An All Purpose Prayer

 An excerpt from A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield, page 155:

The great Buddhist text from the Tibetan Book of the Dead is a wonderful guide for moving through the process of death, rebirth, and awakening to our true nature. The text is intended to be read to the one who has just died. But because there is fundamentally no division between birth and death, the teachings that apply to the movement from one physical state to another give us identical instructions for living in this life, from one day, one moment, one breath to another. I have read them to friends who are dying, to friends in the midst of divorce, to those on vision quests and to students in retreat.

Remember the clear light, the pure clear light, from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns. The original nature of your own mind, the natural state of the universe unmanifest.

Let go into the clear light. Trust it, merge with it. It is your own true nature, it is home.

The visions you experience exist within your consciousness. The forms they take are determined by your past attachments, your past desires, your past fears, your past karma. These visions have no reality outside of your consciousness. No matter how frightening some of them may seem, they cannot hurt you. Let them pass through your consciousness. They will all pass in time. No need to become involved with them, no need to be attracted to the beautiful visions, no need to be repulsed by the frightening ones, no need to be attached to them at all. Just let them pass. If you become involved with these visions you may wander for a long time confused. So let them pass through your consciousness like clouds passing through an empty sky. Fundamentally they have no more reality than this. If you become frightened or confused, you can always call on any luminous being whom you trust for protection and guidance. 

Remember these teachings, remember the clear light, the pure bright shining light of your own nature. It is deathless. When you can look into the visions you experience and recognize they are composed of the same pure clear light as everything else in the universe, you will be liberated. No matter where or how far you wander, the light is only a split second, a half a breath away. It is never too late to recognize the clear light.