Kali Ravishing the Dragon; Riding Time's Eternal Wave

 Kali Ravishing the Dragon;

Riding Time's Eternal Wave

The Goddess is the Bliss of being, and we can never be content unless we realize this joy within our own hearts.   -Dr. David Frawley  

Submerged in deep waters, I float between the cracks of my subconscious and a dream. Appearing out of the green and black mystery the dragon flashes his bold orange scales, crazy claws and luminous torso. Dauntless and on the prowl, he moves with speed and grace. He's glorious and strong with his eye on the kill.  Fresh meat is his only thought, and I see he's ferociously chasing a beautiful water sprite, mermaid-like. She's desperately trying to escape him. With all his might he extends his claws in a desperate grasp for her tail. She dodges him, narrowly escaping her fate as she slips in between two rocks of mercy. She avoids death for now. The dragon shocked by her swift moves is filled with rage as his boiling desire for flesh and bone has not been satiated. She's breathless, yet enlivened by this close call. What did this creature ultimately want with the soft and supple mermaid? Was it her beauty and grace? Pleasure? Control? 

I wake up in a fluffy bed with a warm sweaty body lying next to mine. He rolls over and puts his hands on me; long nails scrape my skin. His stomach pulsates next to mine. Something starts to bubble up. At first it's a small ripple, but soon it’s a raging force of nature. I have a feeling that I shouldn't be here, and I shouldn't be doing this. Shakti, the sexual life force whispers into our hearts,  "Listen to the subtle sounds within, for you are not the cause of movement," she says "but are being danced by me." I try to deny that there's a small fire burning inside me, a fire that’s hard to put out.

I'm still clothed. How can I get away from the wrathful fire of desire? “Just keep your clothes on," I think.  He continues to grasp at me, yearning for pleasure. We continue this gyrating dance of seduction and pain, control and submission.  I rip off my shirt, roll on top of his belly, ass in the air and he slips his hands into a secret place below the depths of my being. I'm trapped; there's no getting away now. His grip is too strong. I surrender in pleasure; I have no place to go. My inner muscles get tighter and tighter, and it feels as though he is reaching up inside of me, clamping down like a vice around the part of my brain that inhibits movement. I moan and sweat; he’s drenched in the heat of the summer morning. Waves crash. I come.

I continue the day as though in a dream state. We roll out of the house with a glimmer in our eyes and please our bellies with food and coffee. We find a soft spot on the sand, and offer our bodies to the sun. Devotionally, I allow the light of this hot July day to radiate its heat upon me. When we can't take the intense radiation any more we jump into the cooling waters of the ocean, a shocking reminder of how quickly heat can dissolve into cold. I delight in the contrast of the two. Eventually we part ways, honoring the energy and intensity we shared.

My dream state becomes shockingly real once I return to the cityscape of a bustling downtown area. Was I really in a bubble of paradise just this morning, luxuriating by the seaside?  I can't help but think how delicate life is; how beauty is so transitory, and that eventually everything dies. We have this small window of existence called life. What is this dance?

Unconsciously, we experience life and death within the measurement of one full breath. We inhale life force, experience its fullness, then exhale to its death and surrender it back to emptiness. The space between here and there is a speck, a blink of Kali's eye as she waves her wand of blood and compassion. She loves us and shows us mercy, but not without pain. Crazily we agreed to incarnation's law of separation.  We enter the world through our mother's womb through a series of contractions, which brings us to a dual state of consciousness. After our last breath we expand through The Father's crown, returning to the blissfulness of Oneness.  So what to make of flesh and bone, blood, sweat and sex? Why does life seem so fragile? Why is this moment, right here, right now so important to wake up to? Is this all we have? 

I'm loosing more and more blood with every passing menstrual cycle, which is forcing me to sleep more, lay close to the earth and contemplate life, death, and energy.  My body has been forcing me to move slowly, allowing me time to think, be, and feel in the present moment. The great dark mother Kali, which breathes life into us, can, and will, take it away. Kali means "to count, to measure, or to set in motion," hence time. The measurement between my birth and death is slowing down for me so I can truly appreciate the rising and falling of awareness. We never know when the clock will strike midnight, and Kali's hand will come down to slay our necks and the illusion of time will once again appear endless. I will have only but one choice; to surrender; to let go of this mortal coil and be set free into the boundless sky. 

