Kali – Goddess of Transformation, Destruction and Transcendent Energy

Kali’s archetype is associated with love and protection. She connects us with our power, our strength, and our emotions. She calls us to be alive, juicy, passionate and committed.

Kali is the goddess of life, death, and rebirth, and bring us in touch with the eternal movement and cycles of life. She brings us renovation and transformation, and with her fierce love supports us to let go of old structures and limiting concepts, so that life can start flowing through us again, bringing new energy and capacity to act.

She is the archetype of the wild woman, fully in touch with her emotions and instinctual self. This is the energy and strength that women draws from inside herself in order to give birth, when she needs to roar and bear down, connecting with a raw an inhibited part of herself which is just like the divine mother Earth herself.

Kali is the force of nature that comes to free us from old habits that keep us stuck and no longer serve us, and sometimes she may appear like a thunderstorm shaking everything up and waking us from our sleep. If we are not in touch with her fierce love and are afraid to surrender, she may seem terrifying. And, when we open to her powerful love, she is the mother, she is the lover and she is the ultimate teacher of freedom.

In her iconography, she comes out of the forehead of the goddess Durga, roaring like a thunder, swirling her bloody sword, slicing off the heads of demons. She is an intensely emotional Goddess and can get intoxicated by her emotions and become destructive. Therefore, the process of letting go requires the presence of awareness, which is symbolized by Shiva, her consort, holding and supporting her wild emotional dance with his silent awareness and vast consciousness.

She is the embracing mother that reminds us to love the non-beautiful part of ourselves, the places in our bodies, hearts, and mind, which we tend to hide and reject. And with the loving fire in her eyes, she guides us into our dark places, in order to find the treasures that are hidden in our inner world.

Kali’s fiery dance is a dance of life and love, and in her ecstatic dance she brings everything into manifestation and dissolves it. In the work with Kali we dance wildly and playfully, we open to our emotions with full expression and awareness, when our bodies come alive and our eyes become open and shinning. And mother Kali lovingly ask us questions such as: What are you ready to let go and release? What are you resisting in yourself? What is changing and how do you relate to it? What are you hiding from yourself and others? What are the old habits that keep on repeating in your life? What is opening in you, what is new?

Kali is related to our erotic and ecstatic energy and to our deep longing to let go of control and meet our orgasmic, pleasurable, and creative nature. And she shows us that when we have a sense of orientation, safety and grounding we can allow our wild, natural and emotional energy to express, settle and flow naturally through the river of life.

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PARVATI – the goddess of relationship and sacred marriage.

The Goddess Parvati has the strength of Durga and the softness of Lakshmi. She directs her seductive radiance to her beloved and at the same time she is focused on her own essence. She is a mother and a yogini, which is a woman that loves to practice and to be fully engaged with life. Parvati is powerful and tender, she is willful and she is playful.

Parvati incarnates our longing to experience the balanced union between the sensuality of the feminine and the presence of the masculine. This is an inner marriage that can happen inside of us and can also reflect in our intimate relationships, our actions and the projects we bring into life.

The conscious masculine is about will, capacity to move forward, express my energy out into the world, and the conscious feminine is about the joy of full expression, relating, emotions, endless creativity, playfulness, and relaxation.
The Goddess Parvati calls us women to question and inquiry on how our masculine and feminine energies are manifesting inside and outside of us: Is my inner man strong and clear or collapsed and disconnected from his will? Is my inner woman radiant and alive or asleep and disconnected from her body and her sensuousness? Is my masculine energy supporting or suppressing my feminine energy? Is my feminine putting down or appreciating the masculine? What is on the way and what supports me to connect these energies inside of me?

When you invoke the goddess Parvati, you tune-in to your own longing for sacred partnership, the dance of intimacy where two independent beings enter into deep union, love, and connection without sacrificing their individuality.

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Durga – The Warrior Motherly Goddess.

