Shakti, Queen of the Cosmos.
(SHOCK-tee) Hindu
The creator. Equalizer of your heart.
Throughout my life I have struggled with inner scorn and self judgement.
I have done it subscously or caught myself and it was hard to stop. Is it true for you?
This is serious stuff. We are taught to not LOVE ourselves. At best, just not COMPLETELY. We hold our love at bay from the one who wants it the most…ourselves. And hold it up for ransom, sadly forgetting or never learning how to give it with no strings attached.
I have re-written this story, an adaptation from a book called “The Storyteller’s Goddess” by Carolyn Edwards. (I will be including a link of me telling this story vs. you reading it here downloadable so check back.)
We learn it young.
Parents, family, school, for many church and so on. This behavior becomes a thought, which we integrate as a belief, which becomes a way of being. We then start to tint (or even paint over) our lives with this sickly terrible color - everything we do, everything we are, everything we create.
This story feels import today and during this time because we are really seeing duality painted across our nation. The right and wrongness of politics, information, etc. We are pointing stiff fingers at good and bad and raising our voices for what should and shouldn’t be.
Let me spill some beans right now, in The New World, in 5D reality, when you “ascend” you exit a perception that in order for one thing to be, the other must leave.
I bring this story to you, today, because this struggle of duality is clearly seen in the outside world as it lives within our inner world. Over this summer, 2020, the idea of self-love and how it is a key to healing our outside world… dropped in a few levels deeper into my body and consciousness… I viscerally felt it in my body as it landed in a way of understanding that words cannot describe.
It is important to understand that as we stay stuck in opposition, we will stay stuck in the cycle of conflict.
And one of the hidden yet powerful ways to change the outside world, is to change what is at conflict and opposition within you.
When I am willing to get intimate with myself and dance with my own differences, I am willing to do that with others.
I’ll say it again, to fix the outside world we need to heal ourselves in the process - creating a world and contributing to a world from a place of health and wholeness vs. sickness and pain. Sarah Marie and I talk about this aspect in a podcast, here.
And so without further adieu the story of Shakti and Shiva.
The goddess Shakti’s name translates as “cosmic energy”;she is the dominant force in the universe. Shakti alone has the power to motivate and move the divine masculine into action;guiding and stirring his energy to that which will become.
Shiva, the King of the Cosmos, her consort - dancing with her, balancing her and feeding her.
Hinduism honors the union of differences as the ultimate power of the universe. The coming together of masculine and feminine, creator destroyer, and god and devil, yin and yang.
The Shakti and Shiva together dance at the center of the universe and thus the center that is within the human heart. The dance of Shiva and Shakti is the kundalini rising, the ultimate union within, the honor and acceptance of all of you, and the embodiment of empowerment.
The Story: The Center of the Heart
I take my sister. I take my lover. I take my friend. But in the end, I have to go alone to the center of my heart to find the love I am searching for.
At first I said, let’s not waste time, my heart is inside me - why should I go there? I have it already. But really, I was afraid. I wanted a hand to hold. For what if I don’t like what I see when I get there… in my heart? What if I guard myself from my own love, holding love back as if for ransom or only given when I do good? What if I deem myself not good, unworthy enough for my own compassion, my own forgiving, unconditional, passionate love?
But I have to go alone. I have to travel deep inside to the most tender parts of myself. Telling myself I can be trusted. I won’t hurt you, I promise, I come in peace.
I move through the kaleidoscope of my memories, all the teachings I’ve taken on, the wishings I have whispered to myself, the corrections and rules I now demand from myself, the pressures of policies and politics stealing my attention. I have been trained, trained to keep my power at bay, to stay small and be quiet. Keeping my dreams in a locked dairy in the darkness of my mind.
I have been taught that not all of me is loveable and I remind myself of this everyday.
I move through my conscious, daydreamy through subconscious... I move through the wind, the sun, the rain. The seasons reflected in my body, the ebbs, the flows. Each layer of myself cleansing and revealing to me deeper to my truths.
I travel past jeweled elephants and big green jungle leaves. I turn through the spiral of peacocks, and roses and I swim under the fan of the voluptuous pink lotus into the warm black muddy-ness of its roots. This is the doorway, the pathway, the tunnel to my heart.
I have become still, relaxed, surrendered and baptized by the depths of me. I allow the current of my heart to pull me, returning me, to my center. I float down, down, down, deeper and deeper. The silence is like a velvet curtain. I know my conscious eyes are blind here, so I open my unconscious eyes to see through the unlit abyss of my soul.
As I travel nearer, I hear a humming, a sweet song… Is it coming from me? I hear my voice humming, singing along. This song without words, yet I feel it talking to me, calling to me, begging me to come closer. It is my heart, my heart's song.
And then I can see a red velvet room. And I know that I have returned, I have come to the center of my heart.
Yet when I get to the center of my heart, I am not alone.
For the Shakti and Shiva are there. Both beautiful, sultry, waiting for me, eyes on me, loving me like they have known me for all time. The divine cosmic balance between all things; they create a most satisfying wholeness.
