A Transformative Vision of Tara

  Om Tare, Tu Tare,

  even in the darkest prisons,   you offer your hand:

  Your touch cools hatred and grief.

  From you, the demons of delusion fly

 Praise Tara, whose fingers adorn her heart

 Light radiates from a wheel in Your hand.

It is an irony that the most profound and meaningful things in my life I, by and large,  I cannot talk about.  I share  my visionary or intuitive experiences  hesitantly, if at all, because ours is not a culture that accepts visionary experiences as true or meaningful, let alone open for discussion and interpretation.   And yet, for me, and I believe many others, they are true touchstones as we navigate the passages ebbing and flowing throughout our lives.     

The other reason is because these experiences, which are so important to me in forming my worldview, belong to "the Mystery".  "Mystery" is derived from a Greek word that means "that which cannot be spoken", and probably relates to the ritual Mysteries of ancient Greece.  Participants were forbidden to speak of them, and to this day we do not know what actually occurred at the great, once in a lifetime Elusinian Mysteries although we do know they were about the triple Goddess Persephone/Demeter/Hecate.  And indeed, some experiences seem to be too profound to speak of.  Doing so diminishes them.  Perhaps the spaciousness of poetry is best, because the Poem has wide spaces for the imagination to roam.

I've been re-reading "Journey of Souls" and other books by Michael Newton Ph.D.  and others from his  Newton Institute recently.  Newton, and later his students, used hypnosis to bring thousands of people into altered states of consciousness, wherein they would consistently, even if they did not particularly "believe" in past lives, describe past life events and, more importantly as far as Newton's research was concerned, "between life experiences".  The work is fascinating to read about, and there is no doubt that Newton devoted his life to it, ever seeking to understand (sometimes in very dry, academic ways) what his patients and clients revealed.

Because of re-reading his books, I felt like sharing a very important vision  I had in 1997, a vision that helped me to begin a new life, to  release the past, and a vision that  became the inspiration for the many masks I made dedicated to the Goddess Tara. I also created a spoken word performance dedicated to Tara as well.   I've come to the conclusion that such visions, such experiences, are personal Blessings.  And they also are universal, and as such, I believe I  should share them.   It was a profound gift.

White Tara Performance, "Goddess Alive", 2002,
conceived and directed by Macha NightMare

In 1997 I was getting divorced, and all ties were severing between us.  The ending of the marriage,  did not bring out the best in me, and I felt a great deal of remorse, emotional confusion, and grief.  In my effort at healing and self-growth that summer, I went to a well known energy healer, a Shaman,  in Massachusetts,  Jewell.   After a brief relaxation exercise, she put me on her table, and I went immediately into a trance state.

I found myself standing before what looked like many television screens, and each one was playing what seemed like  "clips"  from  movies.  Each scene was rapidly replaced by another scene.  I still remember some of  those "clips" quite vividly:  a ceremonial room decorated with  orange marigolds;  an emaciated old black woman lying on a dirty bed;  a heavyset white man with glasses, bundled up in a kind of fur parka;  African drummers, drumming with passion around a fire, and more.  Gradually,  I felt myself "pulled back", so that I seemed to be watching these scenes from a greater distance, as if they formed a patch-work quilt of moving images.  I remember thinking how incredibly beautiful it all was from that perspective, like a great, colorful work of art.

White Tara at the Parliament of World Religions (2015)

Then I became aware of an immense energy - an enormously powerful being that radiated (there's no other way to describe it) tremendous compassion and love.   

She had no form, just intense white light.  The only thing that seemed identifiable was that I felt the Being was female.  And  she communicated something like "Don't take on so, Lauren - look at all of this.  You'll meet again.  You can move on now."  

I might add that she also radiated an equally huge sense of humor!  I felt  like a little child getting a loving pat on the head from a Goddess.   If that makes any sense........

Then I was infused again with compassion, and She left.


When I came to on Jewell's table, I described my experience to Jewell.  I learned that Jewell  began her sessions with a prayer from the 21 Praises to Tara, a  series of Tibetan prayers to the  21 Manifestations of the Goddess Tara.  To me, that visitation was White Tara, Goddess of Compassion, manifesting to help me move forward to a new stage of life. 

I've revered Her ever since, made a number of masks for Her.  And indeed, shortly after that Vision, the divorce came through.  I packed up my car, and moved to a new home, a new community, and a new life in California, even as my former husband found a new partner and a new life as well.  I believe this was done with Tara's Blessing.

 Mana Youngbear as "White Tara" (2004)