Durga is the goddess we call for protection and help us move through obstacles. She is a fierce warrior and she is motherly. She is a queen and also a martial artist goddess that stands up for justice and inner freedom. She invites us to speak our truth and to stand up for it.

Durga is the female archetype for inner and outer power, she supports us to set clear boundaries by creating a protective field around us and she also gives us impulses to move forward.

Durga embodies the protective energy of the mother-lioness, and that is how she comes to us when we call her: powerful and elegantly ridding on a lion or a tiger. And she invites each one of us to find our own power animal – to ride it and to receive its qualities of joyful strength and will.

Durga represents the instinctual energy known in the animal world, which naturally protects her offsprings and care for the herd. She is the quality of strength and power in women, which flows from her belly into her solar plexus into her heart, arms, and hands… and she takes appropriate actions that are attuned with her body, her heart, and her environment.

The Durga that is in all of us asks: “What do you need to say no to, in this moment of your life? What do you want to say yes to? How do you define your limits – at work, with a partner, in life? How much are you in contact with your body to sense and feel what you really want and need? How do you communicate that?

We meet Durga when we dance and sing, when we feel ourselves in our strength and our vulnerability, and when we discover our limits in connection with our bodies. And with her support, we awaken the awareness of our female natural confidence and courage.

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Lakshmi – The Golden Goddess of Love, Abundance and Generosity

 

Lakshmi is the goddess of abundance, loving kindness, beauty and wealth. She reminds us that we are rich by nature. She represents the compassionate feminine heart that flows naturally, like the love of mother earth that is constantly giving and offering her gifts.

In the journey to meet Lakshmi, we enter a luxurious garden full of shinning trees and beautiful colorful smelling flowers and orchards full of the most delicious tasty fruits and organic vegetables.
She is the goddess of abundant nature and sustainability. We meet her in our clean homes, in beautiful smells, in all kinds of inner and outer beauty, in freedom and harmony. She loves nice comfortable clothes, flowers and the luxury of relaxation.

When we call her, Lakshmi comes to us with a gentle smile, as a beautiful woman with a golden face, wearing colorful clothes, and she emerges sitting on a lotus flower. She has four hands: in two she holds pink lotus flowers, in the third a pot of valuables, and from the fourth hand gold coins flow constantly down her feet and into the earth.
Her generous, gifted hands are directly connected to her heart, and as she receives our offerings with a smile she immediately opens her hands to offer them back into the world. She is the essence of generosity, fertility, and an emanation of female relaxation and well-being.

How do we discover Lakshmi in ourselves? How to connect with her? How to experience her?
She is one of the archetypes of the feminine energy, so each woman carries her as a potential. She is part of our nature.
We just need to create the right space and environment, which is easy when women join their natural gifts, their hearts, intentions and, together, call her divine energy… through dance, through breathing freely and through sharing. While our arms and hands swim in the dance we feel our heartbeat, we breath deeper, we swing our hips, we smile. There she is!

The goddess Lakshmi brings the questions to us contemporary women: How much space do I give myself to experience beauty, abundance, harmony, and balance in my life? What beauty do I see in myself, in others and around me, in the world? Do I give generously? Do I accept with joy? Am I aware of my internal wealth? How I use this inner abundance?
She reminds us: you can make a practice of being attentive to all manifestations of beauty and abundance in your life, and you can consciously collect these precious moments when you notice them… It will strengthen your heart!

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A Dream of Creation and Re-creation of Life

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CREATION AND RECREATION OF LIFE

“Being round in the initial period of existence is equivalent to assuming oneself to be total and complete and hence a God that can do all things”   – Edinger –


The “Breath of Life” is a Craniosacral Biodynamic term that refers to the principle of creation. Its intention manifests in a living being through creation at conception, and re-creation throughout life and death.

Life and death is a continuous process of regeneration and potentialization that carries on the intention of the Breath of Life, which patiently gives us the chance, again and again, to merge with its immense creative potential and love while we are alive in a human form.

