Monday, January 4, 2021

Vitæ EMA [EleusisMystesAlana]

Although it has a few glitches, I still regard Tantra as the philosophical project most aligned with the Eleusian Epiphanies.  Here are a few notes from five decades as a practicing Tantrika: 

Tantric literature usually begins with a shout-out to one's mentors and lineages, a practice that works a little like a Western CV.  Its purpose is to inspire confidence in the reader, and establish the writer's accomplishments within the context of the lineage.   

That might be something of a challenge as my actual lineage lay in the future.  It will be found within the Fifth Turning of the Wheel of Dharma, the Ghantayana.

I have, however, taken empowerments [/intiations] within the second (Mahayana), third (Vajrayana) and fourth (Tantrayana) turnings of the Wheel.  My dharma name was bestowed by a Nyingma lama who didn't know me from Adam, but it happened that the name he conferred, Changchub Drolma (Dedarkened Tara), referred to a practice I had secretly undertaken a few years earlier.  So, we tight.  

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From 15-18 years of age, I served as a 'kamala' --a kind of cupbearer-- for a household of Western tantrikas. My legal guardian, Carla M., was in a marriage that included a third and occasionally fourth partner, and all were improvising a path using works by Alexandra David-Neel, Ajit Mookerjee, Benoytosh Bhattyacharya, Arthur Avalon and Walter Evans-Wentz, among others.  I was too young to participate in the maithuna (ritual union), but I did set up the room, prepare the robes, purify the atmosphere, arrange the mandalas, etc.  When I look back on that era, I am amazed by Carla's intuition.  Her ability to translate vague textual hints from a few bowdlerized texts into a living practice impresses me to this day.  

At age 18 I went guru-chasing, inviting three prominent teachers to my city under the auspices of a fictitious 'Austin Spiritual Council.'  The ASC was really no more than a dozen friends who put up deposits for travel expenses and auditorium rental.  In this way I was able to buttonhole people expert in meditative practice, and see if I was drawn to work with any of them.  The summer of my 19th birthday, I traveled to Dharmadhatu (at the time known as Karma Dzong) in Boulder, Colorado.  One early morning in the ashram kitchen, I found myself moving 5-gallon tins of honey with Rimpoche.  Sweet. 

The massive Green Tara mounted in Trungpa's dining room haunted my dreams for the next several 
years, but I decided to study with the breakaway Surat Shabd-yoga teacher, Paul Twitchell.  She didn't mind.  

A few years later I was in a library in Albuquerque, New Mexico, tucked into the Spanish language studies section.  Reaching for a grammar text, a large black book fell off of the shelf and hit me on the head. It was Arthur Evans-Wentz's Tibetan Book of the Dead.  It landed open to the "dissolution of earth into water"  page.  I looked around the shelf for any other titles in English -there were none- so of course I checked out the book.  Returning home, I got a phone call from a friend in Mexico letting me know that the body of one of my dreamwork students, Carmen D., had just been dredged from Tantra lake in Boulder. 

Thus I became a (reluctant) bardologist and psychopomp.  Turns out I would be especially attuned to suicides and overdoses.  Carmen was the first. 

In 1993 --having entered a harrowing graduate program-- I began doing Green Tara sadhana.  I figured it would be less risky than the SSRIs flowing through my academic community.  A little riskier, perhaps, was the practice of Vajrayogini, whom I have dubbed "The Girl in the Bone Bikini."  After my daughter's death in 1998,  I took a series of empowerments -- including a Vajrasattva initiation which turned out to be an accelerant for that nascent Bardo practice.†

Later I would discover that BuddhaVajrasattva is the consort of my root yidamVajrayogini, which meant that instead of a 'guru', I was working with a tsong-yab/yum (Secret Consorts).  Then it got interesting . . .

§§§

My training, as you can see, has been eclectic and ongoing - with assistance from consorts, companions, husbands, children as well as the exasperated kindness of various swamis, lamas and monks.  But the most instructive moments have come through a montage of women: ekmothers, Taras, yoginis at various stages of alchemical transfiguration.  

The Eleusian Epiphanies are built around the idea that any empowerment, initiation, diksha - whatever the terminology-- is a gift from your future Self††.  The job of a good counselor is simply to get the present and future Self/s lined up to meet one another, and jump out of the way when lightning flies through the mirror. Olé!

Eleusis•Mystes•Alana 

January 4. 2021
Korinthos, Greece



Notes: 
† I have about 600,000 627,000 Vajrasattva mantras logged, for those who count such things.  Kinda like airmiles for Skydancers.  
†† ...a phrase I minted a decade before McConaughey's Oscar speech, damnit!
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