Kuan Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Compassion
On the spiritual path - transforming desire © 2007
Hope Bradford CHt
“[People] want to taste all these experiences. And the ego makes it possible. Don’t curse the ego. So many scriptures curse the ego self. Instead, regard your life as about choices, experiences and desire and that you are already liberated. Don’t be afraid of desire. It is why you’re here: to taste, live.” From: The Living Word of Kuan Yin
Once, during a Kuan Yin session, trance channel Lena Lee's discovered herself riding with Kuan Yin atop a huge, lumbering elephant. As this segment gradually unfolded, Kuan Yin soon revealed that the elephant symbolized one’s “driving force”, the spiritual engine propelling one along his or her path of liberation. This driving or, as it is sometimes referred to, creative force is not some unwieldy inner desire. Instead, as divine beings having free will, we are to appreciate and effectively direct this inherent and powerful force. Saying this process helps us "spiritualize matter"; it is, according to this goddess, one of the main reasons why we've come to earth.
“There
is something Kuan Yin is trying to
show to me about love, compassion and power,” comments Lena, from the
depths of
her trance. “That just experiencing the power of the elephant moving
along is
important. She is also telling me to listen to the sounds of the
jungle, to
just be with what is. 'But Kuan Yin,’ Lena now asks: ‘How do I know
when to
push or to just sit and be with something?’"
"I’m going to be silent for a moment and listen to Kuan Yin’s answer. I’m getting the impression that Kuan Yin is trying to show me how to be aware of the signals. When I said to you, Hope, I was going to listen for Kuan Yin’s answer, I noticed that the elephant turned and went towards a small lake.”
“The elephant needs a drink of water,” Kuan Yin explains in a matter-of-fact way. “So she temporarily veers off the path, traveling to the lake. When she’s satisfied she’ll return to the original path. The elephant’s “break”, then, is good for everyone, helping them to get along better.”
“We’ve
now returned to the trail. Kuan
Yin knows where we’re heading. She has a stick in her hand,” explains
Lena.
“It’s a directional tool. I would never hurt anything. Instead, I just touch one or the other flank, to instruct the elephant which way I want to go. One can’t just “hit life” and expect it will co-operate, go the way one wants. Maybe it will and maybe it won’t. You might have heard the sayings, “the path is the goal” or “the journey is the goal”. These sayings are antithetical to the reality of living in your culture. Your culture is very goal structured. There is always a push to be where one is supposed to be rather than savoring where one is right now. This is cultural, not instinctual. Naturally, one needs a driving force to survive. However, the concept of having specific goals is very Western. This kind of mindset makes people very ambitious. However, no one is obligated to live his life by this Western view of things. It's important to have an idea of the path one wants to be on. This statement comes with the warning that one not be too attached to the outcome. To have a concept about the nature of one’s life path can be a skillful tool in living one’s life. However there is a danger that one will misconstrue a goal to be the entire purpose of one’s life and in so doing perhaps create a negative driving force. Don’t be too harsh on yourself concerning the choices you’ve made during your life. When one subtracts from the equation of life physical birth and death, one can regard lessons learned as forming an infinite line. Then one can say to oneself, ‘I’m learning this right now’."
“Try to crystallize the components of the lesson, excluding as much as is possible gender and financial factors. Repeat to yourself, ‘this is the lesson I’m learning right now, at this exact moment in time’.”
“Kuan Yin is here, now,” explains Lena. “She is immense, having many arms, many dimensions. She’s so real. I’m amazed by the realness of her flesh.”
Within
each dimensional layer or “layer
of karma” (as referred to by Kuan Yin) there lies some mystery about
physical
existence. Through physical life (whether waking, trance or dream)
encounters
will invariably enlighten us. However we are better served when
bringing to
such encounters a very open approach. For example, inquiring about her
son's
sometimes-troubling dreams, Lena was informed by Kuan Yin that dreams
are an
opportunity to work out lingering karma children can bring with them
into a new
life.
That humans can experience a sequential life in a multi-dimensional universe is, indeed, the anomaly of voyaging the earthly plane. Like a butterfly emerging layer by layer, one eventually flies free. No longer a captive of ego’s protective encasement, one becomes the limitless vistas of his or her soul.
Integral to this process, one must necessarily employ focus while allowing for the expression of one's deeply intuitive creative force. This integration is absolutely imperative when directing and refining the shape and breadth of one’s thought and emotional formations. In waking mode, one is continually inundated by a barrage of sensory input. Perhaps unaware one is living the consequences of certain beliefs, intentions and emotions, it is more in the privacy and immediacy of one’s dreams where one perceives the constant play between mind and manifestation.
Within the constructs of particle and multiple universe theories, Kuan Yin’s multidimensional forms and shape shifts show the nature of the universe as it actually exists when ego's linear selection is removed. The embodiment of dynamic concepts of energy and motion and of time and of change in time, Kuan Yin represents every conceivable arrangement of elemental building blocks. Forming immense and infinitesimal self-creations from levels of scale so small as to be undetectable by the human eye, she is the divine expression of quarks, gluons, subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, photons and energy.
