This is so edgy for me to share (the edge of my edge edgy): I filmed my first puja to listen for personal mantras this year, so that you could see inside the process.

Wrapping myself up in the divine and opening to receive your mantra has felt like (and I have assumed it to be) my private, personal practice of preparation.

But it’s not mine. It’s yours.

When I first turned toward transitioning into this work full-time, and it wasn’t working, the greatest teaching I received from my guru was: You still think it’s you. It’s never you.

The only way any of this works is if I get out of the way. That’s what this video is: a window into my act of getting out of the way.

(My guru also had no use for secrets. She didn’t think pujas and practices were for the annointed few, but for all of us.)

Honoring this, I share it with you.

My ego does not want me to. I am vulnerable. I am in devotion. I am empty, raw and naked. (And frankly, not that flexible.) But it’s not about me. It isn’t even me. Of that, I am clear.

The video is an hour and 18 minutes long, divided into two parts, with the mantra discernment at the end.

Here’s what you’re seeing:

Puja is a moving prayer. My moving prayer is a practice of yoga that invokes devotion and detachment. That is how I want to enter into meditation: clear, empty and with great love.

In this darkest part of the year, I bow to Shiva, the eternal essence, and to Kali, the releaser. I practice a dance of yoga, specific to honoring them, handing down by my Guru. I hold them in mind with each breath.

After which, I set out my Guru’s mala, pink quartz, amethyst and a tibetan bell in the space in which I will place cards with the names of the 11 energies for this years malas, and wrap my malas around my wrists. I ring the bell, listen to its perfect pitch and feel it clear and attune me. Then, I enter meditation with an invocation of Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, and my Guru and her Guru.

This prayer on my breath, I practice what is called the death breath. It is then that I invite each of you in.

In the depth of meditation, I hear the vibration of your energy, your essence, and I hear the discords or disruptions in that vibration.

It’s subtle. It’s not like auditory voice or thoughts or even the voice of intuition. It’s more like a disruption in the silence. That first layer of sound before it becomes sound. Like Om itself.

With all of my attention on this experience of your vibration, I ask what will harmonize you, or sometimes, what you need this year and then I pull a mantra card. The mantra often surprises me (it is never what my mind would have offered you after reading your intentions), but when I listen for you again alongside the mantra, the frequency of the mantra always heals the discord.