Despite my burning desire for food, sex, pleasure and beauty I know these things will never fulfill my deepest yearning. My spirit longs to be united with the Mother. Why, then, were we even given a body?  Why the split between consciousness and form? Maya; our gift of creation, our fall from grace. We dance in duality, so that we may sit more deeply with the discomfort of pain. We hopelessly seek fulfillment in distraction, yet we must be courageous and feel our way through life, and go towards freedom. The key is surrendering to what is; not projecting, not judging oneself, just relaxing into the moment, which mean sometimes sitting with discomfort.  

Is beauty worth all the pain? Is awakening so powerful that it pierces through the veils of death, suffering, disease and war?

We all have had moments of darkness and suffering; had our hearts broken or even witnessed a family member pass in an untimely manner. The clock that Kali holds never stops, not even at death. She holds everything in her womb of wisdom; the profane and sacred, sharks and bunnies, love and war.  She welcomes all of it, showing us that our pain is the pathway to our greatest learning. She sees the divine orchestration in all things and has unwavering faith amidst our screams to creation of, "WHY ME? WHY THIS NOW, WHY THIS WAY?" These are moments when she asks us to pull strength from our own well-spring of source. She will answer our soul's yearning. All-knowing, she carries the mystery, with unwavering love for her children. We surrender to the mother, the breather of life into the cosmos, the ultimate manifestation of beauty into form. 

For now, our feet are what we have to walk with, our voices to talk with, our body to express with and our brain to learn with. Utilize this ground you're walking on. Sustenance is merely just a tool for higher awakening. We cannot "get out" until we wake up in our bodies. By recognizing the sacredness in simple pleasures, we begin to have love for all of creation.  By observing the recurring patterns of the universe, such as the Fibonacci sequence, one finds unity within the All. Just like Kali adding numbers to create our living matrix, these numbers formulate the spiral of creation. We are but drops in this infinite ocean of primordial spinning vibration, serving each other on this endless dance floor of remembering what we once forgot. 

As a spiritual warrior, why is awakening to sublime states of consciousness so absolutely stunning? Why do we continually fall in love, even though we know our hearts will break when that love is taken from us? Why do we continuously grasp happiness outside ourselves, when the only answer is within our hearts? We are the most compacted lock, yet the seat of our consciousness is the key to all doors. In other words, why do I keep trying to find fulfillment in ice cream, coffee, in human relationships and in sex? 

Could it be that behind the seriousness of seeking Truth, there is merely the pleasure and enjoyment of the Goddess?  Let’s take each other off the spiritual hook for a moment, and stop "trying to get there.” Perhaps spiritual attainment is in the ice cream.  As I sit in the neighborhood gelato shop, it sure seems to be a place worthy of worship. Families line up in droves to enjoy flavors such as root beer float, strawberry custard and madagascar vanilla. A white father covered in tattoos holds his black daughter.  His 11-year old daughter is standing next to him.  She is a slender blond dressed in fishnets, cowgirl boots, a sparkling tutu and an orange farmer's hat.  It's clear to me that she doesn't give a shit about sex, consciousness or arising Shakti in the body. All she can do right now is revel in the joyous texture and flavor of the ice cream. Her dad calls out her name, Amrita (which means nectar of the Gods). By enjoying her ice cream in this moment, Amrita is enjoying the ambrosia, the divine sweetness of the ice cream. She is a spiritual warrior, transported by her ice cream experience; the trick is to not get attached to this experience; lick, enjoy, and let go. Not all beings know they are on a spiritual quest to expand their consciousness beyond space and time, so enjoyment becomes a worthy means of worship.

