices with some additions that have nothing to do with it. So here when I say Tantra or Vajrayana, I am referring not to neo-Tantra but to traditional Buddhist Tantra.

Tantric Buddhism arose in India during the Pala Empire, whose kings ruled India primarily between the eighth and eleventh centuries. Remember that Buddhism had already existed for more than a thousand years by this time, so Vajrayana was a late development in the history of Buddhism. The union of Buddhism and Tantra was considered to be in many ways the crown jewel of the Pala period.

Although the origins of Buddhist Tantra are still being debated by scholars, it seems that it arose out of very ancient pre-Aryan roots represented in Shaktism and Saivism combining with Mahayana Buddhism. Though there is still scholarly debate about the origins of Vajrayana, Tibetans say it was practiced and taught by the Buddha. If we look at the Pala period, we find a situation where the Buddhist monks have been going along for more than a thousand years, and they have become very intellectually astute, developing various schools of sophisticated philosophy, Buddhist universities, and a whole culture connected to Buddhism that is very strong and alive. But at this point the monks have also become involved with politics, and have begun to own land and animals and to receive jewels and other riches as gifts from wealthy patrons. They also have become rather isolated from the lay community, living a sort of elite, intellectual, and rather exclusive existence.

The Tantric revolution—and it was a revolution in the sense that it was a major turning point—took place within that context. When the Tantric teachings joined Buddhism, we see the entrance of the lay community, people who were working in the everyday world, doing ordinary jobs and raising children. They might come from any walk of life: jewelers, farmers, shopkeepers, royalty, cobblers, blacksmiths, wood gatherers, to name a few. They worked in various kinds of occupations, including housewives. They were not monks who had isolated themselves from worldly life, and their spiritual practice reflected their experiences. There are many early tales, called the Siddha Stories, of people who lived and worked in ordinary situations, and who by turning their life experiences into a spiritual practice achieved enlightenment.

See also Tantric Breathing Practice to Merge Shiva and Shakti and Achieve Oneness

There are also some stories of enlightened women practitioners and teachers in early Buddhism. We see a blossoming of women gurus, and also the presence of female Buddhas and, of course, the dakinis. In many stories, these women taught the intellectual monks in a very direct, juicy way by uniting spirituality with sexuality; they taught based on using, rather than renouncing, the senses. Their teachings took the learned monks out of the monastery into real life with all its rawness, which is why several of the Tantric stories begin with a monk in a monastic university who has a visitation from a woman that drives him out in search of something beyond the monastic walls.

Tantric Buddhism has a genre of literature called “praise of women,” in which the virtues of women are extolled. From the Candamaharosana Tantra: “When one speaks of the virtues of women, they surpass those of all living beings. Wherever one finds tenderness or protectiveness, it is in the minds of women. They provide sustenance to friends and strangers alike. A woman who is like that is as glorious as Vajrayogini herself.”

There is no precedent for this in Buddhist literature, but in Buddhist Tantric texts, writings urge respect for women, and stories about the negative results of failing to recognize the spiritual qualities of women are present. And in fact, in Buddhist Tantra, the fourteenth root of downfall is the failure to recognize all women as the embodiment of wisdom.

In the Tantric period, there was a movement abolishing barriers to women’s participation and progress on the spiritual path, offering a vital alternative to the monastic universities and ascetic traditions. In this movement, one finds women of all castes, from queens and princesses to outcasts, artisans, winemakers, pig herders, courtesans, and housewives.

For us today, this is important as we are looking for female models of spirituality that integrate and empower women, because most of us will not pursue a monastic life, yet many of us have deep spiritual longings. Previously excluded from teaching men or holding positions of leadership, women—for whom it was even questioned whether they could reach enlightenment—were now pioneering, teaching, and assuming leadership roles, shaping and inspiring a revolutionary movement. There were no institutional barriers preventing women from excelling in this tradition. There was no religious law or priestly caste defining their participation.

See also Tap the Power of Tantra: A Sequence for Self-Trust

Dakini Symbols

Another important part of the Tantric practice is the use of symbols surrounding and being held by the deities. The first and probably most commonly associated symbol of the dakini is what’s called the trigug in Tibetan, the kartari in Sanskrit, and in English, “the hooked knife.” This is a crescent-shaped knife with a hook on the end of the blade and a handle that is ornamented with different symbols. It’s modeled from the Indian butcher’s knife and sometimes called a “chopper.” The hook on the end of the blade is called the “hook of compassion.” It’s the hook that pulls sentient beings out of the ocean of suffering. The blade cuts through self-clinging, and through the dualistic split into the great bliss. The cutting edge of the knife is representative of the cutting quality of wisdom, the wisdom that cuts through self-deception. To me it is a powerful symbol of the wise feminine, because I find that often women tend to hang on too long and not cut through what needs to be cut through. We may hang on to relationships that are unhealthy, instead of ending what needs to be ended. The hooked knife is held in the dakini’s raised right hand; she must grasp this power and be ready to strike. The blade is the shape of the crescent moon, and the time of the month associated with the dakini is ten days after the full moon, when the waning moon appears as a crescent at dawn; this is the twenty-fifth day of the lunar cycle and is called Dakini Day in the Tibetan calendar. When I come out early on those days and it is still dark, I look up and see the crescent moon; it always reminds me of the dakini’s knife.

The other thing about the dakinis is that they are dancing. So this is an expression when all bodily movements become the expression of enlightened mind. All activities express awakening. Dance is also an expression of inner ecstasy. The dakini has her right leg raised and her left leg extended. The raised right leg symbolizes absolute truth. The extended left leg rests on the ground, symbolizing the relative truth, the truth about being in the world, the conventional truth. She’s also naked, so what does that mean? She symbolizes naked awareness­—the unadorned truth, free from deception. And she is standing on a corpse, which symbolizes that she has overcome self-clinging; the corpse represents the ego. She has overcome her own ego.

The dakini also wears bone jewelry, gathered from the charnel-ground bones and carved into ornaments: She wears anklets, a belt like an apron around her waist, necklaces, armbands, and bracelets. Each one of these has various meanings, but the essential meaning of all the bone ornaments is to remind us of renunciation and impermanence. She’s going beyond convention; fear of death has become an ornament to wear. We think of jewels as gold or silver or something pretty, but she’s taken that which is considered repulsive and turned it into an ornament. This is the transformation of the obstructed patterns into wisdom, taking what we fear and expressing it as an ornament.

See also Decoding Sutra 2.16: Prevent Future Pain from Manifesting

The dakinis tend to push us through blockages. They appear during challenging, crucial moments when we might be stymied in our lives; perhaps we don’t know what to do next and we are in transition. Maybe an obstacle has arisen and we can’t figure out how to get around or get through—then the dakinis will guide us. If in some way we’re stuck, the dakinis will appear and open the way, push us through; sometimes the energy needs to be forceful, and that’s when the wrathful manifestation of a dakini appears. Another important aspect of the dakini’s feminine energy is how they cut through notions of pure and impure, clean and unclean, what you should do and shouldn’t do; they break open the shell of those conventional structures into an embrace of all life in which all experience is seen as sacred.

Practicing Tibetan Buddhism more deeply, I came to realize that the dakinis are the undomesticated female energies—spiritual and erotic, ecstatic and wise, playful and profound, fierce and peaceful—that are beyond the grasp of the conceptual mind. There is a place for our whole feminine being, in all its guises, to be present.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author

Lama Tsultrim Allione is the founder and resident teacher of Tara Mandala, a retreat center located outside of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. She is the best-selling author of Women of Wisdom and Feeding Your Demons. Recognized in Tibet as the reincarnation of a renowned eleventh-century Tibetan yogini, she is one of the only female lamas in the world today. Learn more at taramandala.org.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.

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Lama Tsultrim Allione—one of the first American woman ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun— shares what she’s learned about love, life, and liberty while researching dakinis, or fierce female messengers of wisdom.

