Why do we forget?
Photo: Geoffrey Dunn
In the discussion forum at the end of my current Lakshmi: Goddess Rising course, someone asked me, “Why does Lakshmi exit? And so suddenly? Without any chance of explanation?” She was referring to the archetypal story of Goddess Lakshmi leaving Her Divine Masculine consort, Vishnu, when She felt humiliated by what She perceived as His indifference to Her pain.
It is a long story, but the short version is that a sage was tasked with bringing the offerings of a ritual to Vishnu and Lakshmi. The sage happened to be a person who, despite his sagely endeavours, still held self-importance. When his obeisance to Vishnu was ignored as Vishnu and Lakshmi were absorbed in their cosmos, he marched up to Vishnu and kicked Him on His chest which happens to be the abode of Lakshmi. Vishnu prioritized His obligation to eliminate the sage’s Hubris and attended to that task.
Lakshmi’s outrage was twofold—at the sage planting a kick on Her abode and at Vishnu’s ignorance of Her pain. Like a volcanic eruption, She uprooted Herself from their idyllic cosmos and left despite Vishnu’s pleas. Vishnu spent millenia seeking her in all the universes until He rebirthed as Venkateshwara, and Lakshmi rebirthed as Padmavathi, and they reunited.
However, this archetypal invocation is a ritual, so the Goddess exits again and again, and Vishnu grieves, seeks, rebirths, and reunites with Her again and again. It is like the wedding of Venkateswara and Padmavathi that is ritually celebrated every year in May over three days of celebrations in the famous Tirupathi temple in India—the union is reignited each year. As a young dancer, my teacher created a spectacular dance-drama about this story in which I performed hundreds of times and each time the exiting of Lakshmi, Vishnu’s wandering , and the marriage were reignited. So, the ritual movement of this story is a very familiar intelligence.
Lakshmi is the Prakriti, the primordial Consciousness. She is that dimension of our being that, like the Earth, is elemental, ancient, and not a creation of the mind. In essence, Body is the manifestation of this Lakshmi primordiality with is sensory intelligence and its attributes of movement and archetypal cosmos.
Vishnu is the Divine Masculine mind that is sourced in the heart where Lakshmi is ensconced on Her lotus. It is the harmonious manifestation of mental and Body-led consciousness that moves with Reality and not in mastery over Reality. This is the co-creative expression of the Vishnu-Lakshmi dance.
This union is never permanent because, like Reality, and its flow between polarities of beginning and ending, birth and death, and the finite and infinite, it must also dissolve and become emergent again, to be renewed and remade in the consciousness of the ever-unfolding Truth. In the cosmos of our beings, this is the dance between the mental and Body-led Consciousness. No sooner than the Vishnu-Lakshmi harmony emerges, than the sage appears. And the drama begins…again.
The whole constellation of the story is within the cosmos of our Consciousness. The sage is the precipitous (in fact the sage’s name in Sanskrit, Bhrigu, alludes to the precipice) state of being even when we consider ourselves “masters” of spirituality. We hanker for Divine attention, and some sign that we are seen and acknowledged. Vishnu’s attending to His call of removing the sage’s Hubris is as it should be. Sometimes heartfelt duty tears us away from our Lakshmi Self, which is the attention to the nonlinear dimensions of Truth. This Lakshmi Truth is rarely justified by our linear narratives or even visible to them. It may not be what appears to be the obvious duty or “right” action.
Vishnu’s loss and His deep grief is the wisdom of that heartfelt intelligence which returns to remembrance of the sensation of His union with Lakshmi. This remembrance is non-narrative, rather it is the poetic invocation of Indira, the lotus blossom, which is the archetypal symbol of Lakshmi. In essence it is a dance that envelops Him in lotus scent as He descends into an anthill to return His attention and consciousness to His Body.
The anthill is an ancient sign of Body and Goddess. It is also associated with death. There is an ending that must occur for a rebirth. Lakshmi does not simply return to the same cosmos. There is no yesterday’s river. There is no yesterday’s union. There is no yesterday’s Lakshmi.
The moving beauty of this ritual and dance is the generosity of its invitation in the Prakriti or primordial design of Consciousness. It is inevitable that we will have our Bhrigu moment and will turn away from our Lakshmi nature. It is inevitable that we will contend with the sudden emptiness of the tearing away of our connection to what is ancient and elemental in us and that which pre-exists the mental story of self and life. It is inevitable that we will grieve and wander in the universes with empty hands and the lingering fragrance of lotus bloom. Then we may be so fortunate as to find our Vishnu intelligence which is the ferocity of descending into the anthill and invoking the emergence of Lakshmi no matter how long it takes.
For me this story is personal one not only because I have danced this innumerable times and its ritual reignition is a powerful wisdom, but also because it has supported me in some of the most difficult times of my life. When I have turned away from Body in the Lakshmi sense and felt constrained to be mind-led and mechanistic, I have taken heart at the poetic devotion of Vishnu’s sadness. I have found company in my own wanderings across universes for what seemed like millenia in Vishnu’s remembrance and longing. I have found my way back to the anthill and He has shown me that the simplicity of love, devotion and yearning is all that is needed to meet my Lakshmi again.
Why do we forget?
Because forgetting and remembering is the elemental movement of Reality. We forget so we can renew and reignite. We forget so we can bathe in the ever-flowing waters of Reality and not stay in a stagnant pond. We forget so we can be drenched in the poetic humility and astounding beauty of grief that renders us divine. We forget so we remember our essence beyond all the clamour and bright lights, in the quiet of an anthill, under a spreading banyan tree.