The Goddess Kali recently answered my prayers. I had become increasingly aware of a knot of tension, of selfishness, of impurity in my consciousness and I wanted to remove it. I was raising a ton of energy in my meditation and yoga practice but I was having some trouble getting it all to flow. I was stuck and I knew it. So I did what reasonable people have done forever, I prayed for help. The Goddess Kali responded to my prayer and removed my blockage. She came in the form of viral meningitis.
We in the West don’t have much experience with myth and symbols so it can be hard for us to appreciate the beauty and profundity of someone like Kali. She is depicted as being pitch black, dancing bare-breasted in ecstasy. She wears a garland of human skulls and a skirt made of human arms. She carries different weapons of destruction in three of her arms and a bloody, severed head in the fourth. She appears terribly gruesome to those who are frightened, and like one’s own beloved mother to those on the path of spiritual growth.
Kali is black because she lives mostly in our subconscious. She is down there trying to bring it to light so that we can heal our neurosis, addictions, and unhealthy attachments. She dances freely, comfortable in her body, celebrating the inherent joy of life, of love, of God. She is not afraid of her own power to be happy.
Kali literally means “she who is beyond kala,” beyond time. Her garland of skulls depict the different faces, the personalities we try to be to help us fit in socially. She is not opposed to these personas, the Greek term for “mask,” but she is not fooled by them either, and she doesn’t want us to stay stuck in them. Her skirt of arms symbolizes the variety of self-important actions in which we engage. But all actions are in time and Kali is not impressed with action, only with bliss, with love.
Kali carries various weapons of destruction because she is a powerful warrioress capable of obliterating anything that stands in the way of liberation. If you call her she will come, but be prepared because two of her favorite teaching tools are sickness and death. These are powerful remedies to our stubbornness and attachments. The severed head she carries is our ego, the primal selfishness in all of us, who claims that we are the center of the universe and the purpose of the world is to make us comfortable and happy. Everyone will give their head to Kali eventually, for this is the experience we call death, the decapitation of everything we call “mine.” The mature spiritual aspirant offers his egoic head while still alive and after it is gracefully removed, he becomes what is known in yogic terminology as a jivamukti, one who is enlightened while still in the body.
Sri Ramakrishna, the great Bengali yogi of the late 19th century, once had a powerful vision of Kali. He saw a beautiful young woman arise out of the ocean, lie down on the gentle sands, and give birth to a child. She held the baby close to her breast and nurtured it with the utmost tenderness and love. Then, at some point, she turned into a powerful beast and devoured the child. This is a shocking and disturbing vision, but it is one that very accurately describes the cycle of nature. We are born from her, we are nurtured by her, and then she takes us back into herself.
We in the Judeo-Christian West have only one image of feminine divinity, that of the gentle, virginal Mother Mary. While Kali is one in her essence with Mary, her manifestation is much wilder and more orgasmic– she is the Wolf-Shaman-Goddess-Woman.
If you want the radical track to spiritual growth you can call upon the Goddess Kali. But be prepared because if you call on her she will come, and then you’ll have to deal with her. She will most definitely appear terrifying because she will take from you everything you are clinging to, everything which gives your ego a sense of importance and protection. But when you see your will for freedom is the same as her will for your freedom, then you will welcome her and realize that she is only taking from you what you don’t really want– your hurry, worry, fear, and self-doubt. And when you are at peace with your united wills, then sickness is understood as fierce grace and death as simply a dramatic movement in her eternal dance of the cycle of life.
