Category: Neurodiversity

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Transformation

Ask the Mountains

This january marked the 10 year anniversary of starting my tantric path, although I started my journey in hatha yoga in 2011.

What is tantra to me?
It is easy to go into a textbook definition of it, and I will add one further down, but first I want to share what it means to me personally.

Tantra is transformation. It is working with energy in energy systems (of our mind and body).

Tantrics are usually laypeople – men and women with children, jobs, etc. We do not renounce the material and relative world but rather the opposite – using everyday life and challenges as fuel for the path, transforming impure energies into their pure state through specific yogic practices*.

Being a tantric means training and trusting one’s own path and experiences, rather than just doing what is being told – to have disernment and critical thinking, yet stay open and humble.

Tantra can turn ignorance into wisdom, selfishness into compassion. Illuminating the dark corners of our minds, interrupting the cyclical habits, and learning how to read and work with energies; masculine and feminine, peaceful and wrathful alike. To find the center between extremes; letting hope and fear, aversion and attachment collaps into each other. With practice I believe it is possible to return ones mind and body from the samsaric state into its natural pristine state – which is the difference between ourselves and fully realised practitioners/masters of yoga/tantra. It only makes sense to me, for example, that if you can heal 10% of your traumas, you can heal 100%.

There is no tantric lineage without a head teacher (‘guru’ in sanskrit language, although I hesitate to use the word guru because it has been so misused and thus misleading). Tantra is based on passing empowerments from the teacher to the student. All empowerments I have received has been from Finnish tantric teacher Amrita Baba, and I am part of his sangha (community of practitioners), called AmritaMandala. I feel fortunate to have found what I deem to be an authentic Teacher of Dharma, who is able to transmit high teachings to his students, so that we actually feel the shifts and benefits. In this pragmatic lineage we work closely with non-physical tantric masters (mahasiddhas), mainly Padmasambhava, Yeshe Tsogyal, Ishanath (aka Jesus Christ), Babaji, Mataji, Krishna, Radha, Lao Tzu, Bodhidharma, among many others. See full list here.

Personally, I feel a very close relationship with Ishanath, he has for instance healed some of my serious physical ailments spontaneously on more than one occasion since 2021 in meditation, and he is – in my eyes – a true tantric yogi beyond of any religious establishment – pure Christ consciousness.

Impermanence is also a central topic in tantra. It is well believed that a practitioner (tantric yogi/ni) should be able to know what happens at the time of death (our two subtle bodies leaving the physical body), and there are practices for this specifically. Meditation and contemplation on illness, death and the impermanent nature of the relative world is essential.

I vaguely remember a few past lives, and that my soul chose this incarnation; I chose being a girl/woman, my parents, my place of birth, and the immense health challenges to fuel my practice. The deeper the suffering, the wider the perspectives, the greater the lessons and the brighter the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am also a Mother, and both of our boys’ souls came to ‘visit’ me before they decided to be born through me. I feel very honored that they chose us as parents, and I cannot wait to see what their plans are for their lives.

Another important cornerstone of tantra is bodhicitta; the genuine wish to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. This wish can carry you through some of the darkest moments – it really has for me.

Do you have a spiritual practice? 😊



*Main practices of Amrita Mandala is:
Rainbow Body Yoga (free download)


Amrita Kriya Yoga (free download)


Amrita Asana Yoga


Trauma specials guided practice(youtube playlist)


Mending the Broken Human guided practice (youtube playlist)

Talk on Dzogchen, trekcho, thogal and atiyoga (the highest yoga)

Click here to read about Amrita Mandala’s 13 bhumi model

Free e-book on awakening (opening of the first bhumi center inside the head)

The Two-Part Formula for Awakening

Vajrayana is the tantric interpretation of mahayana. The goal is the same in mahayana but the methods are different.

The biggest practical different, as they’re doctrinally the same, are empowerments and transmissions given by a tantric preceptor who traditionally are called gurus (tib. lit. lama). In tantric empowerments the guru transmits the experience of buddhanature that all beings inherently possess that can be afterwards returned and cultivated by the student. This cultivation is done through the repetition of mantras, visualizations and mudras or physical gestures that are direct expressions of the enlightened speech, mind and body. Mantras are specific verbal formulas of various deities or enlightened archetypes of buddhas and bodhisattvas that embody different aspects of our inherent enlightened nature. Manjushri is an archetype of wisdom and discrimination, Avalokiteshvara that of compassion and Vajrasattva that of selfless clarity. The tantric system is an esoteric method of healing and awakening which under certain circumstances leads to buddhahood ie supreme enlightenment (skt. anuttara samyak sambodhi) in a single lifetime.

It is good to mention that the mentioned enlightenment is not something of the distant past and cultures. Vajrayana which is a yogic training system for normal laypeople, enables full enlightenment for anyone who dedicates to pursue the path to enlightenment for the purpose of helping others, is willing to keep bringing accepting awareness to one’s most painful and unpleasant thoughts, emotions and memories and who is willing to continue to the end of the process regardless.

In terms of doctrines vajrayana, like mahayana, is based on the so called Second and Third Turnings of the wheel of Dharma by Buddha Shakyamuni. Interpretations of these doctrines, especially the buddhanature (skt. tathagatagarbha) teaching of the Third Turning vary slightly. However, all vajrayana, also called tantrayana or mantrayana, is based on the doctrine of emptiness or better, selflessness of all things of the mind (skt. shunyata) and bodhicitta which means revealing the natural loving, compassionate and kind nature of ours towards all beings.