Because
the mind can have a hope and because
reality is capable of being imagined, every conceivable arrangement of
matter
and energy combined with thought, however improbable, is postulated to
exist as
a separate universe. The mind, then, as an integral player, is creator
and
governor in the realm of matter and probable realities.
Stating: “You have lived all your lives…there exist only seasons of life”, Kuan Yin is referring to experiences constructed from one’s beliefs and free will; that they continue on as parallel, open-ended dramas. Insisting that each such arrangement, each probable reality, is similar to a still frame in a reel of a motion picture, Kuan Yin explains that any one point in one’s life (or still frame) represents levels of infinitude. Like the tree Lena experienced from her childhood still miraculously existing outside of time and space, each still frame created from one’s mindset has durability, the potential to live on eternally within the original belief framework.
Upon
entering the mental visages of her
trance, Lena could be instantly swept into Kuan Yin's fanciful worlds,
front
and backdrops overflowing with enchanted and alchemistic
tools. Once,
clutching the long train of the Goddess's elaborate garb, Lena whirled
with
wild abandon through the universe. Watching with astonishment, she
witnessed
Kuan Yin’s silken gown opening wide, spreading prayers over the earth.
Accompanying Kuan Yin during each new session was an array of items and environments intended to demonstrate her spiritual canons. Once, coming with a thousand arms, holding traditional spiritual items, (for example, a candle, incense, a peace symbol, etc.) she quickly explained:
“You might find it helpful to read about the many tools I hold in my hands. I can tell you they are often metaphors for human qualities and also are used to balance one’s life.
In offering her many and varied spiritual tools, Kuan Yin provides ways for us to heal beliefs stifling our potential for love and joy. Cautioning that spiritual tools are very individualistic, she explains that we need not feel compelled to utilize spiritual tools designated for other cultures and historical times.
Instead, she recommends seeking out tools and interactive strategies most applicable to one’s present season of life. By skillfully identifying the driving force (intention, beliefs, and emotions) and prevailing circumstances (karma) influencing one’s present situation, one effectively prioritizes his or her individualistic spiritual needs and strategies.
In
several of the chapters, Lena found
herself transfixed by the beauty and complexity of Kuan Yin's wardrobe.
In one
remarkable passage: Lena contemplates the folds traversing Kuan Yin's
regal
robes. In a flash of divine inspiration, Lena suddenly fathoms this
cosmic
enigma: The folds represent one's spiritual mosaic of multifaceted
realities.
Lena and I came to comprehend that the entirety of Kuan Yin’s wardrobe
held a
deep significance, integral to the ancient messages harbored within
each of her
parables. Indeed, Lena experienced her own tightly
wound robes suddenly
loosening and coming undone: a metaphor for the unraveling, and thus
release, from
sorrow.
Happening
upon Kuan Yin strumming an
intricately carved lute, Lena was informed this was Kuan Yin's way of
teaching
that balancing one's energy centers (chakras) is central. Instructing
that we
are made of sound and that sound comes first in the universe, Kuan Yin
urged
each of her readers to practice certain interactive strategies so to
become
familiar with one’s tonal resonance. An expression of the uniqueness of
one’s
soul, tonal resonance is the underlying force, according to this deity,
governing
health and well-being. The source of one’s deepest impulses, one’s
unique tonal
resonance can be finely adjusted just as one might skillfully tune an
instrument. Chakra tuning, right speech and affirmations, chanting and
meditation! Each helps in its own way to strengthen and expand energies
dwelling on the earth.
Encountering
the deity gazing intently
upon a flower, Lena knew this was Kuan Yin's way of conveying the true
meaning
of meditation:
“It’s an interesting thing. Seeing Kuan Yin relating to a flower so intently. She's not just looking at it; she's interacting with it…I’m seeing how the act of relating to a flower appears to be so simple. Yet, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to make such a “simple” act important. Now, the lotus is floating away.”
Well
into our travels, Kuan Yin presented
to both Lena and I a glowing and precious diamond. A metaphor for the
clean and
clear wealth of higher consciousness, this mystical gem was to show
Lena and I
the true meaning of giving and receiving.
About Hope Bradford CHt
A graduate in Women's Studies and Fine Art, transpersonal hypnotherapist, parallel-life regressionist and intuitive artist for over twenty years, Hope Bradford CHt could never have imagined the singular psychic event that would transform her life. Commencing in the winter of 2004, a hypnosis client, Lena Lees channeled twenty-eight sessions delineating Eastern goddess of Compassion, Kuan Yin's modern spiritual scripture. Witness and transcriber to these sessions, Ms. Bradford compiled them into the manuscript, The Living Word of Kuan Yin: The Teachings and Prophecies of the Goddess of Compassion and Mercy.