The purpose of practicing Highest Yoga Tantra is to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible in order to liberate sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment in the shortest possible time.

When your mind is ready, take the initiations when available and train your mind in the practice of the generation stage. You can do a little completion stage practice just to plant the seeds for that, but initially your main emphasis should be on the generation stage. You might like to meditate on the completion stage just for fun, but you cannot accomplish it without accomplishing the generation stage. Do that first and then practice the completion stage.

The reason to take Highest Yoga Tantra initiations and to do the practice is that it is the quickest way to achieve enlightenment in this life for yourself and then to be able to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment the quickest.

From these three deities—Gyalwa Gyatso, Most Secret Hayagriva and Secret Hayagriva—whichever you have the strongest or closest feeling toward, that is your main deity, but you can take all of these initiations and do the practices of these deities if you wish and do retreats. If you don’t have initiations yet for the one that is your main deity, then you can still recite the mantra and recite lamrim prayers (stages of the path prayer of that deity) then later you can take the initiation when you have finished your study of Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo or Middle Length Lamrim, or Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by Pabongkha Rinpoche.

Study these well from beginning to end, then after that you can take the initiations and commentaries and then you can do short or long retreat, but most important is the lamrim. Even if you study the five great treatises, whatever you study, the lamrim is still the most important thing, from guru devotion to developing renunciation, these things.

When you are most fluent in generation stage then you can practice completion stage, for imprints, then with the realization of generation stage—both gross and subtle—then you can complete the practice of completion stage and go to enlightenment.

But the main thing is the lamrim from beginning to end. You can take the initiations, then do whatever commitments are given by the lama who gives the initiation, whether it is mantra commitment or sadhana commitment, but the main thing is the study and practice of the lamrim. Otherwise, it becomes like going in the restaurant and tasting all different kinds of foods but not doing anything properly or correctly. So please practice in the correct way.

With much love and prayers ...