It's Hard, But Love Her Even When You're Scared

Like a moron, I drove my car into a three-foot deep "puddle" the other day during a rain storm (it didn't look that deep!), and as the engine cut off and the car floated to a stop, that awful feeling of doom and disaster washed over me... ohmygod mycarmyday myliiiiiiiiiife whatwillidoooo?

I tried to prioritize: figure out if someone was about to rear-end me (didn't look like it), whether I should try to move the car (no), figure out what stuff I had to take with me to keep it dry (water was seeping around the doors kind of rapidly), and I called Sophia and said she should probably pick James up from school. I had moment of panic-- my car... cars are expensive!!! and the subliminal, pre-conscious I'm alone and helpless... but quicker than I ever had, I thought I'm here, this is what's going on, so I need to be here and do the next right thing, so I yanked myself out of the self-pity, opened the car door, grabbed my stuff, and waded to the side of the street.

I stood in the rain and tried to forget the future, what's going to happen and are they even going to be able to tow the car and will it ever run again, and I felt the rain and heard the lovely thunder and watched the trees blow in the wind and laughed to my Mother Kali about this very stupid situation, and I felt stupid as hell but tried to get over it. I was mad at the circumstances and squinting in hindsight, but Kali is circumstance, Her unfolding is the shit that happens, and in my laughter I embraced Her, made space for Her in my heart, shoved me and mine to the side and let Her flow in.

I didn't stop kicking myself for driving into a mini-pond, at least not right away, but as I forced myself to reach out to Kali and forget my fears and wants, I was aware of just how much there is to be grateful for: Sophia, James, Molly (who was so sweetly concerned when she heard about the imbroglio), rain, love, personal evolution, gurus, and everywhere, always, my Kali-- my sky, my rain, my love, my heart.

Kalibhakta Sutra, Part Four

Verse 4:
Clothe Her if you will, but always desire Her naked.

Sanskrit:
Vibhakti paramatman, matta bhaktih.

Comment:
The verse is impossible to translate literally. Vi- is an intensifier but also has the connotation of "dissolution." Matta has meanings of, according to Monier-Williams, intoxication, madness, sexual abandon, wild joy.

The verse is a sly parody of a Hindu proverb: Parabhakti paramatman, sukha bhaktih ("The most intense devotion leads to oneness with the highest realm of divinity, but even a little devotion sweetens life."). Kalibhakta, a staunch adherent of the devotional (bhakti) tradition, seems to vaunt that tradition here, even as he reminds us that ultimate Godhead has no form-- the basic tenet of the advaita tradition. Bhakti is almost always focused on some specific form of God, and so it "clothes" the formless Infinite in an image, in personality and emotion. For this reason, bhakti is considered by the sages to be the most accessible and effective spiritual path, as its personalizing of God makes steady practice easier and intensifies the aspirant's spiritual state. Advaita, on the other hand, is a much more difficult path due to the challenge of abandoning all concepts and ideas about God.

The verse hints, however, that as one progresses on the spiritual path advaita is inevitable, as one begins to see God in more and more of the world, finally attaining the sense of Her presence in all phenomena. In the "unclothing" of advaita, it is not only God who sheds all conceptual form, but concepts themselves fall away, as does the aspirant's own self. Kalibhakta seems to say: follow the path you like best, worship the image of God that appeals to you most ("clothe" God with that image), but don't let the particulars of an image, the details of theology, or the rituals of worship deaden your sense of adoration and joy in all of creation. One of Kalibhakta's teachers, Mother Meera, was fond of saying that no matter how much of God we have enjoyed, no matter how exalted a spiritual state She may have graced us with, there is always more, always higher. That itself would be a good translation of the spirit of this verse.

Vibhakti can mean "intense devotion" but also means "grammatical case." As a word in Sanskrit takes on different cases, and therefore different forms, according to its role in various sentences, so do we give God various forms through our religious ideologies. These ideologies, in turn, shape us and shape our world, as the words in a sentence shape its meaning. Somewhat esoterically, the grammatical imagery refers to Kali, "She Who is words," according to the Sri Kali Sahasranamam (1000 Names of Kali). Kali is often depicted wearing a garland of the 50 letters of the Sanskrit alphabet.

Language can serve as a door to the Divine, but not as a substitute for It. Hinduism, like most religions, places much emphasis on scripture, but it is somewhat unusual in that it recognizes that scripture is limited, human-produced, and thus unable to convey or contain ultimate truth. Eventually, the aspirant reaches the stage at which scriptures, rituals, and devotion itself fall away into uselessness. As Ramprasad wrote: "Rituals and devotions have grown profitless for me / My sleep is broken .... For now I am wide awake .... I have discarded, once and for all, / both righteousness and sin." Kalibhakta cautions us, though, in his correspondence, that "Anyone who tells you they're in this state isn't in it." We assume he excused Ramprasad from this dictum.

