02/16/2026
I received a spiritual key when I was 19. Only, as it goes with most spiritual practices, it took me decades to unlock its true healing power.
In 1988, I lost my dad very suddenly. His death threw me into deep grief and, at the same time, into a profound awareness of the other side.
I began dreaming of him. Not vague dreams. Clear ones. He would speak to me and impress upon me, again and again, that he was not actually gone. He was right there. Just beyond what I had been taught to perceive. I had been totally misled by the whole “he is gone” narrative.
I told my mom. She sent me to a therapist who said it was a case of grief, wishing he were still alive. And yes, that was true.
But there was more.
His presence in those dreams cut through doubt. They did not feel like a mishmash of wishes and fears. They felt instructional.
Around that same time, what felt random then but not at all now, I was invited to a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center. The first meditation evening became the beginning of a deeply integrated practice that reconnected me with something I had known as a child: the ability to sense beyond the 3-D world.
As a kid, I used that ability to find hidden sweet treats in the cellar or pull homework answers seemingly out of thin air. As a young adult, that same sensitivity became a subtle current of meaning and purpose, a feeling of being guided.
The initial Karmapa Meditation I learned gave me more peace. But peace was not the deepest gift.
The real work began when I entered the initiatory school of the Kagyu lineage.
The first practice was prostrations, a hundred thousand of them to be exact, fully down on the floor, nose to the ground, arms stretched out in front of an image of the Tree of Refuge. Over and over, reciting a mantra of devotion, humbling the ego, taking the Bodhisattva vow. Something like: I surrender ego-pride. I align with awakened wisdom. I dedicate my life to liberation, not just mine, but everyone’s.
Not fully understanding the implications, I took a Bodhisattva vow; awakening not just for myself but for all beings. Promising to return again and again until suffering is liberated. My teacher taught me to count on a small mala. In my case, my hands were wrapped in wool socks so they would slide across the floor more easily.
Then came the second practice: Dorje Sempa or Vajrasattva meditation. This is where I received what I think of as my first key to true healing. I was taught to visualize a radiant white Buddha, Dordje Sempa (pictured) above my head, seated in a lotus, one toe extending slightly over the petal. As I recited the 100-syllable mantra, luminous nectar would flow from that toe, and a stream of light poured into the crown of my head and washed over and through my entire body.
Slowly, it worked on me to clear the pollutions of the mind as they exist in the body. This shifted something fundamental in me.
I moved from the Western idea that the mind lives in the brain, in thoughts, to the understanding that our thoughts, feelings, and actions live in the body as energy.
Energy that is either luminous, tingly, open and expansive or dense, contracted, and painful.
Good deeds open us. Harmful actions contract us. Unprocessed fear leaves knots. Moments when we shut down and never fully reopen leave imprints. Over time, that practice evolved.
What began back then as calling upon a radiant deity above me gradually transformed into something more intimate. The light was no longer only descending from above.
I began to feel it within. In my heart.
The Dorje Sempa practice trained my nervous system to understand something essential: contractions in the body are the embodiment of negative patterns, painful stories that can be met with light, or as I would say it now, with loving presence. They do not have to be fought, analyzed, or expelled. They can be softened and ultimately released.
Slowly, that luminous nectar moved from visualization to lived experience and today, my practice is less formal and prescriptive. Less ceremonial if you will. More embodied and immediate. While I maintain a spot in my house for meditation, it’s really with me all the time, everywhere, like a best friend that never leaves. At 55, I am infinitely more with myself, more inside my tender body than I was at 19.
Now, all it takes is a small flutter of contraction in my chest or belly, and I am right there: I’ve got you, babe. I am here. I love you. I feel it immediately. I meet it. I am here. You are not alone. That helps me relax what reacted inside.
I surround it with light. Loving presence. True friendship.
Sometimes when it's particularly uncomfortable in my body, I pray: Dear God, Purusha, Divine Loving Light, Christ, Loving Mary, hold me as I hold this dense, contracted energy. It is so uncomfortable. Please be with me. I am with you. I feel it. I relax. I am not alone with this.
The light feels internal now. Not distant. Not above. Not out there. Inside.
And not just inside me. Inside you. Inside everyone. You can see it in the eyes, sometimes luminous, sometimes a little dim. But it’s there. If you smile at someone, the light tends to show itself in the eyes.
Perhaps this is where my Buddhist path meets the esoteric Christian understanding of the Kingdom within. Or the yogic understanding of Purusha, the indwelling Divine presence. The light embodied. All the lineages and religions made of love meet in the heart.
