Calling oneself a “spiritual person” is all fine and dandy when we are comfy and cozy in our life setup, when we are admiring Ganesha the elephant god as a cute, pot-bellied pachyderm and a sweet deity to put on the wall as a tapestry. “Spiritual life” is fine when our downward dogs and hot yoga classes are helping us look hotter at the next office party.
Spirituality is especially peachy-keen when we have enough money in the bank to afford all-organic food and to pay for our fair trade, shade-grown coffee. Then we love to talk about how we’re “all one” and that “love is the answer.” Then it’s just darned great.
But what is spirituality when we can barely move, when we’re clobbered by our very human existence? When we’re slammed with a debilitating health crisis? When someone near and dear to us dies unexpectedly? When we feel trapped by our life circumstances, of which we feel no way out of, in a million ways, with nowhere to turn? When we absolutely, positively feel there is no solution to the hell du jour and only an airlift from God is going to help? Where do we go when we have nowhere to go? How far does our cute, pot-bellied pachyderm take us then, hmm? What then?
Yes, this is where the rubber meets the road – when we’re in a real, honest to goodness crisis. IF we’re lucky, we may be able to remain conscious during the meltdown. By conscious here, I mean remaining semi-mindful – able to offer up a prayer, still keeping our side of the street clean and doing our best to keep an internal equilibrium. But this is still the realm of the ego, and when we are really, truly losing it (which most churches, spiritual feel-good junkies and self-help gurus will never, ever tell you), the ego is being burnt to a crisp.
If we can’t remain conscious during a life crisis, maybe, just maybe, we can remain aware that we are unconscious, like a person in a coma who can’t quite get out of it but who knows that they are in a coma. We may be able to remain aware – in touch with the witness, or the watcher – that the shit is really hitting the fan and we haven’t a chance.
Calling In the Big Guns
The gods and goddesses of India are archetypes that represent states of existence. Whether or not one embraces the deities as incarnations doesn’t matter. Makes no difference if you’re a yogi or a Christian or an atheist or a Hindu: the quantum realities of the gods are real – as energies, as forces of nature.
When things are truly falling apart and we haven’t an ice cube’s chance in hell to stop it, perhaps it’s time to get out of the way and let the darker archetypes do their job. Let us genuflect to the biggies, Lord Shiva and Mother Kali.
Shiva, god of transformation, is always on the job when things are dying, dancing His eternal tandava dance as Nataraja, lord of creation and destruction of the universe. Create, destroy, live, die. Evolve, rinse, repeat. We egoic humans cling mightily to the pretty, to the living, to the pleasant. Sure, that is our nature – that’s how life goes on, through the life force pulsing through us. But when everything in our life is breaking down, from body to home to pocketbook to profession to marriage, quite frankly, Shiva doesn’t give a shit.
That’s why we worship Him, even if symbolic, and bow down to His altar in great humility. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, Shiva may grant us a shred of grace, once we’ve accepted that He is leading the tandava dance, and we are merely following. This is real tantra. And it doesn’t mean you get to have it your way. It’s not Burger King.
And then… and then there are the heavier-duty cases, where we enter the ghastlier realms of life experience. Now we are in Kali’s realm. We can avoid Her, this darkest of the dark goddesses, and play hide and seek for a long time. Who wouldn’t prefer to hang with Saraswati, who plays a veena harp and rides a swan? Or lovely lady Lakshmi, perched on a pretty pink lotus bed, distributing coins of gold and health and wealth?
But, when the rubble just keeps tumbling down on us and we have no hope and there is no way out and the whole stewpot is too horrifying to face and we want to call it a day but somehow the life force and the cosmic joke keeps us here without release from human existence… THEN we meet Beloved Kali, the dark one, the slayer of illusions. Once again.
O Maa Kali! Lolling tongue, gnashing teeth, severed heads and bloodshed. Here we are now in the realm of the wrathful one, Shiva’s dark consort. Kali comes not when the Tower of our lives is crashing down, no. Kali IS the crash! She makes sure our life structures and petty constructs are totally, 100% annihilated. There is a plan and a divine orchestrator, and we…are…not…it.
How can we feel less than an absolute failure when the Tower is crashing? The error is in mistaking this meltdown to be our own doing, that we have somehow made this happen and could do something to fix it – and fix it now! – rather than accepting and worshipping the annihilation of our life as we know it.
We are cautioned not to mistake the illusion of our own doer-ship as real lest we add a mistaken dose of shame to the mix. Shame arises when we confuse the process and think we are the doer. NO. That is where we get the truth wrong. This complete and total destruction, as messy and ugly as it is, is exactly what is supposed to happen, and it is going to take as long as it takes. So… pop the popcorn, pull up a chair, and watch the show. There is nothing you can do to change the movie reel. It’s gotta play out.
Prostrating to Maa Kali at this point, believe it or not, is to say Thank You! to Her for destroying your life. Sound like a tall order? Keep fighting it. See how long it lasts.
Realization at this point is to SEE that, if you’re still in the battlefield of breakdown, She is not done yet hacking away at anyone and anything – the demons of illusion and suffering – that do not fit.
Best to stay down. On your knees. Let Her finish the job.
Now you can relax.
Jai Maa.