Of course, the verse's sexual undertone is what makes it controversial and what, ironically, led to Kalibhakta's expulsion from a well-known school of Tantric Hinduism. Kalibhakta here, echoing Sontag, calls us away from endless interpretation of dead texts and towards an "erotics" of religion, as he also does in the next verse. Of course, sexuality is only one side of the verse; the reader is also, very importantly, urged to love the Divine Mother for What She Is, even when Her unfolding is wildly playful or chaotic (see previous verse). Wishful thinking, however comforting, can only lead to distorted and ultimately dangerous religious ideas.

A Classic Post from Martha Beck

I love this: "Easter in the Year of the Dog."

I have been practicing gratitude lately, just while driving to work, singing the Gayatri mantra to Kali as I send Her love and thanks from my heart... it's easy to let myself get into those toxic spaces where "they" are a bunch of idiots conspiring to ruin "my" life, where I'm not getting what I want because not everyone groks the like, totally perfect wisdom of my every wish, and from there it's easy for me to get resentful, fearful, falling down the sinkhole of doom as "my" dystopian future, in my imagination, enfolds me like a shroud...

but it's not about me, or them, or the future... it's Her, now, always.


Also: Martha gets down with early hominids.

OK, Now SkepChick Is the Greatest

blog... ever. Or at least has publish'd the greatest reader comment ever.

Is There, Possibly, Hope... Possibly?

I just read that as late as 1978 Allen Ginsberg had to be told by Chogyam Trungpa, his Teacher, to "Be doubtless. Go ahead and do it, and [don't] be hesitant about what you're doing."

I guess we all have to learn these lessons over and over. I guess it doesn't make me a Bad Student or a Bad Person that I didn't ascend to godhood the first time I chanted the Gayatri mantra. I guess the fact that I worry, get scared, and feel awkward doesn't mean I have about the same chance of "getting there" that a flea has of spontaneously evolving into a racehorse.

Because there is no "there."

Here is there, and the more I am here, the more I am Her.

Sad Yet Cool

One of my favorite books, one you've heard me rant about for years, is now effectively in the public domain on Scribd.

I can only assume, given Scribd's new, uhh, commitment to the concept of intellectual property, that Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality appears there with its author's blessing. I know that, despite this book's wit, brilliance, and insight--it is truly an important work--it has never topped the charts and Harpur has had trouble "keeping it out there."

If you want a nice summary of Daimonic Reality, read Dr. Snake's interview with Harpur.

But I think you should read the whole book.

This Is Why I Like SkepChick

At least one of their writers thinks it's possible to be religious AND a skeptic (!!!!!!!∞).

As I never tire of saying (sorry, loyal and Cherish'd Readers), skepticism is the one requirement on the spiritual path, if a person is going to make genuine progress without going insane, dropping by the roadside into a ditch of bitterness (or hubris, if there's a difference), or getting took by some Sally League Jim Jones.

You don't have to believe in anything, you should practice incessantly but you will need breaks now and then, you don't have to subscribe to any single religion or world view, but you need to doubt. Your doubt will sustain you. Your doubt, in the pages of your spiritual journal (OK, there are two requirements) and in your heart, will blossom into some kind of transcendent faith, and even if that faith is in yourself or the laws of physics and you leave all gods behind-- if it is a faith that births the world every day, like the flooding of the Nile or the waxing of the moon, then it is the faith you need.

Even atheists have their Holy Guardian Angels.

Exorcism Update: The Twain Have Met, Dammit

via Pharyngula:

Don't get a massage, don't stand on your head, and for Christ's sake don't read Twilight.

I can get behind that last churchly demi-commandment, but for different reasons that those offered from the Archbishoprick of Sydney by "auxiliary bishop" Julian Porteous.

The whole teen vampire connection is left rather vague, but as far as "yoga, reiki massages, and tai chi" go, them there things "all come out of religious traditions of the East and [therefore] people can ... find themselves in the grip of demonic forces." Apparently Satan invented the East so he could ensnare innocent white Chrustians, especially those who, like Australians, are unfortunate enough to have East to the right of them, East to the left of them, East in front of them...and lots of Eastern immigrants.

It's OK, though: Sydney will soon have a new exorcist and presumably Satan's going to have to go back where he came from.

Scroll down in the article for unusually direct commentary by a god-hatin' liberalcommiefag English professor. I don't mean "unusually" for a prof, since you hear this sort of thing in the hallow'd halls all the time, but it's unusual for the news media to quote someone like this, since they prefer that their experts give more boring, more considered, more unwittingly-supportive-of-the-status-quo commentary.

OMG-- am I advocating "incivility"???

Previously on WiHW: The Rite by Matt Baglio