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My deepest gratitude to the divine feminine on this day. May this day be a celebration of the feminine in all of us. This day can be a way of celebrating sensitisation in men as well. As we do this we see that the polarities of male and female exist within us as beautifully depicted by Ardhanareshwar in Indian symbolism. Ardha = half, Nari = woman, Ishwar = Lord
The more men honour so-called feminine qualities in them like being responsive to emotions and not negating them, the more they will honour women. They will learn that these qualities are strengths and not weaknesses and use the power in them and in women to create a more uplifting and cohesive world. I am grateful for everyone in female form as well as those who have paved the path in practical ways for other women to follow.
The spectrum of being a woman
When I look at my family lineage I see many women who I was inspired by. Qualities in both my grandmother’s were uplifting. My paternal grandmother was a doctor married to a doctor whom she met in medical school. Both were financially successful, running independent hospitals and nursing homes. She was ahead of her times in divorcing her husband when she learnt he was unfaithful, raising her three boys on her own.
I have fond memories of being in her home where she would call out to Joseph, to cook up a feast . She always ate with us while Joseph, her cook, served us.
Joseph was an excellent cook who made the best biryani and Kerala fish curry. She and my dad would extol the benefits of fish to me as I sat there being repulsed by its smell and not wanting to look it straight in the eye. It was a roasted eye, but an eye nevertheless.
To me Joseph was a symbol of this nurturing spirit in my grandmother’s home making many delicacies like avial and coconut curry stews that I loved.
Many times I remember wandering into my grandmother’s room admiring her crystals and a golden liquid glistening in the sun in her room. I later learnt she loved her expensive whiskey and her platinum jewellery. She wore platinum before it became popular. She was empowered for her generation, going on three world tours alone, golfing in her free time, and even having a boyfriend whom she, in a matter of fact manner, told me was her boyfriend. My grandmother was from Kerala, a matriarchal society where her mother was managing a cocoa farm and lived a full life. Much later I learnt this was not the norm in Chennai/India , but while growing up this was my normal.
My maternal grandmother
My maternal grandmother was the opposite in many ways. Scared to travel alone , vegetarian all her life , never worked outside the home and never tasted alcohol. Her Brahmin background meant she was raised in an environment where a clean lifestyle was encouraged. She had cooks and maids too but took great joy in serving us and got her joy from how we enjoyed eating her cooking. She is the best cook for all things subtle and ayurvedic and until today I have not eaten sambar, kootu, rasam, chutney, or kozhukattai made and flavoured with such finesse.
She made everything from scratch and I have fond memories of hanging in the kitchen, waiting for her to give me the brown bits at the bottom of the Indian wok or kadai to munch on after she made ghee. Sometimes I would hang there to see her making pongal, curry leaf powder, or roast cashews and the large kitchen made me at home as I could sit and just watch, absorb all the aromas, and then sample. Taking in the smells and being around my docile grand mom was as soothing as the food sampling and savouring. She had a cook and maid too but she was in the kitchen a lot.
My grandfather had his property in his wife’s and daughter’s names. He told me as a teenager that the power dynamic is such in India and this was to make sure his women are cared for. Not that he wanted his women to be at home. He educated all his sisters after his father passed and one of them also had the choice to remain unmarried. She was the head of the department of mathematics in a large university in Chennai. Despite his progressive views he was still the authority in the house.
These two contrasting homes I saw were not better because one was matriarchal, but because of who was at the helm of things. I learnt contrasts can be complementary.
Contrasts can be complementary
The so-called opposite ways of seeing women gave me permission to be who I was. I realised being a woman meant I could be in any evolutionary spectrum and it was ok. That was modelled for me by both my grandmothers. I bonded more with my maternal grandmother because of her nurturing qualities and because I ended up living with my grandparents for a while, which shaped my life deeply.
Wounds to clean, love to glean
My paternal grandmother, as lovely as she was, had hardened in some ways. That was unfortunate as she was taking on qualities she saw brought success in a male-dominated world. I knew it was a facade to protect the betrayal of her husband, her fear that her sons will love their father more despite all she did for them, and her deep-rooted pain. But that journey within was not something she was ready to take as her lifestyle and esteem in the world was her priority.
Now I see that my maternal grandmother also had a lot of repressed emotions as was common for women of that generation. She was sweet to me, though unkind to herself by holding in so much fear.
After my grandfather passed she lived with my aunt and I started a seniors class opposite my aunts house, just for her to practice. It was providence that right opposite was a heritage building nestled in greenery with a café below. The senior women enjoyed the class and their time with each other. When she passed I was visiting Canada for a few months in 2009. I was in Grand forks teaching and post that decided to participate in a purification ceremony of three sweats. When I was praying to the ancestors I distinctly felt her spirit, a gentle presence. Those days I was not carrying a cell phone and when I returned to Vancouver, I got word that she had passed.
As I observed my grannies, I saw that the lineage I inherited could be tweaked and made better. I could see what served the highest from both of them and I could choose my inheritance as a woman. We can all do the same not just from the women in our family but by modelling the spectrum of beautiful women in our world family.
We can open our minds to see different constructs that women can exist and thrive in. We can open our hearts to take in the love that comes through the play of light and shadow.
Sitting with Shiva and Shakthi
Shakthi in Sanskrit means power and energy. Shakthi is the divine feminine.
However, we have always been taught to associate power with the masculine in the Western world. I grew up speaking English in school and I saw that the constructs of power in English were mostly associated with men.
Shiva is consciousness, benevolence, auspiciousness, and change for the positive in Sanskrit. This capacity to change for the better was the Divine masculine in Yoga and Tantra. However, this flexibility and sensitivity was relegated to women in day-to-day associations.
