Feedback and Comments | Open Heart

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Feedback and Comments

"Thank you for the transmission. Its all a bit familiar from other Tibetan practices I have done but with some slight differences and I find, those differences have been very powerful. I am really amazed and grateful, thank you so much for being available! Just for an example, your Guru Yoga is the first time I could really understand and get something from that practice. I am really impressed with your teachings as they have had a profound effect on me very quickly, almost immediately. I have been doing meditation and practices since a little girl, now I am 60 years old."

”When I read about The Two Part Formula for awakening it seemed to me very obvious that the self was like a condensation of this energy in the body, like the knots you described. A tightening or clumping of this energy in the head or heart which is uncomfortable.”

”You are offering awakening and then progression to seriously refined states of atiyoga (dzogchen) in a matter of a few years, less even. Is there any group out there anywhere offering this? I doubt it, maybe one or two groups, if that. Diamonds are expensive because they are rare, and you and what Open Heart offers is a diamond.”

”Thank you so much for making these talks freely available. They are an incredible gift.”

”I'd like to elaborate a little bit my experience when visiting the Open Heart center. I highly recommend visiting to everyone. Kim has explained a little bit about the benefits of visiting the center and the teacher. In fact the reason why I wanted to go there, was that I had previously read from Kim's posts, that there is a felt blessing at the center. Ok, this I want to try out, I thought. The moment I opened the center door was like entering another kind of dimension, like being immersed under the bottom of the sea. In a good, clear way, not suffocating or anything like that. Maybe a bit intoxicating at first, but that passed fairly quickly. I was at the height of my mental abilities, clear as the sun, for the next few days in fact. That is why I would say, if you have the change go and find out if you also experience a benefit like this.”

”The service you are offering is priceless.”

”I feel I've made more progress in one week with you than five years with other teachers. Thank you!”

”Awakening (permanent awakening, not glimpses) is still very rare, all across the world and pretty much in every tradition of buddhism. And Open Heart have literally 'cracked the code' of awakening, something that as far as I know has never been done before. The concentration of awakened people in OH, and their opening of bhumis is totally off the scale worldwide.”

”I've never even met you but somehow you managed to get me awakened!”

”This is so wonderful. The distinction between the subject-self and the object-self is such an important distinction to make, something I never understood until I came across the Guidance on the Open Heart-website. Really crucial to awakening. I spent 18 years working with the object-self doing vipassana which would have knock on effects on weakening the subject-self, but left it still alive and kicking, whereas after two weeks looking at the subject-self in the Guidance with Kim I finally woke up! I feel so grateful for this - it's been life changing for me. I don't think there are many teachers out there that understand the subject versus object self distinction. Open Heart is really lucky in this regard. In terms of Buddhism in general, this really is ground breaking stuff.”

"I studied the texts of buddhism, including mahayana and tantra, and figured out that what you teach is according to the scriptures, except that Open Heart teachings are stripped off of any baggage."

”Open Heart is truly blessed that awakening is generated so soon in practice 
with the two part formula (2PF). It literally takes most practitioners years 
to awaken with traditional practices, whether Theravada or Mahayana. 
So much of the struggle of the practitioner working with the self, and the 
paradox of practice is circumvented by generating awakening so early. 
That's why I'm so enthusiastic about the 2PF. That tool could be employed 
to great use in so many other schools of Buddhism, since awakening is 
pretty much a universal goal for all dharma practitioners. A massive boost.”

”Before I came to Open Heart, I thought that the just sitting and Chan 
were the same as Dzogchen/Rigpa. In one sense they have the same open, 
non goal orientated spirit, but doing Open Heart practices I have been 
really impressed at how much deeper and primordial the experience of the 
ati-yoga is to my previous practice. I think it is because of all the elements 
of how the Tibetan Heart Yoga practice is put together: the initiation, 
guru yoga, the jewel visualisation, working with the chakras and nadi 
technique, the mantras, the specific instructions on 'sky gazing' and the 
4 gears of open awareness and the 4 refuges. I'm finding that this really 
takes me directly to a primordial place of stillness to a depth that wasn't 
there in my old practice. It's actually almost shocking sometimes, the depth 
of it all. And it's a healing experience.”

”Wow, Chöd really worked for me! I mentioned Kim that I was looking 
forward to reading about his solution to getting rid of migraine that he 
had mentioned in passing a while back as I'm frequently suffering from those. 
I had just started to have the first symptoms of a migraine, which for me is a 
pressure sensation behind one eye and everyting looking a bit funny. 
I usually don't have too much pain but I'm drained from energy and 
sometimes over sensitive to lights, sounds and smells. Regular pain killers 
won't do anything, only migraine medication helps. So I got the instuctions 
and together with Kim and Karl we did the practice and I did the 
visualization as told. And lo and behold, after the session my eye felt 
normal again and I still haven't had any migraine symptoms since! 
Thus is unusual. For the past three years I've had migraine every single day 
I spend on a work trip plus all the regular migraines at least couple of times 
a month, sometimes even three per week. To be honest I did have some 
maybe-this-is-a-migraine-starting feelings on the bus ride (6 hours!) 
after leaving the center, but I did some chöd visualizations once more and 
always felt better afterwards. This was extremely promising and I will 
definitely continue treating my migraine with chöd in the future. 
Thanks again, Kim!”

