The forsaken coming to light

My fellow practitioners

First of all, let me start off by setting ablaze the term ‘seekers’. Those of you who have read previous posts from this blog know that I address my readers as seekers. Seeking is what gives momentum to the mind, and while it may serve a purpose initially, it has to fall away at some point. To address you as seekers no longer feels right and it irks me to be honest and so ‘practitioners’ it is!

I was inspired to write this piece quite a while back and revisited it on several occasions and although the structure was starting to take form on some level, it wasn’t quite ready to come forth up until now. Another reason was that I was debating as to whether I should be sharing my thoughts or not as my own practice is ever evolving and quite dynamic in nature. I inferred that it was perhaps my perfectionist attitude resting on top of the fear of vulnerability that prevented me from allowing myself to express freely. With the amount of expectations I brought upon myself, I would have had to achieve total liberation to ever bring pen to paper again...

As time went by, I started to take a closer look at what I was trying to avoid here, and what appeared as fear was actually a fear of potential feelings of fear, shame, humiliation and unworthiness; a psychological fear, working to protect against feeling these physiological sensations. The whole process of writing this particular piece has been a lesson for me to look at every nook and cranny I could find within me that emanated a sense of resistance. So, if there’s anything left that is holding me back from going ahead with this, let it go up in smoke! 

One evening, as I stepped outside of my room into the open corridor, I saw the scenic view of the mountain range, set aflame, captivating me by all its splendour. It was as though I was looking at a painting of hell coming to life right before my eyes...and it was glorious. The night sky was illuminated with fiery outlines of rows of burning pine trees and the subtle sounds of the crackling wood in the distance filled the otherwise vacant ambience. The dull patches of orange alluded to light cast upon the smoke. I could see my mind trying to interject with thoughts of “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”, crying for its preservation and dying over its destruction. Had I entertained that stream of thought I would have been the one burning and miss its beauty altogether. 

Why is it that we can embrace the serene green mountain range against the brilliant blue sky so effortlessly, yet struggle to let in the same mountain in its wrathful state, coloured in warmer hues against the stark black sky? Have we assigned meaning to colour and then shunned both those colours and the emotions associated with them that we believe to be so dark and unwanted? Have we demonized those emotions and deemed those colours to be hell?

What is it like to see red without all the meanings we give it? Without it ever being called red... For just a moment, what is it like to see it without perceiving it with any add-ons? And what about blue? Is it truly serene or is that yet another feeling we associate it with? If so how come we somehow miss the feeling of serenity when we are feeling blue? Then come solid colours to mind. Is there such a thing as something being one shade of colour or are there subtle variations? For instance, say you are staring at a plain white wall...is it pure white that you see or do you notice that it is engaging with the environment and picking up colours onto itself? If we just look...why do we assume it to be white when it’s tinged with other colours? And how about the bewitching nature of silver, which is nothing but a potential colour in a sense. It's truly mesmerising to see the interplay of silver objects in motion with everything around it. 

Recently, I stumbled upon the Dus Mahavidyas while I was searching for mantras of goddess Kali. Although I’m usually disinclined to write about any religious themes in this space, I would like to share my thoughts on this. These goddesses represent the ten aspects of the divine mother. What’s fascinating is that some of them are depicted in wrathful forms, just as some of the archetypes found in Tibetan Buddhism. So, Kali is an interesting one. She is said to have destroyed Raktabīja, a demon with an ability to duplicate himself with every drop of blood that touches the ground. It’s been told that she severed his head and drank all the blood to prevent him from doing so. But her bloodlust got out of control and Shiva had to come to soothe her. When she finally realised that she had trampled him it is said that she stuck her tongue out in shame. Kali is portrayed as an embodiment of fury but also revered as a motherly figure. 

Isn’t it beautiful to see someone who expresses rage and shame without holding back, being revered as a deity when ordinarily those are some of the emotions that we condemn and reject and are not even allowed to be felt within ourselves? To see a goddess in a figure that represents aspects of ourselves that we have cast off might help us to embrace those feelings once again. And when I mean embrace I don’t mean to react outwardly...not to go on a killing spree by any means...what I mean is to feel...to integrate those emotions that we have demonized for so long. Can we allow them to be felt as if they were just as divine as any blissful feelings? Even though labelling something as divine is yet another layer, it does open us up energetically to a more allowing state of being. If you hear someone knocking on your front door to whom would you open the door? The one who announces themselves as a devil or a deity?

Once we have acclimatised our body to feelings of anger, fear and shame, we can then start to investigate and see the myriad of labels and beliefs our mind associates with the pure energetic sensation. But unless we allow ourselves to feel these sensations, we will try to get rid of them by reacting. Being intimate with sensations, especially those we have discarded as evil or wrong is what Kali represents to me. Now, this is how I see her and how I think she can be of help in practice but hold this lightly as I utilize whatever feels right in the moment and move on to what beckons me in the next.

One thing I must admit though is that I was quite reluctant to write about Kali at first. No matter how hard I tried to steer clear of writing about her, she was the expression that wanted to come through from this piece of writing, and I've learned to love her in the process. Of course, there may be deeper dimensions to her that I'm yet to learn about but I'm glad that she showed up as a raging mountain to incinerate the shackles of belief that restricted feeling deeply into certain aspects that are otherwise considered to be vile. 

Life seems to continuously humble us with lessons by bringing forth all that we have forsaken to be transmuted into light... Teaching us to embody light but without being separate from it...to be light itself. But how can we turn ourselves into light if we are afraid of the burn? So my fellow practitioners, may we burn like a phoenix and rise from the ashes. Take care and have a good day! 

Attributions

Image by Sabine Fenner from Pixabay 

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/biollama-622272/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1669266">Sabine Fenner</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1669266">Pixabay</a>

Photo by Kolkatar  Chobiwala: 

https://www.pexels.com/photo/maa-kali-12994378/