Read the stories of the Dakini—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism to tap into your feminine power.

When I was eleven, I ran home on the last day of school and tore off my dress, literally popping the buttons off, feeling simultaneously guilty and liberated. I put on an old, torn pair of cutoff jean shorts, a white T-shirt, and blue Keds sneakers, and ran with my sister into the woods behind our old colonial New Hampshire house. We went to play in the brook burbling down the steep hill over the mossy rocks, through the evergreens and deciduous trees, the water colored rich red-brown by the tannins in the leaves of the maple trees. We would play and catch foot-long white suckerfish with our hands, and then put them back because we didn’t want to kill them.

Sometimes we swam naked at night with friends at our summerhouse in the spring-fed lake 15 miles away, surrounded by pine, birch, spruce, and maple trees. I loved the feeling of the water caressing my skin like velvet, with the moon reflecting in the mirror-like lake. My sister and my friend Joanie and I would get on our ponies bareback and urge them into the lake until they were surging up and down with water rushing over our thighs and down the backs of the horses; they were swimming with us as we laughed, clinging onto their backs.

When violent summer thunderstorms blew through, instead of staying in the old wooden house I would run and dance outside in the rain and thunder, scaring my mother. I liked to eat with my fingers, gnawing on pork chop bones and gulping down big glasses of milk, in a hurry to get back outside. I loved gnawing on bones. My mother would shake her head, saying in desperation, “Oh, darling, please, please eat with your fork! Heavens alive, I’m raising a barbarian!”

See also This 7-Pose Home Practice Harnesses the Power of Touch

Barbarian, I thought, that sounds great! I imagined women with long hair streaming out behind them, racing their horses over wide plains. I saw streaked sunrises on crisp mornings with no school, bones to gnaw on. This wildness was so much a part of me; I could never imagine living a life that didn’t allow for it.

But then I was a wife and a mother raising two young daughters, and that wild young barbarian seemed lifetimes away. Paul and I had been married for three years when we decided to move from Vashon Island back to Boulder, Colorado, and join Trungpa Rinpoche’s community. It was wonderful to be in a big, active community with many young parents. However, the strain of the early years, our inexperience, and our own individual growth led us to decide to separate and collaborate as co-parents.

In 1978, I had been a single mother for several years when I met an Italian filmmaker, Costanzo Allione, who was directing a film on the Beat poets of Naropa University. He interviewed me because I was Allen Ginsberg’s meditation instructor, and Allen, whom I had met when I was a nun in 1972, introduced me to Costanzo. In the spring of 1979, we were married in Boulder while he was finishing his film, which was called Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds, and soon thereafter we moved to Italy. I got pregnant that summer while we were living in a trailer in an Italian campground on the ocean near Rome, and that fall we moved into a drafty summer villa in the Alban Hills near the town of Velletri.

When I was six months pregnant, my belly measured the size of a nine-months pregnant woman’s, so they did an ultrasound and discovered I was pregnant with twins. By this time I knew that my husband was a drug addict and unfaithful. I couldn’t speak the native language and felt completely isolated. In March of 1980, I gave birth to twins, Chiara and Costanzo; they were a little early, but each weighed over five pounds. I buckled down to nursing two babies, caring for my other two daughters, and dealing with my husband’s addiction, erratic mood swings, and physical abuse, which started during my pregnancy when he began to hit me.

My feelings of overwhelm and anxiety increased daily, and I began to wonder about how my life as a mother and a Western woman really connected with my Buddhist spirituality. How had things ended up like this? How had I lost that wild, independent girl and left my life as a nun, ending up in Italy with an abusive husband? It seemed that by choosing to disrobe, I had lost my path, and myself.

Then two months later, on June 1, 1980, I woke up from a night of broken sleep and stumbled into the room where Chiara and her brother Costanzo were sleeping. I nursed him first because he was crying, and then turned to her. She seemed very quiet. When I picked her up, I immediately knew: she felt stiff and light. I remembered the similar feeling from my childhood, picking up my small marmalade colored kitten that had been hit by a car and crawled under a bush to die. Around Chiara’s mouth and nose was purple bruising where blood had pooled; her eyes were closed, but her beautiful, soft amber hair was the same and she still smelled sweet. Her tiny body was there, but she was gone. Chiara had died of sudden infant death syndrome.

See also Relieve Anxiety with a Simple 30-Second Practice

The Buddhist stupa of Swayambhu in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

The Dakini Spirit

Following Chiara’s death came what I can only call a descent. I was filled with confusion, loss, and grief. Buffeted by raw, intense emotions, I felt more than ever that I desperately needed some female guidance. I needed to turn somewhere: to women’s stories, to women teachers, to anything that would guide me as a mother, living this life of motherhood—to connect me to my own experience as a woman and as a serious Buddhist practitioner on the path. I needed the stories of dakinis—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism. But I really didn’t know where to turn. I looked into all kinds of resources, but I couldn’t find my answers.

At some point in my search, the realization came to me: I have to find them myself. I have to find their stories. I needed to research the life stories of the Buddhist women of the past and see if I could discover some thread, some key that would help unlock the answers about the dakinis and guide me through this passage. If I could find the dakinis, I would find my spiritual role models—I could see how they did it. I could see how they made the connections between mother, wife, and woman . . . how they integrated spirituality with everyday life challenges.

About a year later, I was in California doing a retreat with my teacher, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, who was teaching a practice called Chöd that involved invoking the presence of one of the great female masters of Tibetan Buddhism, Machig Labdrön. And in this practice there is an invocation, in which you visualize her as a young, dancing, 16-year-old white dakini. So there I was doing this practice with him, and for some reason that night he kept repeating it. We must have done it for several hours. Then during the section of the practice where we invoked Machig Labdrön, I suddenly had the vision of another female form emerging out of the darkness.

See also 10 Best Women-Only Yoga Retreats Around the World

What I saw behind her was a cemetery from which she was emerging. She was old, with long, pendulous breasts that had fed many babies; golden skin; and gray hair that was streaming out. She was staring intensely at me, like an invitation and a challenge. At the same time, there was incredible compassion in her eyes. I was shocked because this woman wasn’t what I was supposed to be seeing. Yet there she was, approaching very close to me, her long hair flowing, and looking at me so intensely. Finally, at the end of this practice, I went up to my teacher and said, “Does Machig Labdrön ever appear in any other forms?”

He looked at me and said, “Yes.” He didn’t say any more.

I went to bed that night and had a dream in which I was trying to get back to Swayambhu Hill in Nepal, where I’d lived as a nun, and I felt an incredible sense of urgency. I had to get back there and it wasn’t clear why; at the same time, there were all kinds of obstacles. A war was going on, and I struggled through many barriers to finally reach the hill, but the dream didn’t complete itself. I woke up still not knowing why I was trying to return.

The next night I had the same dream. It was slightly different, and the set of obstacles changed, but the urgency to get back to Swayambhu was just as strong. Then on the third night, I had the same dream again. It is really unusual to have the same dream again and again and again, and I finally realized that the dreams were trying to tell me I had to go back to Swayambhu; they were sending me a message. I spoke to my teacher about the dreams and asked, “Does this seem like maybe I should actually go there?”

He thought about it for a while; again, he simply answered, “Yes.”

I decided to return to Nepal, to Swayambhu, to find the stories of women teachers. It took several months of planning and arrangements, a key part being to seek out the biographies of the great female Buddhist teachers. I would use the trip to go back to the source and find those yogini stories and role models I so desperately needed. I went alone, leaving my children in the care of my husband and his parents. It was an emotional and difficult decision, since I had never been away from my children, but there was a deep calling within me that I had to honor and trust.