When someone decides to go into a group process in order to explore death, there is already from the beginning a movement towards openings, connecting, exploring and expanding – The participant is carrying on with the Breath of Life intention and becomes a co-creator. That initiative and motivation shows a system that has enough resources available to move with the Breath of Life’s plan, and has the possibility to re-experience, while alive in a physical human form, one’s original wholeness as it has been before conception, during embryonic stages, through adult life and will be after death.

This recapitulation of the Breath of Life intention of recreation through life, death, and rebirth happens all along life. It can be observed within the duration of a lifetime, a day, and certain moments. There are moments throughout life that ignites this intention bringing it to its full potency. When someone decides to move into a conscious journey towards death, the igniting fire has already started, it is already in process.

This ignition may appear simply as a light that brings clarity and understanding to certain life patterns, or as a spark, that can start a fire which will burn one so completely that there is no other way than to be reborn with new potency, with new possibilities. And so the Breath of Life fulfils its intention of moving forward to keep the process of eternal creation and recreation of life.

 

CREATING  SACRED  SPACE:  The Womb

“Life’s errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole.”
  – Rabindranath Tagore –

The movement towards death starts with a creative intention, which brings a group of people together to experience something new. The intention manifests and develops by mutual attraction between all the different parts that are going to form one organism in the form of a group (the embryo), including facilitator, organizer, assistants, helpers, participants, and everyone and everything else that is part of it.

The facilitator is an important fulcrum of orientation in this process, and her/his ability to keep clear communication between all the parts, to be in a neutral state, and to be grounded in her fulcrums is fundamental for the development of this new organism.
The group – as a living entity and a system with its own organizing forces – is not just the sum of the elements it consists of, but an interrelation of all the forces present, which gives it an organic quality of unity and wholeness. As the facilitator, my work is to support the stabilization of this system so that it has space to flow with its inherent motion and intelligence.

* While doing the last touches to complete the project, the archetype of “the mother” came to me in relation to one of the facilitator’s function.
“The mother” is the container that holds the space for the embryo’s heart ignition and further development – by manifesting qualities of receptivity, lovingness, comforting and nourishment. And the facilitator, as “the mother’s” archetype – involved by the heart space that the embryo inspires – engages all her/his motivations towards the development of the embryo to its full potential.

The ‘sacred space’ – the womb – that will be hosting the process of recreation, is an important resource.
The preparation of the room is done with lovingness and sense of beauty. Everything is placed with equilibrium and aesthetic feelings, creating an atmosphere of care and welcoming that supports the participant’s nervous systems to settle as they enter the space. The group room will be in a constant process of transformation during the process.
Once the process of conception starts, the group space becomes more and more alive and keeps on transforming as the embryo develops throughout the days.

 

COMING TOGETHER: Conception

“The circle represents God and eternity, wholeness and fulfilment of the transpersonal dimension of life.”
– Michael Shea –

The internal and external movements, from the elements that are part of the group, start taking a clear direction towards the space of the womb, where the “ovum”- the circular space formed by cushions in the group room – is ready to be entered. And Participants start entering the quiet, vibrating, round and welcoming space.

The circle has a magic function. While entering it, a natural silence and respect for the space happen. There is an inner knowing that this is a sacred space. Many participants close their eyes as they sit in the circle and start moving inward. The Sufi music also invites this inner movement. Some people remain in a more alert, activated state, looking around, moving and changing position.

Through my mid-line – a vertical alignment of my body – I sense all the outside movements and use every experience to rest deeper in my base and belly, to enter a receptive space in my heart center, and to expand the area between my eyebrows. I may then invite people to close the eyes and take a moment to arrive inside themselves. Usually, it helps to invite a few deep inhalations to support the way in.

At this moment the facilitator’s ability to stay present and open to connect with the whole group functions as a resource, a fulcrum of orientation for the individual particularities – feelings of anticipation, insecurity, excitement, or disconnection. As the group settles into a more silent space, potency starts building up for the process of forming a new, unique organism.

