Goddess Kali and the Practice of Non Duality
The Goddess Depth practices of most ancient cultures invite the experience of non duality. Goddess Kali in Indian spirituality has the same invitation. Non duality is essentially liberation from the limiting stories and explanations our verbal languages provide. In Indian spirituality, Goddess Kali herself is a manifestation of this vision of non duality. She is both mother and destroyer, cruel and compassionate, and ferocious and sensuous. The dissolution of polarity is one of the most powerful experiences of the Goddess Kali practice.
Goddess Kali is the Deity of the domains we reject or set aside. However, it is not simply about “accepting” everything we usually reject. Goddess Kali is about the inquiry into the fullness of our depths, and through that, and only through that, into our cosmic nature which is the same as Reality and Consciousness.
Non duality is most powerfully possible through dance languages that are aware of, and manifest, this potential of dance. It is through dance that non duality is available to us as an embodied sensation beyond the possibility of words and other languages. When we taste non duality, we are liberated to be the fullness of our sacred and cosmic self.
Goddess Kali and the Practice of Non Duality Video Transcription
SPEAKERS
Padma Menon
Padma Menon
These are very much the times of Goddess Kali. She is, of course this archetype of dissolution of chaos of the unknown, of instability. And, of course, for many of us, at the heart of the experience of these times is this dance of Kali, this wild, terrifying, ferocious dance of Kali. I think the endurance of Kali through the centuries into the times we live in, to me is about the power of the goddess philosophy or the philosophy of the divine feminine. Of course, this philosophy is very ancient. And despite centuries of attempts to water it down, to set it aside, to make it invisible, Kali has endured, and she continues to dance in these times, and to me there is nothing more moving as an assurance from the Goddess that she will endure than the presence of Kali our times. One of the greatest invitations of Kali that is relevant to us now, is this practice of non duality. You can see that the very presence of Kali, wild, terrifying ferocious. and in our languaging, indiscriminately destructive, cruel. She baffles us and try as we might, we are really not able to story Kali in a way that fits into our notions of good and bad and right and wrong without completely distorting her. In fact, she is not Kali, in those stories that we make that try and contain her.
There is a great mystery about Kali—why does she have this ferocity? Why is she so challenging to our ideas about beauty by peace, about harmony, in fact, challenging to a very idea of what is divine and what is feminine. And I think this is exactly the invitation of Kali— to move beyond our neat definitions of the Divine and not divine, and the good and the bad, and the right and the wrong and creative and destructive. All these kinds of dualities that make life seemingly more convenient and more understandable for us.
For me, what I find the most moving invitation of Kali is her invitation to consider our fear of difference. So one of the fundamental movements of Kali is this movement, which is about setting a way or moving away from all those things that call us towards anything that might make us different from the tribe that might earn us the disapproval of the tribe that might lead us to be excommunicated from the tribe. You know this. So everything that we set aside that may ask us to be different, and perhaps be earned the disapproval. And Kali starts when we step into this, this pile of things that we push away. And in the story of Kali, she is dwelling in cremation grounds, which, of course, is outside of community and settlement. And here again, is this space that we don't really want to bring close to us, we set it aside death, places of death. And so it's when we step into that space, that is the beginning of the descent into Kali. At the same time, it's not simply about accepting everything. Because Kali is not about rejecting or accepting the invitation of any goddess depth practice is about an inquiry, and it is an embodied inquiry. It is an inquiry that we have to do with our bodies, our feelings and our sensations. And this inquiry is the sacred practice. We can leave the rest to the Goddess, because that inquiry is that experience of expansion. That space that opens up within us. So any experience can be a way of connecting to that expansive goddess source. And Kali’s invitation is not about accepting or rejecting. But it is simply about stepping into the fullness of who we are, without any fear without any condition. And that stepping in is that sacred practice or the sacred act.
That is the beginning of the descent into the Goddess.
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