Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine
A method of inner transformation and empowerment into wisdom and fierce compassion. Be a part of the rising and return of the sacred feminine.
ADVANCED PRAISE FOR WISDOM RISING
Deepak Chopra, MD
“Wisdom Rising speaks to the sacred and feminine in all of us.”
Eve Ensler, activist, playwright and author of The Vagina Monologues
“Like our mother, Tara, who knew she could attain enlightenment in a woman’s body, Wisdom Rising is a stunning call to women to trust our bodies and beings to manifest the energy, vision and spirit to heal and transform these terrible times. A book full of wisdom, experience, stories, dakinis, mandalas, practices and possibility.”
Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge
“These teachings are medicine for our times.”
Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence
“In Wisdom Rising, Tsultrim Allione draws on her spiritual depths to distil profound Tibetan wisdom into user-friendly practices well-suited for our times and lives.”
Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now
“This book made me realize how undervalued the feminine perception has been and how women can contribute their uniqueness substantially more than they currently are.”
Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness and Real Love
“Those who adopt the practices offered here, women and men alike, may indeed feel their wisdom rising and act as forces for healing in the world.”
Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart
“A powerful gateway of awakening for men and women alike into the deep feminine through the Tibetan teachings. Wisdom Rising is a great contribution.”
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, author of Into the Heart of Life
“We should be deeply grateful that these traditional Tibetan methods are now presented in a creative manner. This book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of both the Wisdom Dakini energies and the mandala principle in general.”
Shiva Rea, yogini, author of Tending the Heart Fire
Wisdom Rising is a treasure for all women as it illuminates the path of healing, awakening and empowerment for women through the mandala.”
Roshi Joan Halifax, Abbot, Upaya Zen Center
“The empowered feminine is fully and deeply revealed in this powerful and revelatory book, a book whose time has come, and yet born of years of practice and deep inquiry by its author the beloved teacher Lama Tsultrim Allione.”
Krishna Das
“BREATHE THIS BOOK IN! Lama Tsultrim shares her personal inner search and journey of healing and realization in this amazing Teaching.”
Michaela Haas, PhD, author of Dakini Power and Bouncing Forward
“What a timely message of empowerment and hope! Lama Tsultrim Allione, one of the foremost pioneers of bringing Buddhism to the West, guides us on an inspiring journey into the heart of Tibetan Buddhism – the sacred principle of the awakened feminine. Allione masterfully shows us the secret to harnessing the energy of the dakini within, through contemporary stories, personal experience, and age-old wisdom.”
Elizabeth Lesser, Cofounder of Omega Institute, author of Broken Open and Marrow
“In this magnificent teaching memoir, Lama Tsultrim writes: “We must learn to leave something when we take something.” Lama Tsultrim has taken gems from her long immersion in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and leaves us this guide for spiritual life, emotional healing, and—if we follow her fierce, feminine lead—restoration of Mother Earth.”
Diana Rowan Rockefeller, Trustee at The Authors Guild Foundation, former editor at The Atlantic Magazine & former contributing editor, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
“A transcendent work by the extraordinary Lama Tsultrim Allione. She has mastered and distilled the most complex and subtle of esoteric Buddhist concepts, she brings her own deep moral feminist courage and that of her stalwart ancestors to her teaching and writing, and to this powerful call for the re-emergence of the sacred Dakini principle in all of us. We, and our troubled world need this journey-map to healing and evolution.”
Sangye Khandro, Teacher-translator
“Lama Tsultrim Allione is generously offering a feast of wisdom nectar and enjoyment as she weaves together the prose of a great life story with the truth of the Buddhadharma that she has internalized over her lifetime. Lama Tsultrim has illuminated the outer, inner and essential meaning of the sacred configurations of mandalas, providing an accessible and useful guide for transformation and wisdom. May there be great benefit for all who read this!”
Elizabeth Namgyel, author of The Logic of Faith
“Lama Tsultrim Allione is a pioneer, a serious seeker of wisdom, and a teacher who has had a tremendous influence on Western Vajrayana Buddhism. As a mother, long-time practitioner, and someone who has studied under some of the most realized contemporary masters of the Vajrayana tradition, she has a lot to share with us. In her new book, Wisdom Rising, she presents the wisdom of the mandala principle in a personal, earthy, and authentic way. I think that you will find the stories and instruction in this book deeply inspiring, transformative, and practical.”
Feeding Your Demons®
Tsultrim Allione brings an eleventh-century Tibetan woman’s practice to the West for the first time with Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict, an accessible and effective approach for dealing with negative emotions, fears, illness, and self-defeating patterns. Allione – one of only a few female Buddhist leaders in this country and comparable in American religious life to Pema Chödrön – bridges this ancient Eastern practice with today’s Western psyche. She explains that if we fight our demons, they only grow stronger. But if we feed them, nurture them, we can free ourselves from the battle. Through the clearly articulated five-step practice outlined in Feeding Your Demons, we can learn to overcome any obstacle and achieve freedom and inner peace.
Feeding Your Demons® was elected one of The Best Spiritual Books of 2008 on SpiritualityandPractice.com.
Read the review here.