This is a moment when life and death is very present.
Death is already happening as individuals die to parts of themselves, surrendering their old ways of being to a new and unknown experience, in order to grow. This is a continuation of a process of renovation that happens through life and death and will be recapitulated over and over during the group and beyond it.

A new embryo is in its process of development, manifesting in the group as a whole – as one organism – and in the wholeness of each individual. The settling deeper in the womb is a sign of a readiness to keep moving with the life-death-life journey that will culminate with death and rebirth.

The embryo will go through expansion and differentiation, and sparkling moments of transformation (ignition). It’s time for finding one’s own center, through the mid-line, and to orient around the fulcrum of the heart, to practice dying and being born, again and again, gathering potency on the way, getting ready for the eternal journey towards birth, death, and rebirth.


MORE ABOUT:
“Die Before You Die” (A Sufi journey of preparation to die consciously and to create space for ignition of life).

 

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A Sufi Approach to Death

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People of all ages are attracted to this process which uses the focus of preparing for death as a way of becoming more open to life. We asked Komala what this course is about, and how it supports daily life.  (O.T, February 2008, www.osho.com/copyrights)


OT: How is it that such a young vibrant person like you is working with death?

Komala: By going deeply into my aliveness – when I am connected with my body and can enjoy dancing, singing, moving – I reach places of relaxation inside. When I feel alive and present in my body I have more resources to deal with the challenges of life.

When life stops being a problem and starts being an opportunity for experiencing and learning and I can enjoy the journey, the mystery of life starts unfolding. Suddenly I go behind appearances: I’m alive, I love life. Then what more is there, what is beyond it? It becomes an adventure. When I go deeper into the experience of being in the body with a friendly approach, it shows something to me which is beyond death. Another kind of experience reveals itself: “I’m not the body.” I’m something much more expansive that is not contained in this body. It’s very paradoxical. That’s just how it is.


OT: The Sufi approach can be very energetic, with a lot of sounds and movements. Does this lead to this experience that you’re talking about?

Komala: We ask ourselves, “When I am on my way to the final let-go when I am going to die, what is there still that I haven’t lived? What is still holding me from the past? When I’m here right now, and I’m going to die, what makes me feel that I’m not ready? It can be some resentment, some story from the past still holding on to me: “I am carrying something with me. At this moment I cannot totally let go because it is still there.” It could be a story with somebody, like a relationship that has finished in an unloving way, and there is still resentment. At some level, these “past stories are still active in the body-mind system. We don’t try to clean the past. If there is something, we invite it to come up and show itself. In the course, we have 50 hours to live and to prepare for dying. So we say “Okay. We don’t have time to solve these problems. I cannot solve any situation with someone right now. But I can find a place – this place which we are creating in the heart – to embrace this situation in my individual journey.” And it really happens magically – old stories from the past are finally integrated and completed.

It might be that someone just needs to take the time to feel the pain of that inability to let go of something, or even to reveal again if there is something which makes them feel angry. We also use specific exercises to go into those emotions and to make friends with them. The way to surpass the emotions is to celebrate them, to honor them. So we do lots of singing. When we want to meet the energy of anger – which is a human quality – we sing it, we go into it, we celebrate it. We go into the pain, we feel it, we connect its vibration through sounds. When we connect the original vibration of an experience we can reconnect and find new ways to relate to it.


OT: What do you do with the fear? That’s often the biggest issue people have in relation to death.

Komala: Fear is an energy that moves in a certain way. The way I work with it is to bring more awareness into it. My own experience is that fear is an energy which is held in the body – I feel it in my belly or in the spine or kidneys – and when I open and allow it to be I may tremble a lot. Then the energy moves through the body and we can experience it as life energy that becomes available. An amazing amount of energy can start flowing. It’s the same with pain, anger, and fear. I also understand that before moving into strong emotions it is important to connect first with resources, to be able to hold such energies. That is how the meditations and the group process are a great support: we practice awareness, self-love and the strength to be able to meet the energies of life.