See also 7 Things I Learned About Women from Doing Yoga

Back in Nepal, I found myself walking up the very same staircase, one step after another, up the Swayambhu Hill, which I had first climbed in 1967. Now it was 1982, and I was the mother of three. When I emerged at the top, a dear friend of mine was there to greet me, Gyalwa, a monk I had known since my first visit. It was as though he was expecting me. I told him I was looking for the stories of women, and he said, “Oh, the life stories of dakinis. Okay, come back in a few days.”

And so I did. When I returned, I went into his room in the basement of the monastery, and he had a huge Tibetan book in front of him, which was the life story of Machig Labdrön, who’d founded the Chöd practice and had emerged to me as a wild, gray-haired dakini in my vision in California. What evolved out of that was research, and eventually the birth of my book Women of Wisdom, which tells my story and provides the translation of six biographies of Tibetan teachers who were embodiments of great dakinis. The book was my link to the dakinis, and it also showed me, from the tremendous response the book received, that there was a real need—a longing­—for the stories of great women teachers. It was a beautiful affirmation of the need for the sacred feminine.

Learn how to step into your feminine power.

Coming Out of the Dark

During the process of writing Women of Wisdom, I had to do research on the history of the feminine in Buddhism. What I discovered was that for the first thousand years in Buddhism, there were few representations of the sacred feminine, although there were women in the Buddhist sangha (community) as nuns and lay householder devotees, and the Buddha’s wife and the stepmother who raised him had a somewhat elevated status. But there were no female buddhas and no feminine principles, and certainly no dakinis. It was not until the traditional Mahayana Buddhist teachings joined with the Tantric teachings and developed into Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism in the eighth century, that we began to see the feminine emerge with a larger role.

See also Tantra Rising

Before we continue, I want to distinguish here between neo-Tantra and more traditional Tantric Buddhism. Most people these days who see the word Tantra think about neo-Tantra, which has developed in the West as a form of sacred sexuality derived from, but deviating significantly from, traditional Buddhist or Hindu Tantra. Neo-Tantra offers a view of sexuality that contrasts with the repressive attitude toward sexuality as nonspiritual and profane.

Buddhist Tantra, also known as Vajrayana (Indestructible Vehicle), is much more complex than neo-Tantra and embedded in meditation, deity yoga, and mandalas—it is yoga with an emphasis on the necessity of a spiritual teacher and transmission. I will use the words Tantra and Vajrayana interchangeably throughout this book. Tantra uses the creative act of visualization, sound, and hand gestures (mudras) to engage our whole being in the process of meditation. It is a practice of complete engagement and embodiment of our whole being. And within Buddhist Tantra, often sexuality is used as a meta-phor for the union of wisdom and skillful means. Although sexual practice methods exist, Buddhist Tantra is a rich and complex spiritual path with a long history, whereas neo-Tantra is an extraction from traditional Tantric sexual practices with some additions that have nothing to do with it. So here when I say Tantra or Vajrayana, I am referring not to neo-Tantra but to traditional Buddhist Tantra.

Tantric Buddhism arose in India during the Pala Empire, whose kings ruled India primarily between the eighth and eleventh centuries. Remember that Buddhism had already existed for more than a thousand years by this time, so Vajrayana was a late development in the history of Buddhism. The union of Buddhism and Tantra was considered to be in many ways the crown jewel of the Pala period.

Although the origins of Buddhist Tantra are still being debated by scholars, it seems that it arose out of very ancient pre-Aryan roots represented in Shaktism and Saivism combining with Mahayana Buddhism. Though there is still scholarly debate about the origins of Vajrayana, Tibetans say it was practiced and taught by the Buddha. If we look at the Pala period, we find a situation where the Buddhist monks have been going along for more than a thousand years, and they have become very intellectually astute, developing various schools of sophisticated philosophy, Buddhist universities, and a whole culture connected to Buddhism that is very strong and alive. But at this point the monks have also become involved with politics, and have begun to own land and animals and to receive jewels and other riches as gifts from wealthy patrons. They also have become rather isolated from the lay community, living a sort of elite, intellectual, and rather exclusive existence.

The Tantric revolution—and it was a revolution in the sense that it was a major turning point—took place within that context. When the Tantric teachings joined Buddhism, we see the entrance of the lay community, people who were working in the everyday world, doing ordinary jobs and raising children. They might come from any walk of life: jewelers, farmers, shopkeepers, royalty, cobblers, blacksmiths, wood gatherers, to name a few. They worked in various kinds of occupations, including housewives. They were not monks who had isolated themselves from worldly life, and their spiritual practice reflected their experiences. There are many early tales, called the Siddha Stories, of people who lived and worked in ordinary situations, and who by turning their life experiences into a spiritual practice achieved enlightenment.

See also Tantric Breathing Practice to Merge Shiva and Shakti and Achieve Oneness

There are also some stories of enlightened women practitioners and teachers in early Buddhism. We see a blossoming of women gurus, and also the presence of female Buddhas and, of course, the dakinis. In many stories, these women taught the intellectual monks in a very direct, juicy way by uniting spirituality with sexuality; they taught based on using, rather than renouncing, the senses. Their teachings took the learned monks out of the monastery into real life with all its rawness, which is why several of the Tantric stories begin with a monk in a monastic university who has a visitation from a woman that drives him out in search of something beyond the monastic walls.

Tantric Buddhism has a genre of literature called “praise of women,” in which the virtues of women are extolled. From the Candamaharosana Tantra: “When one speaks of the virtues of women, they surpass those of all living beings. Wherever one finds tenderness or protectiveness, it is in the minds of women. They provide sustenance to friends and strangers alike. A woman who is like that is as glorious as Vajrayogini herself.”

There is no precedent for this in Buddhist literature, but in Buddhist Tantric texts, writings urge respect for women, and stories about the negative results of failing to recognize the spiritual qualities of women are present. And in fact, in Buddhist Tantra, the fourteenth root of downfall is the failure to recognize all women as the embodiment of wisdom.

In the Tantric period, there was a movement abolishing barriers to women’s participation and progress on the spiritual path, offering a vital alternative to the monastic universities and ascetic traditions. In this movement, one finds women of all castes, from queens and princesses to outcasts, artisans, winemakers, pig herders, courtesans, and housewives.

For us today, this is important as we are looking for female models of spirituality that integrate and empower women, because most of us will not pursue a monastic life, yet many of us have deep spiritual longings. Previously excluded from teaching men or holding positions of leadership, women—for whom it was even questioned whether they could reach enlightenment—were now pioneering, teaching, and assuming leadership roles, shaping and inspiring a revolutionary movement. There were no institutional barriers preventing women from excelling in this tradition. There was no religious law or priestly caste defining their participation.

See also Tap the Power of Tantra: A Sequence for Self-Trust

Dakini Symbols

Another important part of the Tantric practice is the use of symbols surrounding and being held by the deities. The first and probably most commonly associated symbol of the dakini is what’s called the trigug in Tibetan, the kartari in Sanskrit, and in English, “the hooked knife.” This is a crescent-shaped knife with a hook on the end of the blade and a handle that is ornamented with different symbols. It’s modeled from the Indian butcher’s knife and sometimes called a “chopper.” The hook on the end of the blade is called the “hook of compassion.” It’s the hook that pulls sentient beings out of the ocean of suffering. The blade cuts through self-clinging, and through the dualistic split into the great bliss. The cutting edge of the knife is representative of the cutting quality of wisdom, the wisdom that cuts through self-deception. To me it is a powerful symbol of the wise feminine, because I find that often women tend to hang on too long and not cut through what needs to be cut through. We may hang on to relationships that are unhealthy, instead of ending what needs to be ended. The hooked knife is held in the dakini’s raised right hand; she must grasp this power and be ready to strike. The blade is the shape of the crescent moon, and the time of the month associated with the dakini is ten days after the full moon, when the waning moon appears as a crescent at dawn; this is the twenty-fifth day of the lunar cycle and is called Dakini Day in the Tibetan calendar. When I come out early on those days and it is still dark, I look up and see the crescent moon; it always reminds me of the dakini’s knife.

