7   Supportive Practices

Below are short descriptions of practices, most of them recommendations from the Mother Tantra, that are supportive of the main sleep practice.

MASTER

To support the sleep practice, generate stronger devotion to one’s true nature. Imagine the master at the crown of the head and develop connection and devotion. The connection to the master can be very pure, based in pure devotion. When you imagine the master, go beyond just visualizing an image: generate strong devotion and really feel the presence of the master. Pray with strength and sincerity. Then dissolve the master into light that enters your crown and descends into your heart. Imagine the master abiding there, in your heart center, then go to sleep.

The closeness that you feel to the master is actually the closeness you feel toward your own nature. This is the support of the lama.

DAKINI

On a radiant lotus in the heart, seated on a sun disk that sits on the lotus, abides the dakini Salgye Du Dalma. She is clear, translucent, and luminous, like a bright light. Feel her presence strongly, feel her compassion and care. She is protecting you, aiding you, leading you. She is the ally that you can whole-heartedly depend upon. She is the essence of the clear light, your goal, enlightenment. Generate love for her, and trust and respect. She is the illumination that comes with realization. Focusing on her and praying to her, fall asleep.

BEHAVIOR

Go to a quiet place where there are no other people. Cover your body with ashes. Eat heavier foods that help to overcome wind disorders. Then jump wildly around, fully expressing whatever is inside, letting out whatever blocks or distracts you. No one is around, so explode if need be. Let this catharsis clean you and relax you. Act out all your tensions. With great fervor pray to the master, the yidam, the dakini, and the refuge tree; pray strongly, asking for the experience of clear light. Then sleep inside of that awakening experience.

PRAYER

If you have not had the experiences of the clear light of day, meditation, and sleep, pray for these results again and again. It is easy to forget about the simple power of wish and prayer. We think that prayer must be something extraordinary, directed to some incredible power external to us, but this is not the case. The important point is to feel strongly the intent and desire in the prayer, to put our heart in it.

Originally, perhaps, when people wished one another good night or good morning, or to sleep well, there was some power in the words, some feeling. Now these are just habitual phrases that we mutter mechanically, with little feeling or meaning. The same words are used, they are spoken in the same tone, but they are without power. Be careful not to do this with prayer. Know that prayer has power but it is not in the words; it is in the feeling you put in the prayer. Develop intention, make it strong, and put it into the prayer.

DISSOLVING

Doing this exercise can give a sense of how the focusing in the practice should be. The practice begins with light and the perceiver of light, but the intent is to unify the two.

Relax fully. Shut your eyes and begin with a precise visualization of the whitish-blue tiglé, about the size of a thumbprint, in the heart center. Slowly let it expand and grow more diffuse. It is good to see the light of the tiglé but more important to feel it. Let the light radiate from your heart. As the beautiful blue light shines out, it dissolves everything it touches. Dissolve the room you are in, the house, the town, the state, the country. Dissolve every part of the world, the solar system, the entire universe. Every point the mind touches—whether place, person, thing, thought, image, or feeling—dissolve. The three worlds of desire, form, and the formless—dissolve. When everything external is dissolved into light, then let the light come to you. Let it dissolve your body, so that your body turns into blue light and merges with the blue light around it. Then dissolve your mind—every thought, every mental event. Dissolve all the problems in your life. Merge with the light. Become the light. Now there is no inner or outer, no you or not you. There is no sense of a substantial world or self. There is only the luminosity in the space of the heart, which is now pervasive space. Experience still arises, but allow whatever arises to dissolve spontaneously in blue light. Let this happen without effort. There is only light. Then slowly dissolve even the light into space.

It is here you should remain during sleep.

EXPANDING AND CONTRACTING

This is a similar but more formal practice meant to support sleep yoga. Visualize thousands of blue HUNGs coming from both nostrils with the exhalation. They originate in the heart and travel up the channels to leave the nostrils with the breath. As they spread out, pervading all space and all dimensions, they dissolve everything they encounter. Their luminosity illuminates all space. With the inhalation, the light of the HUNGs returns, illuminating and dissolving body and mind, until there is no inner or outer. Do this visualization until there is only the expanding and contracting light of the HUNGs. Dissolve into this light, and abide in the non-dual state. Do this for twenty-one breaths, or more if you can. Practice this during the day as often as possible.

The mind plays tricks. Its main trick is to identify itself as the subject and then take everything else to be separate from that subject. In this practice, everything perceived as outside of yourself is dissolved on the exhalation. The perceiver is dissolved on the inhalation. Both outside and inside become luminous and clear and merge into one another, becoming indistinguishable. Whenever the mind finds a door to escape into distraction, let awareness follow after it with blue HUNGs. When the mind reaches for an object, dissolve the object in light. When the mind returns and fixes on itself as a subject, then dissolve that, too. Eventually, even the sense of solidity can dissolve, the sense of here and there, of objects and subjects, of things and entities.

The Tibetan Syllable HUNG

Generally we think of doing this kind of practice as an aid in generating clear light experience, but it is also helpful in prolonging the experience once it is known and in supporting the continuity of experience.