It’s very beautiful to be meeting everything in existence as energy. When I’m expanding my consciousness I’m just pure energy. And when I’m energy I can meet and be one with everything. Because I am free I can fly in the sky with the birds. I can go into the ocean, I can be the water. I can be the energy of the fish, I can be people …. As energy, we can be everything. Then we can have the experience of oneness. We are not confined to one body. We are this experience.


OT: How does this work support you in your daily life?

Komala: I am doing this work to learn to live my life. Three years ago I was in full surrender in a relationship. I felt that man was my soul mate, my life. We had a very strong connection, very beautiful; we had some difficult times but I had the feeling I would be with this man forever. Then he was away for a week and when he came back from his trip he said that he met someone else. Though it was not easy for him to leave me, after five days he left. Suddenly my life made no sense and I was in deep pain.

I was so grateful for this work with death because I could intensely live everything that I have been talking about in this course – going totally into my feelings. I would cry or feel resentment, and it really happened that going deeply into the feelings that came up kept my heart open. The energy was such that if I closed my heart to him I would close my heart to life, and to me.

The gift of it comes from the meditations I’ve been practicing, from the work with death, and my personal experiences. I could put it all into practice. This happens when I totally let go into the moment and honor the reality I am living.

I can really see that letting go takes practice. This is constantly happening in my life because I am traveling a lot. I may stay in one place for a week and then I move on and stay three weeks in a different place. Wherever I go, I fall in love with the situation – new people become friends. I get involved with the place; I get involved with the work that is happening there. And when it comes time to leave, it feels like death. I may not come back to that place again – So it’s a total goodbye.

I see that the more love I have for a place the easier it is to let go because everything is complete: “I can go now”. And This is very much a result of this work, of these practices. A transformation happens and an understanding on all levels. The body-mind is able to adapt to new situations and to support change.

When I’m driving my scooter or a car, and it comes some challenging situation on the road, I have the tendency to hold the breath. That is a mechanism of protection, to keep me alert. Once the challenge have passed the holding is not necessary anymore. I can let the body relax and expand with a deep sigh of letting go and I can keep on driving and enjoying the way. This is a remembrance to let go of tensions, let go of holdings, and allow relaxation to happen. It is a practice to die and is also a practice to live life fully.

More about the “Die Before You Die” Workshop

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Q & A: Healing the Inner Child – Primal Feelings

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Q. Who is this workshop for?

For every person that feels the longing to open more inner spaces at a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. And especially for people that feels still entangled with his/her past story, people that has difficulty with intimate relationships, and for people that feels entangled with parents in a negative way, either by excessive attachment or through resentments.

Q. I am a parent now, sometimes I am not sure if I am a good mother or father, I have fears and doubts, can this workshop help me, why could it be good for me?

The best way to understand your children and to know from inside out their needs and how to communicate with them is by accessing your own feelings and needs through your own experience. When you make connection with your own little boy or girl inside and let the little one touch your heart, you will remember what is the world of a little child. So that when you meet your own child as a parent you are much more open, understanding and have many more skills on how to relate to them.

An important part of the work is to strengthen the adult in you, and from there you meet your inner child (which is simply a psychologically younger part of yourself). You will listen to the child-you and support its feelings and needs. As you do that, naturally you grow wiser and more loving. This work is ultimately a work about self-love and self-compassion.
And I believe only when I can be loving, compassionate and open to my own needs and my feelings I am able to fully attend with my full heart the needs of another being, which may be my children, my husband/wife, or anyone I relate to.

Q. My childhood was very difficult and painful and I don’t want to touch those old “monsters” sitting quietly under the carpet but my wife says it might be helpful for me. How could I benefit from it?

It is absolutely natural that fears come up when we reconnect with our past stories, because sometimes our “story” is stuck in a frozen negative spiral, and just to think about it releases fear in the system. So it seems better to leave the “monsters” to rest. The problem is that they are not really resting, these so called “monsters” is actually our life energy trapped in old memories. And when our life energy is stuck it can create all kind of symptoms, in our bodies and mind, which can reflect in our physical health and our relationships.