Praise for the Book
“In Feeding Your Demons Tsultrim Allione has performed a remarkable feat of cultural translation and offered the western world a new treasure. She has taken a great and relatively unknown ancient lineage of practice and rendered it into accessible modern form without compromising its essence or losing its power. In this she brings to bear the depth of her forty years of vajrayana training, her skills as an accomplished lama and a visionary, her sophisticated understanding of the western psyche and her fearless consciousness, steeped in the two worlds of classical Tibet and modern life.”
– Jack Kornfield author of Path with a Heart
“Feeding Your Demons is a bold, beautiful, and original work, a book that Carl Jung could only have dreamed of writing. Tsultrim Allione shares the accumulated fruits of her own deep understanding in a completely accessible way, taking the most profound insights and rendering them simply and straightforwardly without compromising them. This is an extraordinary accomplishment, a gift to all who read it.”
– Mark Epstein, M.D., author of Thoughts without a Thinker and Psychotherapy without the Self
“In Feeding Your Demons Tsultrim Allione offers us a powerful and transformative practice…one that can heal the deepest wounds and reveal profound spiritual truths. What is so striking is how, through her own tremendous clarity and heart, Allione brings this practice alive and renders it truly accessible. This book will serve all those who want to untangle the tangles with wisdom and love.”
– Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance
“Feeding Your Demons offers an original and powerful approach to challenging the forces at work in the shadows of our psyche. Tsultrim Allione has done a masterful job of translating ancient—and fascinating—methods to heal modern emotional troubles.”
– Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence
“Tsultrim Allione shows us what life could look like if we were not struggling, not hating ourselves for our problems and frailties, but rather were relating to these challenges with awareness and compassion. She illuminates a clear and practical guide to transformation.”
– Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness
“At first glance, some people may misunderstand what is meant by feeding rather than fighting your demons, as one woman said to me recently, ‘I am aware that I am constantly feeding my demons by indulging in negativity, I don’t need a book about it.’ But feeding your demons as taught by Tsultrim Allione is not a method that increases your patterns of suffering, it is a direct way to free ourselves from psychological paralysis by making conscious that which festers in the unexamined regions of our hearts and minds. I feel immensely grateful to Tsultrim for her exalted clarity and deep care in translating and offering this yogic practice of liberation in such an accessible yet profound form. We are all so fortunate to have such a genuine yogini among us.”
– Sarah Powers, International Yoga Teacher and author of Insight Yoga
Testimonials for the Feeding Your Demons® Process
FYD work has fascinated me ever since I was introduced to it first. It has continued to support my personal development and my spiritual practice. It is of immense value in my therapeutic work. It facilitates development and healing and opens up doors to the peace of nonduality for people, who have not been familiar with Buddhism before.
I remember one FYD work with a client that particularly impressed me. My client had suffered from a spider phobia for several years. Physically he was very tall and slim and experienced his body as disgusting as the spiders he was afraid of. He refused inhabiting his body and hence felt very unlively. His demon emerged as a huge spider, almost two feet big. It needed warmth, security, and contentment from him. As he fed the demon, the spider transformed into a cocoon, out of which a beautiful butterfly arose. By being accompanied by this butterfly, his liveliness and his personal radiation increased. For the first time in his life he felt at home in his body.
That is one example for the numerous instances I have found FYD work to be helpful and supportive for my clients.”
– Dr. Barbara Staemmler, Würzburg, Germany
“The addition of the Ally in the process has drawn an even richer symbolic language into concrete participation in my life. Even though the Inquiry Process has greatly influenced the dissolving of attachment to beliefs and stories over the years, I notice that Chöd and the FYD Practice has significantly reduced reliance on “thinking”. There is such an immediate noticing of either “connection” or “disconnection” in the practice, as if it invites a complete paradigm shift.
What I am noticing is a loss of interest in ” understanding” and a deeper trust in the process itself. What it brings up in that moment is a playfulness that had been unfamiliar and feels very alive. This experience is also really impacting my own work. Clients and students are actually commenting on that. I certainly sense it, but cannot really describe the shift words. So exciting!”
– Anke
Women of Wisdom
Women of Wisdom by Tsultrim Allione is an exploration and celebration of the spiritual potential of women as exemplified by the lives of six Tibetan female mystics. These women achieved full illumination despite cultural prejudices and a host of other problems that male practitioners do not encounter, and their stories are an inspiration to everyone on the spiritual path.
Tsultrim Allione’s extensive autobiography, preface and introduction about her own difficulties and triumphs along the path speak directly to women in the West who pursue a spiritual life. WOMEN OF WISDOM offers valuable insights to all those interested in women’s spirituality, regardless of background or tradition.
“Women of Wisdom is both fantastic and inspiring for Buddhists and non-Buddhists, female and male alike.”
– Victoria Scott, The San Francisco Chronicle
“One of the first and best books to bring out the riches of the feminine in Buddhism. Filled with inspired stories, WOMEN OF WISDOM is truly a classic”
– Jack Kornfield, author of A PATH WITH HEART
“For anyone interested in exploring new ground regarding wither women and religion or Tantric Buddhist lore, this book is a treasure.”
– Anne C. Klein, PARABOLA, The Magazine of Myth and Tradition