Amrita Baba

My tantric tattoo.
A portrait from May 2024, with second baby 🧡
😹🙏🏼
Ishanath
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Mothers Did Not Play With Their Children For 99% of Human History

Ask the Mountains

Why the absence of autonomous, multi-age playgroups makes parenting suck. (This is a reshare of Elena Bridgers’ article).

Sámi mommy breastfeeding toddler in Tromsdalen, Tromsø, Arctic Sápmi, while smoking some tobacco.

“Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and (two or three) gentlemen, because we are about to dive into the my absolute favorite topic of all time: the importance of multi-age playgroups in hunter-gatherer societies. Honestly, I get more excited about this stuff than a dog whose owner just said the word “walk.” Back when I first started reading about motherhood in hunter-gatherer societies there were two things that made me go, “ohhhhhhhh, now I get it.” One is the longer interbirth intervals that probably characterized most of human history (as I wrote about here) and the other is the critical important of multi-age playgroups as a source of substitute childcare for mothers. It was a total epiphany for me, and I suspect you may have the same reaction, because once you see how this used to work, how human childhood evolved to work, it just makes so much sense. Over millions of years, we basically evolved a perfect system involving care of children by children, in a way that was wholly compatible with their own need for play, and that we have entirely abandoned in the modern context, to the detriment of all.

But in order for you to understand why this still matters for mothers in the modern context, I need to tell you my own story about just how much I hate playing with my children (even though I love them deeply) and how misguided I was about the role of a “good mom” and what she owes her kids…

I’d rather stick a fork in my eyeball than play pirates.

Only after I had begun doing deep research on hunter-gatherer societies did I realize that this is exactly how things were supposed to work. Children are supposed to play with other children. It was never meant to be the mother’s job. But trapped as we are in single-family homes where playmates can be hard to come by, parents often end up filling this tedious and time-consuming role…[..]”

Read the full article here.

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A colourful death – Something greater

Ask the Mountains


If you knew that one day someone would be helped and inspired by exactly the trial you are going through now, would it then be easier to bear? I believe that the knowledge/thought that another person can benefit from your story; your experiences and how you solved problems and trials makes the burden lighter in a way; because then you are doing something for something greater than yourself. There is a self-sacrifice in the picture that gives momentum, and you no longer think only of “me and mine,” but also of the well-being of others. I don’t know if this makes sense – I think it’s the autumn and the colourful death and devotion of the plants to the cycle of the seasons that made me write this 🤭🍂💛

-M

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How to Pray | Poem + video

Ask the Mountains

In a world that teaches
me first, me only, me always,
prayer is a quiet rebellion.
It begins with a bow,
a loosening of the fist
that clutches at control.

It dares to whisper:
I am not the center.
I am not the crown of all things.
I am a thread in the tapestry,
a note in the chorus,
a servant of something vast.
Something holy.

Prayer is an act of defiance
against the tyranny of ego,
against the hunger that never fills.
It topples the empire of the small self
and builds, stone by stone,
a sanctuary for all beings.

In prayer, we betray the myth of isolation.
We kneel not in defeat,
but in devotion and love.

Prayer is rebellion,
the most radical kind,
for it wages war not on others,
but on the walls within,
until only openness remains.

Through the power of prayer,
we can align ourselves with life and light itself. What a miracle.

We can call for the aid
of both ancient and recent Masters,
Beyond space and time.
Their luminous wisdom and boundless
compassion can touch our hearts as intimately as the Sun’s warmth opens flowers in the morning mist.

Prayer is not just mere words.
It is the trembling of the soul reaching for our wholeness, a candle lit in the dark, a river bending toward the ocean.
Prayer is tantra and transformation.

-M

Awareness, Health, Neurodiversity, Neurological

Stammering and how it affects me

Ask the Mountains

“Stuttering or stammering, in its simplest form, is any disruption to speech fluency. This could be repetitions, prolongations, or blocks and may occur anywhere in the word or phrase. Nerves or anxiety does not cause stuttering. Stuttering is a neurophysiological disorder. Oftentimes, it is the stuttering that causes anxiety.”

“Stuttering is believed to occur due to dysfunctional blood flow in certain areas of the brain.”

How stuttering has manifested for me:

Blockages; going mute. Also known as stutter blocks. I’ll know exactly what I want to say, but I physically cannot get the words out. They are stuck in my chest, head or throat/jaw. This has made it quite hard to communicate a lot of the time, and to make friends or be social in general. I often rehearse sentences in my head, and get overjoyed if I manage to say it out loud with fluency. This takes a lot of effort, and is why I prefer writing or any other form of communication. I also struggle some with phone calls.

The blocks makes me say “Uummm” a lot too, to kind of fill in the time because I really want to get the next word out, which is quite stressful. I do fear it makes me sound dumb or slow, and it does kill my confidence, especially if I am with people I want to talk a lot with or I know I have a lot to say on the topic we are discussing. I usually have no problem talking to animals, close old friends, chant buddhist mantras or in certain situations where I don’t feel a pressure to say anything. But those situations are rare, and I would love to learn how to “unblock” my speech, which is why I am doing speech therapy too,

Do you have a speech problem, and/or something similar? Let me know how you deal with it.

Thank for reading

Monica xx

Skulsfjord, 2019