The other thing about the dakinis is that they are dancing. So this is an expression when all bodily movements become the expression of enlightened mind. All activities express awakening. Dance is also an expression of inner ecstasy. The dakini has her right leg raised and her left leg extended. The raised right leg symbolizes absolute truth. The extended left leg rests on the ground, symbolizing the relative truth, the truth about being in the world, the conventional truth. She’s also naked, so what does that mean? She symbolizes naked awareness­—the unadorned truth, free from deception. And she is standing on a corpse, which symbolizes that she has overcome self-clinging; the corpse represents the ego. She has overcome her own ego.

The dakini also wears bone jewelry, gathered from the charnel-ground bones and carved into ornaments: She wears anklets, a belt like an apron around her waist, necklaces, armbands, and bracelets. Each one of these has various meanings, but the essential meaning of all the bone ornaments is to remind us of renunciation and impermanence. She’s going beyond convention; fear of death has become an ornament to wear. We think of jewels as gold or silver or something pretty, but she’s taken that which is considered repulsive and turned it into an ornament. This is the transformation of the obstructed patterns into wisdom, taking what we fear and expressing it as an ornament.

See also Decoding Sutra 2.16: Prevent Future Pain from Manifesting

The dakinis tend to push us through blockages. They appear during challenging, crucial moments when we might be stymied in our lives; perhaps we don’t know what to do next and we are in transition. Maybe an obstacle has arisen and we can’t figure out how to get around or get through—then the dakinis will guide us. If in some way we’re stuck, the dakinis will appear and open the way, push us through; sometimes the energy needs to be forceful, and that’s when the wrathful manifestation of a dakini appears. Another important aspect of the dakini’s feminine energy is how they cut through notions of pure and impure, clean and unclean, what you should do and shouldn’t do; they break open the shell of those conventional structures into an embrace of all life in which all experience is seen as sacred.

Practicing Tibetan Buddhism more deeply, I came to realize that the dakinis are the undomesticated female energies—spiritual and erotic, ecstatic and wise, playful and profound, fierce and peaceful—that are beyond the grasp of the conceptual mind. There is a place for our whole feminine being, in all its guises, to be present.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author

Lama Tsultrim Allione is the founder and resident teacher of Tara Mandala, a retreat center located outside of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. She is the best-selling author of Women of Wisdom and Feeding Your Demons. Recognized in Tibet as the reincarnation of a renowned eleventh-century Tibetan yogini, she is one of the only female lamas in the world today. Learn more at taramandala.org.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.

[cedarrrun]

Lama Tsultrim Allione—one of the first American woman ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun— shares what she’s learned about love, life, and liberty while researching dakinis, or fierce female messengers of wisdom.

Read the stories of the Dakini—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism to tap into your feminine power.

When I was eleven, I ran home on the last day of school and tore off my dress, literally popping the buttons off, feeling simultaneously guilty and liberated. I put on an old, torn pair of cutoff jean shorts, a white T-shirt, and blue Keds sneakers, and ran with my sister into the woods behind our old colonial New Hampshire house. We went to play in the brook burbling down the steep hill over the mossy rocks, through the evergreens and deciduous trees, the water colored rich red-brown by the tannins in the leaves of the maple trees. We would play and catch foot-long white suckerfish with our hands, and then put them back because we didn’t want to kill them.

Sometimes we swam naked at night with friends at our summerhouse in the spring-fed lake 15 miles away, surrounded by pine, birch, spruce, and maple trees. I loved the feeling of the water caressing my skin like velvet, with the moon reflecting in the mirror-like lake. My sister and my friend Joanie and I would get on our ponies bareback and urge them into the lake until they were surging up and down with water rushing over our thighs and down the backs of the horses; they were swimming with us as we laughed, clinging onto their backs.

When violent summer thunderstorms blew through, instead of staying in the old wooden house I would run and dance outside in the rain and thunder, scaring my mother. I liked to eat with my fingers, gnawing on pork chop bones and gulping down big glasses of milk, in a hurry to get back outside. I loved gnawing on bones. My mother would shake her head, saying in desperation, “Oh, darling, please, please eat with your fork! Heavens alive, I’m raising a barbarian!”

See also This 7-Pose Home Practice Harnesses the Power of Touch

Barbarian, I thought, that sounds great! I imagined women with long hair streaming out behind them, racing their horses over wide plains. I saw streaked sunrises on crisp mornings with no school, bones to gnaw on. This wildness was so much a part of me; I could never imagine living a life that didn’t allow for it.

But then I was a wife and a mother raising two young daughters, and that wild young barbarian seemed lifetimes away. Paul and I had been married for three years when we decided to move from Vashon Island back to Boulder, Colorado, and join Trungpa Rinpoche’s community. It was wonderful to be in a big, active community with many young parents. However, the strain of the early years, our inexperience, and our own individual growth led us to decide to separate and collaborate as co-parents.

In 1978, I had been a single mother for several years when I met an Italian filmmaker, Costanzo Allione, who was directing a film on the Beat poets of Naropa University. He interviewed me because I was Allen Ginsberg’s meditation instructor, and Allen, whom I had met when I was a nun in 1972, introduced me to Costanzo. In the spring of 1979, we were married in Boulder while he was finishing his film, which was called Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds, and soon thereafter we moved to Italy. I got pregnant that summer while we were living in a trailer in an Italian campground on the ocean near Rome, and that fall we moved into a drafty summer villa in the Alban Hills near the town of Velletri.

When I was six months pregnant, my belly measured the size of a nine-months pregnant woman’s, so they did an ultrasound and discovered I was pregnant with twins. By this time I knew that my husband was a drug addict and unfaithful. I couldn’t speak the native language and felt completely isolated. In March of 1980, I gave birth to twins, Chiara and Costanzo; they were a little early, but each weighed over five pounds. I buckled down to nursing two babies, caring for my other two daughters, and dealing with my husband’s addiction, erratic mood swings, and physical abuse, which started during my pregnancy when he began to hit me.

My feelings of overwhelm and anxiety increased daily, and I began to wonder about how my life as a mother and a Western woman really connected with my Buddhist spirituality. How had things ended up like this? How had I lost that wild, independent girl and left my life as a nun, ending up in Italy with an abusive husband? It seemed that by choosing to disrobe, I had lost my path, and myself.

Then two months later, on June 1, 1980, I woke up from a night of broken sleep and stumbled into the room where Chiara and her brother Costanzo were sleeping. I nursed him first because he was crying, and then turned to her. She seemed very quiet. When I picked her up, I immediately knew: she felt stiff and light. I remembered the similar feeling from my childhood, picking up my small marmalade colored kitten that had been hit by a car and crawled under a bush to die. Around Chiara’s mouth and nose was purple bruising where blood had pooled; her eyes were closed, but her beautiful, soft amber hair was the same and she still smelled sweet. Her tiny body was there, but she was gone. Chiara had died of sudden infant death syndrome.

See also Relieve Anxiety with a Simple 30-Second Practice

The Buddhist stupa of Swayambhu in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

The Dakini Spirit

Following Chiara’s death came what I can only call a descent. I was filled with confusion, loss, and grief. Buffeted by raw, intense emotions, I felt more than ever that I desperately needed some female guidance. I needed to turn somewhere: to women’s stories, to women teachers, to anything that would guide me as a mother, living this life of motherhood—to connect me to my own experience as a woman and as a serious Buddhist practitioner on the path. I needed the stories of dakinis—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism. But I really didn’t know where to turn. I looked into all kinds of resources, but I couldn’t find my answers.

