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.

Praise for Skymind

“Skymind is a journey into the essential teachings of Machig Labdrön, the eleventh-century Tibetan woman who founded the Zhijé Chöd, one of the Eight Great Chariots practice lineages. Based on primary sources, the authors brilliantly metabolize these teachings in a way that can deepen our understanding of the very nature of reality. Skymind also offers essential pragmatic insights into daily life and meditation practices that transform our dulled awareness into luminous clarity.”

—Lama Tsultrim Allione, founder of Tara Mandala and author of Feeding Your Demons

“Skymind is a radiant invitation to rest in the tender vastness at the heart of who you are. Charlotte and Pieter offer wisdom born of deep, consistent practice and attentive lived experience. Guiding us toward the spacious presence that holds everything, this book is both a quieting refuge and a clear call to awareness.”

—Elena Brower, best-selling author of Practice You and Hold Nothing

“Drawing on the secret teachings of Machig Labdrön, Tibet’s great wisdom Mother and founder of the Chöd (Severance) lineage, this book offers an uncompromising path to freedom from self-fixation. The profound path of open awareness is an exploration of the luminous, nondual nature of mind—a fundamental, wakeful wholeness that is always already present. This is the radical invitation of Skymind, the vast, luminous, and unconditional awareness that is our true self.
Machig Labdrön’s revolutionary approach teaches that true liberation is found not by avoiding our fears but by turning toward and even nurturing what we consider most repulsive or frightening. This is a courageous journey of the awakened heart, calling us to meet our darkest shadows and recognize that wholeness includes everything—joy, suffering, and the totality of being.”

—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, author of The Heroic Heart and subject of the best-selling biography Cave in the Snow

“Skymind is a spacious invitation into direct experience of the brilliance and joy of our true nature. Accepting this invitation liberates and transforms, opens and releases us from the fear, struggle, and confinement of our conceptual prisons. We live and embody this primordial freedom through compassionate activity in our everyday lives. Highly recommended!”

—Gaylon Ferguson, author of Welcoming Beginner’s Mind

“What a precious treasure! Skymind elegantly guides us through the hidden depths of the severance journey, placing the dakini Machig’s living wisdom in the palms of our hands. Whether we are longtime pilgrims or brand new to the path, we are empowered to turn toward the demons of our lives with tenderness and skill, opening the luminous vastness underlying everything.”

—Judith Simmer-Brown, Professor Emerita of Naropa University and author of Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism

“Skymind is a treasury of sublime wisdom, transforming power and spacious vision. The writing has the virtue of precision enlivened by clarifying explanations, vivid metaphors, and personal experiences. The authors serve as intimate companions and expert guides through the mental and emotional terrain of ever-subtler layers of ego-clinging, offering at every turn ways to shift toward the realm of pure awareness, radiant compassion, and ever-unfolding beauty and bliss of the universal ocean of being. The narrative arc carries the reader forward with the immediacy and momentum of the storytellers’ art. An illuminating book on every level.”

—Miranda Shaw, author of Passionate Enlightenment

“Charlotte and Pieter have crafted a wonderful book for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. That’s not easy. A lifetime of practice and study is distilled in these pages. Heartwarming stories, illuminating teachings, and most importantly, guided meditations and exercises that bring everything to life make this a welcome addition in the transmission of dharma to the West.”

—Andrew Holecek, author of Reverse Meditation

“Skymind illuminates the wisdom of ancient Tibetan masters with skillful expression that gives readers a clear understanding of their teachings. It is full of insights and offers methods to let go of our mental patterns and open our hearts.”

—Anam Thubten, author of No Self, No Problem

“I translate old Tibetan texts just so that talented new teachers will have authentic sources to reference. It is gratifying that Charlotte and Pieter have faithfully taken the words attributed to Machig Labdrön and not only made sense of them but created an entire coherent journey for our times. Reading Skymind, this heartfelt guide to practices based on Machig’s teachings, it’s hard to imagine anyone who would not be inspired to engage the practice right away.”

—Sarah Harding, author of Chöd and Machik’s Complete Explanation

“The practice of leaning into the things we usually turn away from characterizes Machig Labdrön’s practice of Chöd. The spirit and practice of this essential instruction is indispensable for liberating the mind from confusion and opening the free flow of compassion. The authors of Skymind present the view and methods of this practice in an accessible, insightful, and tender way.”

—Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, author of The Logic of Faith

“Skymind is a gentle and genuine introduction to the wonders of recognizing your natural mind. Chapter by chapter, readers are introduced to practice sequences that make possible the recognition of this mind beyond mind, offering access to the timeless wisdom and unique contemplative style of the One Mother, known as the Lamp from the Tibetan land called Lab (Machig Labdrön). Pieter and Charlotte’s eloquence in conveying their deep experiential knowledge provides guidance that is clear and welcoming, especially to those newly entering these pathways.”

—Professor Anne C. Klein, Lama Rigzin Drolma, Rice University and Dawn Mountain, author of Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse, Meeting the Great Bliss Queen, and Being Human and a Buddha Too

Press

The authors’ smart exercises and encouraging tone make for a compassionate yet urgent call for readers to embrace the full, undiluted reality of life. An excellent introduction to Chöd that honors the practice’s roots without getting mired in doctrine.

— Publishers Weekly, May 2026

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

Skymind is available now wherever books are sold. Your purchase 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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