Meeting the Legend

"Give me your hand," she said.

I laid my fingers, face-up, in the cup of her open palm. I could feel the warmth radiating from beneath the surface of her skin, concentrated in a single spot that pulsed, slowly...filling me beat by beat with a soothing, comforting energy.

She closed her eyes, and I studied her face. It was not the perfect, wrinkle-free mask of serenity that I had envisioned when I first glimpsed her from afar. In that moment, my breath caught, seeing heaven in this earthly form.

The creases in her brow betrayed the years of concentration/examination/intropection which were the price of her wisdom. The corners of her eyes showed faint traces of the course worn by tears which could not be contained. The quietude of her expression could not hide the deep laugh lines engraved over years of struggling to learn to laugh with life.

Instead of making her look older, the experiences relayed by these marks made her ageless. This was the source of the radiance I saw from afar -- the radiance of life lived and loved for what it was.

Reflecting

The great thing about having a blog (even one that is updated as infrequently as this one) is the opportunity to look back at my experiences/thoughts/lessons and see how much (or many times how little) has changed over time.

Not having been here in a while, I just took a brief glance back at some of my posts and I don't even recognize many of my own words. It's cool and kinda weird at the same time. So cool to see that I've received such powerful messaging, so weird that even a year or more later, I'm still processing it.

This frustrates me, more than a little. But I need to be patient with myself and remember to be grateful that I even recognized the messages in the first place, that I wrote them down/captured them so that I could have a place to return to and continue the lessons.

Meeting the Goddess Kali

I've just met the goddess kali for the purpose of learning how to "let go of the things I need to let go of in order to move to the next phase of my life." During the course of this meditation, I descended down to the depths of the earth to find myself at the top of a rocky mountain (descended to the top, I know...) and there is where I encountered Kali. I was asked to face my fears, the things that were most standing in the way of my life at the moment. So i summoned up fear of embarrassment, self-doubt, pride/vanity, envy, spite and whole host of other aspects of my character that I thought might be holding me back from fulfilling my greatest potential. The meditation instructed me to ask the Goddess to grant me the knowledge/wisdom/courage to conquer these things and here's what she said: "To conquer, you must accept."

That was totally unexpected! But in a second, I saw that it makes total sense. The minute I accept something, really accept it, there is no way it can have any power over me. I need to embrace all parts of me, even the ugliest parts. In the meditation, I faced the things I summoned, one by one, and absorbed them back into myself. Then they were no longer standing in my way, my path was cleared...I had been the only one getting in my own way. All I had to do to remove the obstacles I perceived in my character was to accept these things as part of my human nature.

After the meditation, I was to create a work of art and then destroy it in order to learn to let it go as part of the process of transformation. But for me, this didn't fit quite right with the advice I was given by the Goddess Kali. It occurred to me, instead of creating something in order to destroy it, I would create something embarassing ugly/displeasing and then put it in a place of honor, so that I could see it everyday and be reminded to cherish every part of me, even the ugly parts. There is never anything standing in my way, exept for the resistence I create against myself.

Prior to this meditation, I was unfamiliar with the Goddess Kali, only vaguely aware of her being known as a "goddess of destruction." I guess she is, but I see now that breaking/tearing down, or conquering through force/coersion, is not the only path to destruction. Ego can be destroyed non-violently, peacefully, through the loving act of acceptance.