Inside this red velvet room is a bed hung with silks, draping all around. Shakti and Shiva hold each other on cosmic flower petals, laying on the bed. I feel shy. Surely this embrace is not for me to see. Surly I have interrupted something intimate, something private. But I feel a sweeping longing and a fascination; I want this wild abandon.
“Oh, but I should go!” The fear says inside me.
But then, as if he knows, Shiva sits up, “Stay!” he says. The movements of his head and hands and body are as graceful as a cat’s. I am captivated by him.
“This is the center of your heart, after all,” Shakti says. Her eyes are laughing, and she has hooked a hand over the rosy red blanket, rubbing the surface, invitingly me. Enticing me.
“Stay and let us tell you a story.”
Shiva pats the bed too with a welcome in his eyes.
I hold my breath. And I walk closer.
“Come,” says Shakti. Her arms reach out to me. I float over as if in a dreamy state and place myself upon the bed between them,allowing myself to melt into this safe and satisfying place.
I can smell their jasmine, patchouli and sweat, as I lay enveloped in their arms, their warm embrace. I feel myself drift off to sleep, a heavy, deep, healing sleep.
When I awake, I wonder how long I have slept. I feel my face and I trace with my finger, the design imprinted on my skin by the cuddle of the covers. I have not moved. I breathe deeply and open my eyes. I look up to see Shakti and Shivas’ eyes upon me again. Have they been holding me, watching over me, loving me, filling me, this whole time?
As I lie, tiny between them, hot from their celestial bodies, they tell me their story…
“At the beginning of every beginning,” says Shakti, “I am alone. There is nothing. It is as if I am like a windless silk ribbon of fire, full of life, jeweled, vibrant with color, ready to birth, but not moving. And then I see something shimmering, sparkling, stunning like a star colored by lightning. It is Shiva that I see. His lashes, long, his eyes like melted chocolate, his cheeks smoothe and I want to kiss them. He too is still. And so we float, drifting in and out of timeless sleep. Waiting, waiting for the moment creation comes into being.
“And then finally, with no more patients to spare”, Shiva tells, “She wakes me.”
“Yes, I want him up. I am ready.” Shakti interrupts. I want to feel the powerful pulses of labor through my body. And so I kiss him and kiss him again. I wake him with my kisses and our passion like fire rippling from our hot liquid lips, down my throat, through my heart, to the core of my fruitful body.”
Shakti and Shiva lace their fingers over me. I am enraptured in their story. I feel soft, safe and I feel the passion radiating from them, from me.
“When I wake him, I take him into my arms and we dance,” says Shakti. “And how you dance my love, how you dance.”
I turn my face up to Shakti's and her eyes are looking at me, then Shiva, and me again. I feel a melting between us. And I see Shiva’s mouth and eyes soft and wet. He turns his head down to mine and draws his finger across my cheek, “You know this dance, it is within you, of you. Fierce and wild, yet graceful and innocent. It is powerful and at the same time open and vulnerable.”
I felt a knowing, a remembering, an excitement fill me. Oh, I can imagine that dance. The dance of all of me. Undulating, spinning, whirling all of me.
Shakti and Shiva curl their arms about me in the nest of their heart, in the nest of my heart.
“You are the melody of the Universe. A cosmic seed come to life. Against all odds blooming with your purpose, your beauty, your being.” Says Shakti.
“And you are the breath that sings to me, my beloved”, says Shiva.
“You are of us, dark and light, creation, destruction, love and sorrow, loss and gratefulness, simple and complex.” They say together.
The room mutes around me. And I sleep again. Lost in their words, allowing them to heal me whole again. In this dream I see all faces of Shiva and Shakti. There are harsh words, explosions, surrenders, and crying. There is lust and flirting, there is truth and sharing. There is ecstasy and expression and the throbbing of desire. I am in the fiery center of the divine heart.
I am spinning and then I feel myself floating again, past the velvet and flowers, through the mud and roots and up between the fan of the lotus and over the spiral of peacocks and jeweled elephants and the green of the jungle. Back through the rain, the sun, the moon, the wind…
I have returned to my waking life. With my daughter, my brother, my friend, my lover; I am back from the center of delight and pain, up from the shades of death and rebirth- the elixir of immortality and up from the everlasting temple of my heart, where Shakti and Shiva dance - sleep and dance again.
I have brought back with me the knowing that all of life lives within me - that I can love and know and acknowledge and appreciate the energies of all that diversity, the yin and yang, the feminine and the masculine and I hear the melodies, the song of my heart and feel the dance, the balance, the truth that there can be harmony between these things. I feel a wholeness, a fullness, a fulfillment in my heart, void of longing. I am not afraid, I am in love, deeply in love with myself. My nooks, my crannies, my sweetness, my wild. It is all for me and all of me.
I still smell the jasmine, the patchouli, the rose - for it is my own elixir that captures my adoration now.
It is me, it is me.
Questions:
What did this make you think about in your own life?
How can you honor your differences and your contrasts?
Can they both be honored, given time and place to express?
Can you now be curious about those things that seem opposite of each other in daily life and the world?