Think of the sheer scope and grandeur of time.  Because Kali is infinite, it gives Amrita permission to do as she pleases in this moment. She’ll follow her every desire until she chooses to mature, and find happiness in her inner home. Yet once she has arrived "home" in the abode of shiva's third eye, where will she choose to go? 

The tantric view I wish to convey is a FUCK YES to existence.  Existence in this body means inhabiting the splendid desire to taste life, and yoking every last drop. I want to dance, skip, and make love to life. I want to experience the myriad of creation because it's fun. Yup. The only way "out" is straight on through. The divine orchestrator conjured up the perfect formula for life so that we could enjoy it. Kali's perfect Opus is awaiting our admiration.

After tasting every taste, seeing every beautiful sight, falling in love countless times, we realize that there is an everlasting happiness available to us.  After we’ve experienced and lost happiness, we search for lasting contentment inside of our quiet minds. In that infinite expanse we find Kali's abode, dancing on Shiva's corpse. When the outside no longer please the inner, our hearts cry out to Kali to bring us back into her womb where there is no clock keeping time, there is no rent to pay and there is not a hungry belly to be fed.  There is only an oozing of her primordial soma. We all wish to return to her womb, where we can be in her embrace, be fed by her nectar and be held in her love. Life can be  so hard. Chopping wood and carrying water get tiresome. Eventually our hearts will cry out to our creator and ask to be fed by spiritual love.

Spiritual love is higher than Everest, deeper than the Pacific and more powerful than a black hole. It is Lord Shiva's eye, peering out of Kali's body, so piercing and pure that we have no choice but to surrender to His light. This earth is just a manifestation of his splendid inner knowing; a dance of ultimate consciousness. Shiva is the designer, Kali the design. They dance together, holding hands in eternity.

What is the Mother, dear Kali, asking us to do? She wishes for us to ride the sword’s edge between birth and death, of pleasure and pain, of the inhalation and exhalation, and appreciate the gift of the body. Is our life's experience alone not worthy of worship?

Being present to Her creation is the gateway to our secret beauty. The moment we recognize this we become Her, and She, Us.  It's easy to rush through the game, run away from ourselves   and get lost in the rat race of doing.  By rushing, we miss the synchronicity of the conductor; something is played out of tune.  It takes a warrior of love to fully embrace reality with courage. By facing our fears and looking at the dragon head on, we begin to open to grace. Peer into his eyes, no matter how uncomfortable, for this is just purification. "Just be with it,” she whispers.

By opening the vessel of my body to the wisdom of the kundalini serpent, I start to receive energy from both ends. The dragon invokes my secret river to run, and my juice pours out of my yoni; first like squirting throbs of desire then like tears falling from the bodhisattva's cheeks. I cry in my pleasure, for the sheer power of Shakti's dance inside my heart makes me surrender into the depths of another's soul. Through this sexual dance, the cracks of heaven open the gates of truth. Experience Kali's love in this breath, in this gyrating dance between yin and yang, until the Jade sword cuts through space, creating the bindhu of creation inside the yoni's blissful expanse. The pleasure is so intense that breath is no longer possible to take in. After convulsing at the very peak of arousal, peacefulness emerges from the void. Through this silence, we can hear Her opus of life. The ego bows to her sword so that we may hear infinite beauty ringing through unfathomable space. Kali takes many forms; fierce mother, lover, giver and taker of life. Kali is the beauty behind the rose. Like a flower, when she withers and dies, Kali's divine matrix lives on forever. When our lives wither, and we slowly begin to digress, Kali welcomes us back into her bosom, with an open heart.

In the dream, I swim back under the water, flipping my mermaid tail. Refreshed, I push towards the light, and peak my little eyes above the surface of the water. I take a breath of air; rejoicing in this simple act of life. I delight in my fast mermaid body, and hurl myself as fast as I can into the depths of the oceanic gates of time; and I see him, the dragon. He smiles at me. His belly is full. It looks like I'm spared another day, and can swim without threat. I peer closer into his gentle yet striking eyes. It's as if he could turn on me at any moment. He doesn't. The dragon invites me to take hold of his shimmering scales. I ride.