At some point in my search, the realization came to me: I have to find them myself. I have to find their stories. I needed to research the life stories of the Buddhist women of the past and see if I could discover some thread, some key that would help unlock the answers about the dakinis and guide me through this passage. If I could find the dakinis, I would find my spiritual role models—I could see how they did it. I could see how they made the connections between mother, wife, and woman . . . how they integrated spirituality with everyday life challenges.

About a year later, I was in California doing a retreat with my teacher, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, who was teaching a practice called Chöd that involved invoking the presence of one of the great female masters of Tibetan Buddhism, Machig Labdrön. And in this practice there is an invocation, in which you visualize her as a young, dancing, 16-year-old white dakini. So there I was doing this practice with him, and for some reason that night he kept repeating it. We must have done it for several hours. Then during the section of the practice where we invoked Machig Labdrön, I suddenly had the vision of another female form emerging out of the darkness.

See also 10 Best Women-Only Yoga Retreats Around the World

What I saw behind her was a cemetery from which she was emerging. She was old, with long, pendulous breasts that had fed many babies; golden skin; and gray hair that was streaming out. She was staring intensely at me, like an invitation and a challenge. At the same time, there was incredible compassion in her eyes. I was shocked because this woman wasn’t what I was supposed to be seeing. Yet there she was, approaching very close to me, her long hair flowing, and looking at me so intensely. Finally, at the end of this practice, I went up to my teacher and said, “Does Machig Labdrön ever appear in any other forms?”

He looked at me and said, “Yes.” He didn’t say any more.

I went to bed that night and had a dream in which I was trying to get back to Swayambhu Hill in Nepal, where I’d lived as a nun, and I felt an incredible sense of urgency. I had to get back there and it wasn’t clear why; at the same time, there were all kinds of obstacles. A war was going on, and I struggled through many barriers to finally reach the hill, but the dream didn’t complete itself. I woke up still not knowing why I was trying to return.

The next night I had the same dream. It was slightly different, and the set of obstacles changed, but the urgency to get back to Swayambhu was just as strong. Then on the third night, I had the same dream again. It is really unusual to have the same dream again and again and again, and I finally realized that the dreams were trying to tell me I had to go back to Swayambhu; they were sending me a message. I spoke to my teacher about the dreams and asked, “Does this seem like maybe I should actually go there?”

He thought about it for a while; again, he simply answered, “Yes.”

I decided to return to Nepal, to Swayambhu, to find the stories of women teachers. It took several months of planning and arrangements, a key part being to seek out the biographies of the great female Buddhist teachers. I would use the trip to go back to the source and find those yogini stories and role models I so desperately needed. I went alone, leaving my children in the care of my husband and his parents. It was an emotional and difficult decision, since I had never been away from my children, but there was a deep calling within me that I had to honor and trust.

See also 7 Things I Learned About Women from Doing Yoga

Back in Nepal, I found myself walking up the very same staircase, one step after another, up the Swayambhu Hill, which I had first climbed in 1967. Now it was 1982, and I was the mother of three. When I emerged at the top, a dear friend of mine was there to greet me, Gyalwa, a monk I had known since my first visit. It was as though he was expecting me. I told him I was looking for the stories of women, and he said, “Oh, the life stories of dakinis. Okay, come back in a few days.”

And so I did. When I returned, I went into his room in the basement of the monastery, and he had a huge Tibetan book in front of him, which was the life story of Machig Labdrön, who’d founded the Chöd practice and had emerged to me as a wild, gray-haired dakini in my vision in California. What evolved out of that was research, and eventually the birth of my book Women of Wisdom, which tells my story and provides the translation of six biographies of Tibetan teachers who were embodiments of great dakinis. The book was my link to the dakinis, and it also showed me, from the tremendous response the book received, that there was a real need—a longing­—for the stories of great women teachers. It was a beautiful affirmation of the need for the sacred feminine.

Learn how to step into your feminine power.

Coming Out of the Dark

During the process of writing Women of Wisdom, I had to do research on the history of the feminine in Buddhism. What I discovered was that for the first thousand years in Buddhism, there were few representations of the sacred feminine, although there were women in the Buddhist sangha (community) as nuns and lay householder devotees, and the Buddha’s wife and the stepmother who raised him had a somewhat elevated status. But there were no female buddhas and no feminine principles, and certainly no dakinis. It was not until the traditional Mahayana Buddhist teachings joined with the Tantric teachings and developed into Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism in the eighth century, that we began to see the feminine emerge with a larger role.

See also Tantra Rising

Before we continue, I want to distinguish here between neo-Tantra and more traditional Tantric Buddhism. Most people these days who see the word Tantra think about neo-Tantra, which has developed in the West as a form of sacred sexuality derived from, but deviating significantly from, traditional Buddhist or Hindu Tantra. Neo-Tantra offers a view of sexuality that contrasts with the repressive attitude toward sexuality as nonspiritual and profane.

Buddhist Tantra, also known as Vajrayana (Indestructible Vehicle), is much more complex than neo-Tantra and embedded in meditation, deity yoga, and mandalas—it is yoga with an emphasis on the necessity of a spiritual teacher and transmission. I will use the words Tantra and Vajrayana interchangeably throughout this book. Tantra uses the creative act of visualization, sound, and hand gestures (mudras) to engage our whole being in the process of meditation. It is a practice of complete engagement and embodiment of our whole being. And within Buddhist Tantra, often sexuality is used as a meta-phor for the union of wisdom and skillful means. Although sexual practice methods exist, Buddhist Tantra is a rich and complex spiritual path with a long history, whereas neo-Tantra is an extraction from traditional Tantric sexual practices with some additions that have nothing to do with it. So here when I say Tantra or Vajrayana, I am referring not to neo-Tantra but to traditional Buddhist Tantra.

Tantric Buddhism arose in India during the Pala Empire, whose kings ruled India primarily between the eighth and eleventh centuries. Remember that Buddhism had already existed for more than a thousand years by this time, so Vajrayana was a late development in the history of Buddhism. The union of Buddhism and Tantra was considered to be in many ways the crown jewel of the Pala period.

Although the origins of Buddhist Tantra are still being debated by scholars, it seems that it arose out of very ancient pre-Aryan roots represented in Shaktism and Saivism combining with Mahayana Buddhism. Though there is still scholarly debate about the origins of Vajrayana, Tibetans say it was practiced and taught by the Buddha. If we look at the Pala period, we find a situation where the Buddhist monks have been going along for more than a thousand years, and they have become very intellectually astute, developing various schools of sophisticated philosophy, Buddhist universities, and a whole culture connected to Buddhism that is very strong and alive. But at this point the monks have also become involved with politics, and have begun to own land and animals and to receive jewels and other riches as gifts from wealthy patrons. They also have become rather isolated from the lay community, living a sort of elite, intellectual, and rather exclusive existence.

The Tantric revolution—and it was a revolution in the sense that it was a major turning point—took place within that context. When the Tantric teachings joined Buddhism, we see the entrance of the lay community, people who were working in the everyday world, doing ordinary jobs and raising children. They might come from any walk of life: jewelers, farmers, shopkeepers, royalty, cobblers, blacksmiths, wood gatherers, to name a few. They worked in various kinds of occupations, including housewives. They were not monks who had isolated themselves from worldly life, and their spiritual practice reflected their experiences. There are many early tales, called the Siddha Stories, of people who lived and worked in ordinary situations, and who by turning their life experiences into a spiritual practice achieved enlightenment.

See also Tantric Breathing Practice to Merge Shiva and Shakti and Achieve Oneness

There are also some stories of enlightened women practitioners and teachers in early Buddhism. We see a blossoming of women gurus, and also the presence of female Buddhas and, of course, the dakinis. In many stories, these women taught the intellectual monks in a very direct, juicy way by uniting spirituality with sexuality; they taught based on using, rather than renouncing, the senses. Their teachings took the learned monks out of the monastery into real life with all its rawness, which is why several of the Tantric stories begin with a monk in a monastic university who has a visitation from a woman that drives him out in search of something beyond the monastic walls.