”I've been around Buddhism in the UK and Ireland for a while, and I have knowledge of several groups and what goes on in them. As far as I can see, there is nothing even close to Open Heart around. Groups offering a guidance to awakening? Nope. Opening mahasiddha bhumis? Not a chance! There is no expertise like this around publicly available, and if there is it takes years of training and personal commitment to access teachers at that level. What Kim and OH are doing is light years ahead of every other dharma group that I know of, including the group I'm now involved with. It's the simple truth! For many years I was practicing what I thought was shikantaza, but it wasn't really hitting the mark. I now realise that one needs a very high quality teacher like Kim to unlock these practices properly.”

”I recently did the Guidance to Awakening with Pema Rinpoche in early 2017. Prior to that I had 18 years of training experience with a well known UK based Zen teacher. After 7 years with this teacher, I started to get glimpses of my buddha nature. These glimpses continued for about 7½ years, glimpses happening regularly each day. After about 18 years of practice (I had about 4 years with another buddhist group prior to meeting my first teacher) I had experienced probably thousands of glimpses of the natural state and about 10 000-15 000 hours of meditation. So I was an experienced practitioner with very familiar with the the natural state. However, despite all this, I never experienced an awakening i.e. kensho. After my teacher passed away I started to look for help from a teacher outside the group to help me awaken and came across Open Heart. As soon as I tried the Two-Part Formula I realised what I had missed in my training - I had been working with the objective sense of self but ignoring the subjective sense of self. As soon as I started the guidance with Pema Rinpoche things started to shift dramatically for me, and the sense of self started to fall away pretty rapidly. After 15 days of the guidance I finally experienced kensho. I can honestly say that this was a watershed moment for me in my 18 years of practice . My previous teacher was also awakened and worked for many years to try and help students awaken, and would have used this Two-Part Formula had he known about it. All I can do is add my voice here and say that this formula is highly effective at generating awakenings. Many will be sceptical, but some will be willing to try it. Recently, a second person from our sangha has also awoken using this guidance. I am writing this not to prove a point, but because I know from personal experience how hard practitioners work to awaken, and yet despite all their efforts for most it never happens. It was through an online forum that I discovered Open Heart and Pema Rinpoche. I'm sharing my experience here, as discovering this guidance really was life changing for me.

I've continued to practice under Pema Rinpoche to help me with my post-awakening practice. I awoke before he took on the title of 'rinpoche'. Taking on a title like this may be seen as controversial but the quality of the dharma teaching that I've experienced with Open Heart has simply been stunning. Light years ahead of what I've experienced to date. I'm more than happy to state this publicly. And my last teacher was a really excellent one. I have a lot of respect for Pema Rinpoche doing this because I'm sure that he's going to get a negative comments regarding it. I trust him and his motivation. The quality of the dharma is my primary concern. There are plenty of dharma teachers out there with fancy titles who are poor teachers. We just have to trust our experience, try the practices, see the results. That's all we can do. We learn as we go. We have to be pragmatic and be willing to take a chance, otherwise we will never get going. If it doesn't work, at least we tried. Yes, the experience I'm referring to stream-entry, not just momentary glimpses of buddha nature. I was skeptical too before I tried it, but I was willing to give it a try.”

”Awakening through the Two-Part Formula was a life changing shift in my life three years ago. I had done no other practices before started with Pema Rinpoche five years ago, but surely did know enough about suffering. There's nothing extraordinary in awakening, but rather ordinary seeing clearly through the sense of "me" - that there is no "me" or "I" and never was, except as an illusion. Once seen through the illusion, it is not the same as before. Only way to prove the method if it's working or not, and what awakening is, is to go through it by yourself and not to believe blindly one way or the other.
For me the most important indicator in our practice is that if the method and the teacher is really helping or not. Are the methods really working? I can be sure that they do, when my everyday life is getting easier and better. I'm not talking about blissful happiness, but clear seeing. Not from "my" perspective but rather from aware empty space.”

”I have been a student for three years and did Guidance to Awakening six months after I started. For me as others have said, awakening was life changing. A huge relief in fact and the necessary steppingstone for further insight into ones own emptiness. To see through the I-based consciousness, to feel and see it fall away permanently and finally live in clarity and freedom was like having a weight lifted from ones mind. I do fully understand how people might see Open Heart with skepticism - that would be normal I would think, especially from people coming from other historically established traditions/lineages. I can only encourage you to try the teachings for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Speaking for myself the journey has been life changing in the most positive of ways and I am very grateful.”

”I have been a student of Rinpoche 1½ years, when I took part in a Guidance to Wwakening and thus experentially awoke from identification with the feeling of being a solid "I". Since then I have practiced Pemako Buddhism under close guidance from Rinpoche and have experienced a progress that I could not even have dreamt of before discovering Open Heart. I mean, looking back the five years of active spiritual practice before OH feels like a nightmare of just being stuck and reading the classics, wondering why the practice doesn't work as promised. Open Heart teachings and Pema Rinpoche, on the other hand delivers exactly as promised. Simple as that.”