SKYMIND

What This Book Offers

When we awaken to the sky-like nature of our being, we can recognize that we can include everything in the totality of our being; we can meet every moment of life with a heart of unending compassion and a mind as vast as space.

Skymind is a path of direct recognition.

It invites you into a lived experience of the “groundless ground” — the spacious, radiant awareness already present as your own mind. Not as abstraction. Not as something to attain. But as a refuge available in the midst of work, relationship, anxiety, conflict, and joy.

This book does not place awakening elsewhere. It insists that the ultimate is not separate from the ordinary — that wisdom and daily life genuinely meet. Meditation alone does not resolve everything; psychological patterns and relational wounds are included in the path.

Drawing from the nature-of-mind teachings of Machig Labdrön, this work offers:

• A clear view of your inherent wholeness — “the great, clear light” within.
• A progressive arc of meditation, from stabilizing attention to resting in open awareness.
• A courageous path of non-avoidance — turning toward contraction, fear, and shadow.
• A lived integration of absolute wisdom and everyday life.
• Radical inclusivity — nothing excluded from practice.

What becomes possible is not perfection, but freedom within participation — engaged in life, yet less entangled. Responsive rather than reactive. Clear rather than contracted.

Sometimes the most radical gesture is simply to rest in what already is — and act from there

Why This Teaching Matters Now

Because this journey also includes meeting our darkest shadows – personally, socially, and globally – it is a courageous journey. Courageous means to “have heart,” so it is a journey of the awakened heart.

In a time of fragmentation and acceleration, it is easy to lose contact with what is most basic and trustworthy.

These teachings offer a view of unity that gives rise to compassion. In a culture marked by polarization and disconnection, they point toward community as a quiet remedy — restoring coherence not only within ourselves, but between us.

These teachings invite you to rediscover what has never been absent.

How the Book Is Structured

In this book, we present short verses from texts attributed directly to Machig Labdrön (the famous 11th century Tibetan yogini) that serve as luminous pearls of inspiration, profound guides for everyday life, and pith instructions for meditation. Machig’s precise, arrow-like instructions take us into the heart of the Buddhist teachings regarding our true nature and the nature of reality itself. We can imbibe them like drops of sweet nectar or use them like koans to tie up our ordinary mind so that we may liberate into the mystery beyond everyday preoccupations.

These verses are brief enough to memorize, deep enough to contemplate for a lifetime.

Each verse is followed by an unfolding in contemporary language. The arc follows Ground, Path, and Fruition: recognizing awareness, working skillfully with contraction and ego-fixation, and living the inseparability of wisdom and ordinary life.

The book also introduces the Skymind practice — a meditation instruction in working skillfully with attention and awareness — while practical exercises are woven throughout to support integration in everyday life.

About the Authors

Written by Charlotte Rotterdam and Pieter Oosthuizen, this book emerges from decades of practice and teaching within the Vajrayana tradition — offered with clarity, humility, and a commitment to making the teachings livable.

More about Pieter & Charlotte →

Get Your Copy

The book is available for presale, and will be released May 12, 2026. Pre-ordering Skymind supports the unfolding of this work — study groups, retreats, and a growing international community dedicated to practicing open awareness in everyday life.

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