Tantric Buddhism has a genre of literature called “praise of women,” in which the virtues of women are extolled. From the Candamaharosana Tantra: “When one speaks of the virtues of women, they surpass those of all living beings. Wherever one finds tenderness or protectiveness, it is in the minds of women. They provide sustenance to friends and strangers alike. A woman who is like that is as glorious as Vajrayogini herself.”

There is no precedent for this in Buddhist literature, but in Buddhist Tantric texts, writings urge respect for women, and stories about the negative results of failing to recognize the spiritual qualities of women are present. And in fact, in Buddhist Tantra, the fourteenth root of downfall is the failure to recognize all women as the embodiment of wisdom.

In the Tantric period, there was a movement abolishing barriers to women’s participation and progress on the spiritual path, offering a vital alternative to the monastic universities and ascetic traditions. In this movement, one finds women of all castes, from queens and princesses to outcasts, artisans, winemakers, pig herders, courtesans, and housewives.

For us today, this is important as we are looking for female models of spirituality that integrate and empower women, because most of us will not pursue a monastic life, yet many of us have deep spiritual longings. Previously excluded from teaching men or holding positions of leadership, women—for whom it was even questioned whether they could reach enlightenment—were now pioneering, teaching, and assuming leadership roles, shaping and inspiring a revolutionary movement. There were no institutional barriers preventing women from excelling in this tradition. There was no religious law or priestly caste defining their participation.

See also Tap the Power of Tantra: A Sequence for Self-Trust

Dakini Symbols

Another important part of the Tantric practice is the use of symbols surrounding and being held by the deities. The first and probably most commonly associated symbol of the dakini is what’s called the trigug in Tibetan, the kartari in Sanskrit, and in English, “the hooked knife.” This is a crescent-shaped knife with a hook on the end of the blade and a handle that is ornamented with different symbols. It’s modeled from the Indian butcher’s knife and sometimes called a “chopper.” The hook on the end of the blade is called the “hook of compassion.” It’s the hook that pulls sentient beings out of the ocean of suffering. The blade cuts through self-clinging, and through the dualistic split into the great bliss. The cutting edge of the knife is representative of the cutting quality of wisdom, the wisdom that cuts through self-deception. To me it is a powerful symbol of the wise feminine, because I find that often women tend to hang on too long and not cut through what needs to be cut through. We may hang on to relationships that are unhealthy, instead of ending what needs to be ended. The hooked knife is held in the dakini’s raised right hand; she must grasp this power and be ready to strike. The blade is the shape of the crescent moon, and the time of the month associated with the dakini is ten days after the full moon, when the waning moon appears as a crescent at dawn; this is the twenty-fifth day of the lunar cycle and is called Dakini Day in the Tibetan calendar. When I come out early on those days and it is still dark, I look up and see the crescent moon; it always reminds me of the dakini’s knife.

The other thing about the dakinis is that they are dancing. So this is an expression when all bodily movements become the expression of enlightened mind. All activities express awakening. Dance is also an expression of inner ecstasy. The dakini has her right leg raised and her left leg extended. The raised right leg symbolizes absolute truth. The extended left leg rests on the ground, symbolizing the relative truth, the truth about being in the world, the conventional truth. She’s also naked, so what does that mean? She symbolizes naked awareness­—the unadorned truth, free from deception. And she is standing on a corpse, which symbolizes that she has overcome self-clinging; the corpse represents the ego. She has overcome her own ego.

The dakini also wears bone jewelry, gathered from the charnel-ground bones and carved into ornaments: She wears anklets, a belt like an apron around her waist, necklaces, armbands, and bracelets. Each one of these has various meanings, but the essential meaning of all the bone ornaments is to remind us of renunciation and impermanence. She’s going beyond convention; fear of death has become an ornament to wear. We think of jewels as gold or silver or something pretty, but she’s taken that which is considered repulsive and turned it into an ornament. This is the transformation of the obstructed patterns into wisdom, taking what we fear and expressing it as an ornament.

See also Decoding Sutra 2.16: Prevent Future Pain from Manifesting

The dakinis tend to push us through blockages. They appear during challenging, crucial moments when we might be stymied in our lives; perhaps we don’t know what to do next and we are in transition. Maybe an obstacle has arisen and we can’t figure out how to get around or get through—then the dakinis will guide us. If in some way we’re stuck, the dakinis will appear and open the way, push us through; sometimes the energy needs to be forceful, and that’s when the wrathful manifestation of a dakini appears. Another important aspect of the dakini’s feminine energy is how they cut through notions of pure and impure, clean and unclean, what you should do and shouldn’t do; they break open the shell of those conventional structures into an embrace of all life in which all experience is seen as sacred.

Practicing Tibetan Buddhism more deeply, I came to realize that the dakinis are the undomesticated female energies—spiritual and erotic, ecstatic and wise, playful and profound, fierce and peaceful—that are beyond the grasp of the conceptual mind. There is a place for our whole feminine being, in all its guises, to be present.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author

Lama Tsultrim Allione is the founder and resident teacher of Tara Mandala, a retreat center located outside of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. She is the best-selling author of Women of Wisdom and Feeding Your Demons. Recognized in Tibet as the reincarnation of a renowned eleventh-century Tibetan yogini, she is one of the only female lamas in the world today. Learn more at taramandala.org.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.

[amyddaniels]

How to Step Into Your Feminine Power with the Wisdom of the Dakinis

Lama Tsultrim Allione—one of the first American woman ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun— shares what she’s learned about love, life, and liberty while researching dakinis, or fierce female messengers of wisdom.

Read the stories of the Dakini—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism to tap into your feminine power.

When I was eleven, I ran home on the last day of school and tore off my dress, literally popping the buttons off, feeling simultaneously guilty and liberated. I put on an old, torn pair of cutoff jean shorts, a white T-shirt, and blue Keds sneakers, and ran with my sister into the woods behind our old colonial New Hampshire house. We went to play in the brook burbling down the steep hill over the mossy rocks, through the evergreens and deciduous trees, the water colored rich red-brown by the tannins in the leaves of the maple trees. We would play and catch foot-long white suckerfish with our hands, and then put them back because we didn’t want to kill them.

Sometimes we swam naked at night with friends at our summerhouse in the spring-fed lake 15 miles away, surrounded by pine, birch, spruce, and maple trees. I loved the feeling of the water caressing my skin like velvet, with the moon reflecting in the mirror-like lake. My sister and my friend Joanie and I would get on our ponies bareback and urge them into the lake until they were surging up and down with water rushing over our thighs and down the backs of the horses; they were swimming with us as we laughed, clinging onto their backs.

When violent summer thunderstorms blew through, instead of staying in the old wooden house I would run and dance outside in the rain and thunder, scaring my mother. I liked to eat with my fingers, gnawing on pork chop bones and gulping down big glasses of milk, in a hurry to get back outside. I loved gnawing on bones. My mother would shake her head, saying in desperation, “Oh, darling, please, please eat with your fork! Heavens alive, I’m raising a barbarian!”

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Barbarian, I thought, that sounds great! I imagined women with long hair streaming out behind them, racing their horses over wide plains. I saw streaked sunrises on crisp mornings with no school, bones to gnaw on. This wildness was so much a part of me; I could never imagine living a life that didn’t allow for it.

But then I was a wife and a mother raising two young daughters, and that wild young barbarian seemed lifetimes away. Paul and I had been married for three years when we decided to move from Vashon Island back to Boulder, Colorado, and join Trungpa Rinpoche’s community. It was wonderful to be in a big, active community with many young parents. However, the strain of the early years, our inexperience, and our own individual growth led us to decide to separate and collaborate as co-parents.