Exploring these words and their meanings will give us the opportunity to explore rigid role identities. It will help us see if through language we have pigeonholed ourselves into one suffocating construct of the masculine or feminine. Yoga or polarity is the harmonious interaction between so-called opposites. Many times certain words are not opposites but enhance each other. For example, sensitivity and strength, light and dark as with night and day, conscious doing and conscious letting go, or restfulness.
As we sit with these principles and with Shiva and Shakthi, we see their wings gently wrap around us to make us feel safe and unfurl gently to help us glide through life. The movement of the wings though opposite, in this context, are both complimentary and nurturing, helping us move towards our destiny.
How language influences us
I can see the Western constructs of masculine and feminine for what they are and not take them to be the gospel truth. Suzanne, one of the beautiful beings attending the Community Class, made me contemplate this more as she mentioned that having too tight a compartment or looking at certain things as only opposing forces can be dangerous, as she witnessed in earlier instances and she appreciated the clarity I gave.
People's minds can get as rigid or even more rigid than the language compartments. This is dangerous as she observed, because before we know it language has created divisiveness rather than unity.
We can observe if language frees us or binds us or makes us uptight. Can our mind accommodate and sit with so called opposite concepts?
This is a very good indicator to check if we are grasping the essence of yoga or getting stuck in dogma. Language can also trigger if we feel marginalized or unheard.
Celebrating the night
The example we looked at was light and dark and its usage. In Sanskrit, Kaali maa or the divine mother, who helps clear and change things through Kaal or time, is depicted in her beautiful splendour of darkness. Dark is not always bad, scary, or in opposition to the light. And a black hole can be used to suck away our pain rather than our life force. This darkness is different from the darkness or density that prevents us from seeing things as they are, but through the lens of our trauma or reactiveness. Or the darkness that is used in the context of “devoid of love”
In fact the night , darkness and stillness are celebrated in Mahashivrathri which falls this Thursday night as well as Navrathri or the nine nights to celebrate the divine feminine. So the night holds a lot of significance and auspiciousness as well.
Maha = great, Shiva = benign, kind, auspicious, void, nothingness, conscious, rathri = night
Black is beautiful as we see how Rama and Krishna’s complexion is poetically described. The divine is said to incarnate in all shades. Balarama, Krishna’s brother is described as being fair. Both were valorous, however Krishna was the more popular one.
Moonshot
When the moon is associated with our moon cycles we are not any less because the sun is the more powerful light source. There is a softness in the reflection of the moon and a waxing and waning of the moon that is connected to water and flow. The flow of water and life force in us is a beautiful way to clean out old wounds and glean love. As women we naturally have that capacity to tap into this purification by tuning more into our monthly cycle. As we do that we see women are capable of moonshot, or monumental things. Just by allowing women to embrace who they are giant leaps can be taken.
There are odes to the sun as well as life on earth. So each has its place and rhythm and needs to be looked at in that specific context
Shiva without Shakthi is Shava
Shiva or the divine masculine as we saw is consciousness and shava is a corpse or a dead body. So without Shakthi or energy Shiva is a mere dead body. There is a further play on words where the “i” in Shakthi pronounced “e” when removed from Shiva leaves the word as Shva or a corpse.
The Dance of Shiva and Shakthi
I grew up with stories that made me laugh and made me think. This is one such story. The greater symbolism of this is that we need Shiva or consciousness and Shakthi or energy to dance step to step within us. However, in the story they were competing, especially Shiva as he is Nataraja or the Lord of the Dance. He danced the universe into existence and this symbolism has even been honoured by modern physicists by placing a statue of him in Switzerland at CERN, one of the premier research institutes in the world.
However, Shakthi matches his every step. In the end, Shiva, knowing that Shakthi was not wearing her underwear, lifts his leg towards the audience. Shakthi, not wanting to flash everyone, decides to forgo this silly competition and laughs her head off. Shiva declares himself the winner. What started as something esoteric ends with a juvenile male ploy and human emotions. Yet the lightness of the moment is what is important. This lightness was possible because of the magnanimity of Shakthi and her knowing that none of what Shiva did would be possible as without her, he does not exist. And in him she exists. She is the driving force, she is the sustainer, she is the nourisher, she is the birther, and the rebirther.
This is the principle of Ardhanareshwar. We need to cultivate this confidence and strength in us and stand up to the toxic masculine or toxic feminine in us or others. As we are on a real yoga path, Shiva and Shakthi in us will not be challenged by each other but support each other. Through the Tantric and yogic practices we can rise in both consciousness and power.
Yogacharini Maitreyi is an international master teacher, practical mystic, and founder of Arkaya Awareness Centre and Arkaya Foundation. For the last 25 years she has been dedicated to living an evolutionary life and sharing holistic life principles.
Since 1997, she has been given titles: Yoga chemmal (expert), Yoga shiromani (gem), and Yoga acharini (guide) in India. She was one of the youngest to be invited on the Advisory Board of the World Yoga Council, in Europe, in 2007. She has shared the deeper dimensions of yoga, self-management, and sattvic tantra worldwide. She demystifies principles and gives the cultural context to help integration.
Maitreyi has trained over 60 corporations, spoken at many conferences, and has over 100 published articles in India, Hong Kong, Sweden, Dubai , Sri Lanka, the U.S., and Canada. She was invited to share her wisdom at many international yoga, ayurveda, and leadership summits. A compassionate holistic coach, her sessions include online energy assessments to guide one into one's own innate balance. She loves organic food and nature. She now lives in Vancouver, Canada.
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