So, it is very important that this reconnection happens in a way that we can digest and integrate. Therefore the approach we use is very gentle, playful, and each participant moves in its own pace.

The possibility through this work is to redesign our past, through reconnecting also the resourceful positive moments (which every child in one way or another have experienced, even if through imagination!), and to rewrite ones life’s narrative in a new way, liberating life energy that can be available for more aliveness, lovingness and creativity.

Q. What could be the benefit? the change in my life that I could expect after the workshop?

The possibility is to reconnect with the essential qualities of your child-you. We are born with infinite capacities and qualities, which because of our life experiences have remained dormant and haven’t fully manifested in our life.
Through your process in the seminar you can rediscover your essential qualities, which may be more aliveness, creativity, lovingness, openness, playfulness, sensitivity, strength, etc. These are energies that can become available when the child in you becomes more alive. You can regain your primary life energy.
And at the same time, as we work with strengthening the adult in you, you may connect with more assertiveness, clarity, compassion, self-worth, presence, ability to recognize and honor your needs, capacity to relate more with yourself and others,
The possibility is to have a new way of seeing and experiencing your life

Q. How could men benefit from this work?

The greatest strength of a man is to be able to be present with emotions (which usually are easier expressed by women and children), but that is only fully possible when men can touch their own vulnerability and emotional intelligence.
In most cultures men has been very disconnected emotionally. They have been specially cut off very early from their child’s sensitivity, with the idea that “men don’t cry”, and sometimes being a 4 years old boy and hearing things like “you should be a man”, etc. This can create deep disconnection and conflicting feelings about their sensitivity and his masculine energy.
The possibility for men is to touch his real masculine strength by embracing his needs and sensitivity.
Q. How about that big group of people that have been in therapy for years, have participated dozens of workshops and they still feel that their life sucks , but they are already tired of “working on their issues”, could they benefit form it ?

The approach of this seminar is very dynamic, and the focus is not on the issues, but on reconciliation with oneself and with one’s story.
This is a healing journey where we enter a spiritual dimension by connecting with our essential being. The group’s energy supports the places that are open in each participant to have more space, and that function as powerful resources for healing the areas that are closed. The work is about self-acceptance and forgiveness.We create a safe, loving and caring ambient. And when we bring out our story in a new context, in an environment of love and support, where we feel seeing and accepted, our brain cells rewire into new pathways that can balance our whole body-mind system. When we do that in combination with movements, play, and practices that supports our body structure to open in a gentle way, a transformation in our psyche can happen in a very short time.

Q. About you: Something about your OSHO experience, the style of teaching you are using.

I have been in the path of self-exploration since 29 years, living and working as a group leader at Osho’s meditation resort, in India.
The approach of healing I’ve received from Osho is a combination of various western therapeutic techniques with meditation and energetic healing practices coming from different traditions. The work around Osho is very experiential, and involves opening in all levels: physical, energetic, emotional, mental and spiritual.
Through the different experiences, exploration and studies I have created, together with my partner, a Chakra training, the “Training for Life”, where we work deeply with all levels of human consciousness. This training is based on the different steps of child’s development and the newest discoveries of neuroscience.

My personal way of working with people involves reading the energetic patterns at an individual and collective levels and balancing the group energy, so that what is ready to comes up can be worked in a gentle way, through dialogue, body awareness and somatic experiencing (Trauma Healing). I facilitate the energy to move in the group through movement, play, breathing techniques, sounds and sharing.
Q. Something from your international experience, 2 or 3 short examples from other countries or continents to show international expertise.

Currently I live in Austria with my husband and partner and travel to different parts of the world with my work. I love traveling, meeting people from different cultures and tuning-in to their own unique ways, as a culture and as individuals.
I offer different courses and trainings in Austria, Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine and China.

 

 

 

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