In 1978, I had been a single mother for several years when I met an Italian filmmaker, Costanzo Allione, who was directing a film on the Beat poets of Naropa University. He interviewed me because I was Allen Ginsberg’s meditation instructor, and Allen, whom I had met when I was a nun in 1972, introduced me to Costanzo. In the spring of 1979, we were married in Boulder while he was finishing his film, which was called Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds, and soon thereafter we moved to Italy. I got pregnant that summer while we were living in a trailer in an Italian campground on the ocean near Rome, and that fall we moved into a drafty summer villa in the Alban Hills near the town of Velletri.

When I was six months pregnant, my belly measured the size of a nine-months pregnant woman’s, so they did an ultrasound and discovered I was pregnant with twins. By this time I knew that my husband was a drug addict and unfaithful. I couldn’t speak the native language and felt completely isolated. In March of 1980, I gave birth to twins, Chiara and Costanzo; they were a little early, but each weighed over five pounds. I buckled down to nursing two babies, caring for my other two daughters, and dealing with my husband’s addiction, erratic mood swings, and physical abuse, which started during my pregnancy when he began to hit me.

My feelings of overwhelm and anxiety increased daily, and I began to wonder about how my life as a mother and a Western woman really connected with my Buddhist spirituality. How had things ended up like this? How had I lost that wild, independent girl and left my life as a nun, ending up in Italy with an abusive husband? It seemed that by choosing to disrobe, I had lost my path, and myself.

Then two months later, on June 1, 1980, I woke up from a night of broken sleep and stumbled into the room where Chiara and her brother Costanzo were sleeping. I nursed him first because he was crying, and then turned to her. She seemed very quiet. When I picked her up, I immediately knew: she felt stiff and light. I remembered the similar feeling from my childhood, picking up my small marmalade colored kitten that had been hit by a car and crawled under a bush to die. Around Chiara’s mouth and nose was purple bruising where blood had pooled; her eyes were closed, but her beautiful, soft amber hair was the same and she still smelled sweet. Her tiny body was there, but she was gone. Chiara had died of sudden infant death syndrome.

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The Buddhist stupa of Swayambhu in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

The Dakini Spirit

Following Chiara’s death came what I can only call a descent. I was filled with confusion, loss, and grief. Buffeted by raw, intense emotions, I felt more than ever that I desperately needed some female guidance. I needed to turn somewhere: to women’s stories, to women teachers, to anything that would guide me as a mother, living this life of motherhood—to connect me to my own experience as a woman and as a serious Buddhist practitioner on the path. I needed the stories of dakinis—fierce female messengers of wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism. But I really didn’t know where to turn. I looked into all kinds of resources, but I couldn’t find my answers.

At some point in my search, the realization came to me: I have to find them myself. I have to find their stories. I needed to research the life stories of the Buddhist women of the past and see if I could discover some thread, some key that would help unlock the answers about the dakinis and guide me through this passage. If I could find the dakinis, I would find my spiritual role models—I could see how they did it. I could see how they made the connections between mother, wife, and woman . . . how they integrated spirituality with everyday life challenges.

About a year later, I was in California doing a retreat with my teacher, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, who was teaching a practice called Chöd that involved invoking the presence of one of the great female masters of Tibetan Buddhism, Machig Labdrön. And in this practice there is an invocation, in which you visualize her as a young, dancing, 16-year-old white dakini. So there I was doing this practice with him, and for some reason that night he kept repeating it. We must have done it for several hours. Then during the section of the practice where we invoked Machig Labdrön, I suddenly had the vision of another female form emerging out of the darkness.

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What I saw behind her was a cemetery from which she was emerging. She was old, with long, pendulous breasts that had fed many babies; golden skin; and gray hair that was streaming out. She was staring intensely at me, like an invitation and a challenge. At the same time, there was incredible compassion in her eyes. I was shocked because this woman wasn’t what I was supposed to be seeing. Yet there she was, approaching very close to me, her long hair flowing, and looking at me so intensely. Finally, at the end of this practice, I went up to my teacher and said, “Does Machig Labdrön ever appear in any other forms?”

He looked at me and said, “Yes.” He didn’t say any more.

I went to bed that night and had a dream in which I was trying to get back to Swayambhu Hill in Nepal, where I’d lived as a nun, and I felt an incredible sense of urgency. I had to get back there and it wasn’t clear why; at the same time, there were all kinds of obstacles. A war was going on, and I struggled through many barriers to finally reach the hill, but the dream didn’t complete itself. I woke up still not knowing why I was trying to return.

The next night I had the same dream. It was slightly different, and the set of obstacles changed, but the urgency to get back to Swayambhu was just as strong. Then on the third night, I had the same dream again. It is really unusual to have the same dream again and again and again, and I finally realized that the dreams were trying to tell me I had to go back to Swayambhu; they were sending me a message. I spoke to my teacher about the dreams and asked, “Does this seem like maybe I should actually go there?”

He thought about it for a while; again, he simply answered, “Yes.”

I decided to return to Nepal, to Swayambhu, to find the stories of women teachers. It took several months of planning and arrangements, a key part being to seek out the biographies of the great female Buddhist teachers. I would use the trip to go back to the source and find those yogini stories and role models I so desperately needed. I went alone, leaving my children in the care of my husband and his parents. It was an emotional and difficult decision, since I had never been away from my children, but there was a deep calling within me that I had to honor and trust.

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Back in Nepal, I found myself walking up the very same staircase, one step after another, up the Swayambhu Hill, which I had first climbed in 1967. Now it was 1982, and I was the mother of three. When I emerged at the top, a dear friend of mine was there to greet me, Gyalwa, a monk I had known since my first visit. It was as though he was expecting me. I told him I was looking for the stories of women, and he said, “Oh, the life stories of dakinis. Okay, come back in a few days.”

And so I did. When I returned, I went into his room in the basement of the monastery, and he had a huge Tibetan book in front of him, which was the life story of Machig Labdrön, who’d founded the Chöd practice and had emerged to me as a wild, gray-haired dakini in my vision in California. What evolved out of that was research, and eventually the birth of my book Women of Wisdom, which tells my story and provides the translation of six biographies of Tibetan teachers who were embodiments of great dakinis. The book was my link to the dakinis, and it also showed me, from the tremendous response the book received, that there was a real need—a longing­—for the stories of great women teachers. It was a beautiful affirmation of the need for the sacred feminine.

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Coming Out of the Dark

During the process of writing Women of Wisdom, I had to do research on the history of the feminine in Buddhism. What I discovered was that for the first thousand years in Buddhism, there were few representations of the sacred feminine, although there were women in the Buddhist sangha (community) as nuns and lay householder devotees, and the Buddha’s wife and the stepmother who raised him had a somewhat elevated status. But there were no female buddhas and no feminine principles, and certainly no dakinis. It was not until the traditional Mahayana Buddhist teachings joined with the Tantric teachings and developed into Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism in the eighth century, that we began to see the feminine emerge with a larger role.

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Before we continue, I want to distinguish here between neo-Tantra and more traditional Tantric Buddhism. Most people these days who see the word Tantra think about neo-Tantra, which has developed in the West as a form of sacred sexuality derived from, but deviating significantly from, traditional Buddhist or Hindu Tantra. Neo-Tantra offers a view of sexuality that contrasts with the repressive attitude toward sexuality as nonspiritual and profane.

Buddhist Tantra, also known as Vajrayana (Indestructible Vehicle), is much more complex than neo-Tantra and embedded in meditation, deity yoga, and mandalas—it is yoga with an emphasis on the necessity of a spiritual teacher and transmission. I will use the words Tantra and Vajrayana interchangeably throughout this book. Tantra uses the creative act of visualization, sound, and hand gestures (mudras) to engage our whole being in the process of meditation. It is a practice of complete engagement and embodiment of our whole being. And within Buddhist Tantra, often sexuality is used as a meta-phor for the union of wisdom and skillful means. Although sexual practice methods exist, Buddhist Tantra is a rich and complex spiritual path with a long history, whereas neo-Tantra is an extraction from traditional Tantric sexual practices with some additions that have nothing to do with it. So here when I say Tantra or Vajrayana, I am referring not to neo-Tantra but to traditional Buddhist Tantra.

Tantric Buddhism arose in India during the Pala Empire, whose kings ruled India primarily between the eighth and eleventh centuries. Remember that Buddhism had already existed for more than a thousand years by this time, so Vajrayana was a late development in the history of Buddhism. The union of Buddhism and Tantra was considered to be in many ways the crown jewel of the Pala period.

Although the origins of Buddhist Tantra are still being debated by scholars, it seems that it arose out of very ancient pre-Aryan roots represented in Shaktism and Saivism combining with Mahayana Buddhism. Though there is still scholarly debate about the origins of Vajrayana, Tibetans say it was practiced and taught by the Buddha. If we look at the Pala period, we find a situation where the Buddhist monks have been going along for more than a thousand years, and they have become very intellectually astute, developing various schools of sophisticated philosophy, Buddhist universities, and a whole culture connected to Buddhism that is very strong and alive. But at this point the monks have also become involved with politics, and have begun to own land and animals and to receive jewels and other riches as gifts from wealthy patrons. They also have become rather isolated from the lay community, living a sort of elite, intellectual, and rather exclusive existence.

The Tantric revolution—and it was a revolution in the sense that it was a major turning point—took place within that context. When the Tantric teachings joined Buddhism, we see the entrance of the lay community, people who were working in the everyday world, doing ordinary jobs and raising children. They might come from any walk of life: jewelers, farmers, shopkeepers, royalty, cobblers, blacksmiths, wood gatherers, to name a few. They worked in various kinds of occupations, including housewives. They were not monks who had isolated themselves from worldly life, and their spiritual practice reflected their experiences. There are many early tales, called the Siddha Stories, of people who lived and worked in ordinary situations, and who by turning their life experiences into a spiritual practice achieved enlightenment.

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There are also some stories of enlightened women practitioners and teachers in early Buddhism. We see a blossoming of women gurus, and also the presence of female Buddhas and, of course, the dakinis. In many stories, these women taught the intellectual monks in a very direct, juicy way by uniting spirituality with sexuality; they taught based on using, rather than renouncing, the senses. Their teachings took the learned monks out of the monastery into real life with all its rawness, which is why several of the Tantric stories begin with a monk in a monastic university who has a visitation from a woman that drives him out in search of something beyond the monastic walls.

Tantric Buddhism has a genre of literature called “praise of women,” in which the virtues of women are extolled. From the Candamaharosana Tantra: “When one speaks of the virtues of women, they surpass those of all living beings. Wherever one finds tenderness or protectiveness, it is in the minds of women. They provide sustenance to friends and strangers alike. A woman who is like that is as glorious as Vajrayogini herself.”

There is no precedent for this in Buddhist literature, but in Buddhist Tantric texts, writings urge respect for women, and stories about the negative results of failing to recognize the spiritual qualities of women are present. And in fact, in Buddhist Tantra, the fourteenth root of downfall is the failure to recognize all women as the embodiment of wisdom.

In the Tantric period, there was a movement abolishing barriers to women’s participation and progress on the spiritual path, offering a vital alternative to the monastic universities and ascetic traditions. In this movement, one finds women of all castes, from queens and princesses to outcasts, artisans, winemakers, pig herders, courtesans, and housewives.

For us today, this is important as we are looking for female models of spirituality that integrate and empower women, because most of us will not pursue a monastic life, yet many of us have deep spiritual longings. Previously excluded from teaching men or holding positions of leadership, women—for whom it was even questioned whether they could reach enlightenment—were now pioneering, teaching, and assuming leadership roles, shaping and inspiring a revolutionary movement. There were no institutional barriers preventing women from excelling in this tradition. There was no religious law or priestly caste defining their participation.

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Dakini Symbols

Another important part of the Tantric practice is the use of symbols surrounding and being held by the deities. The first and probably most commonly associated symbol of the dakini is what’s called the trigug in Tibetan, the kartari in Sanskrit, and in English, “the hooked knife.” This is a crescent-shaped knife with a hook on the end of the blade and a handle that is ornamented with different symbols. It’s modeled from the Indian butcher’s knife and sometimes called a “chopper.” The hook on the end of the blade is called the “hook of compassion.” It’s the hook that pulls sentient beings out of the ocean of suffering. The blade cuts through self-clinging, and through the dualistic split into the great bliss. The cutting edge of the knife is representative of the cutting quality of wisdom, the wisdom that cuts through self-deception. To me it is a powerful symbol of the wise feminine, because I find that often women tend to hang on too long and not cut through what needs to be cut through. We may hang on to relationships that are unhealthy, instead of ending what needs to be ended. The hooked knife is held in the dakini’s raised right hand; she must grasp this power and be ready to strike. The blade is the shape of the crescent moon, and the time of the month associated with the dakini is ten days after the full moon, when the waning moon appears as a crescent at dawn; this is the twenty-fifth day of the lunar cycle and is called Dakini Day in the Tibetan calendar. When I come out early on those days and it is still dark, I look up and see the crescent moon; it always reminds me of the dakini’s knife.

The other thing about the dakinis is that they are dancing. So this is an expression when all bodily movements become the expression of enlightened mind. All activities express awakening. Dance is also an expression of inner ecstasy. The dakini has her right leg raised and her left leg extended. The raised right leg symbolizes absolute truth. The extended left leg rests on the ground, symbolizing the relative truth, the truth about being in the world, the conventional truth. She’s also naked, so what does that mean? She symbolizes naked awareness­—the unadorned truth, free from deception. And she is standing on a corpse, which symbolizes that she has overcome self-clinging; the corpse represents the ego. She has overcome her own ego.

The dakini also wears bone jewelry, gathered from the charnel-ground bones and carved into ornaments: She wears anklets, a belt like an apron around her waist, necklaces, armbands, and bracelets. Each one of these has various meanings, but the essential meaning of all the bone ornaments is to remind us of renunciation and impermanence. She’s going beyond convention; fear of death has become an ornament to wear. We think of jewels as gold or silver or something pretty, but she’s taken that which is considered repulsive and turned it into an ornament. This is the transformation of the obstructed patterns into wisdom, taking what we fear and expressing it as an ornament.

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The dakinis tend to push us through blockages. They appear during challenging, crucial moments when we might be stymied in our lives; perhaps we don’t know what to do next and we are in transition. Maybe an obstacle has arisen and we can’t figure out how to get around or get through—then the dakinis will guide us. If in some way we’re stuck, the dakinis will appear and open the way, push us through; sometimes the energy needs to be forceful, and that’s when the wrathful manifestation of a dakini appears. Another important aspect of the dakini’s feminine energy is how they cut through notions of pure and impure, clean and unclean, what you should do and shouldn’t do; they break open the shell of those conventional structures into an embrace of all life in which all experience is seen as sacred.

Practicing Tibetan Buddhism more deeply, I came to realize that the dakinis are the undomesticated female energies—spiritual and erotic, ecstatic and wise, playful and profound, fierce and peaceful—that are beyond the grasp of the conceptual mind. There is a place for our whole feminine being, in all its guises, to be present.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author

Lama Tsultrim Allione is the founder and resident teacher of Tara Mandala, a retreat center located outside of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. She is the best-selling author of Women of Wisdom and Feeding Your Demons. Recognized in Tibet as the reincarnation of a renowned eleventh-century Tibetan yogini, she is one of the only female lamas in the world today. Learn more at taramandala.org.

Excerpted from Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine by Lama Tsultrim Allione. Enliven Books, May 2018. Reprinted with permission.