Radical Self-Transcendance

In the midst of packing to go on an adventure to the west coast for the winter I am planning my fourteenth annual women’s Solstice practice. We are calling in the Hindu Goddess Chinnamasta, the headless goddess of radical self-transcendance. From the yogic spiritual tradition, the condition of the headless state represents in fact our true inner nature, of the divine and perfectly detached witness. She’s known for holding her own head and drinking the blood from her decapitated head. I know, it’s rather extreme but given the fact that we seem to be in very extreme and polarized times I find her to be a very helpful energy to engage with.

Her image is shocking and disturbing and yet she is the power of consciousness to see itself. She stand’s naked and raw in her truth. Her blood represents our own nourishment. I had my head chopped off last night just moments after reading about her. A curveball came right at my husband and I. He had his own process and I literally broke down and could no longer think straight. I felt I was being challenged to look fearlessly and ask “Who am I, really?”. I knew in every bone of my body that from that point on I would have to be willing to step beyond all my comfort zones and trust in the unfolding of what was in front of us in order to move forward. I was being asked to sacrifice my ego in the service of something bigger and greater to emerge.

“Hum, hum, hum”……..I chanted over and over as I sobbed in the uncertainty of what was to come. I was aware of her energy asking me to drink the shakti of my own pain, daring me to see into my own raw authenticity; both my shadow and light. “Show me this place that I am broken and show me how I am to enter a new level of self-transcendence”, I asked.

In Sally Kempton’s book, Awakening Shakti she says “The path of consciousness demands that we look at both our light and our shadow gifts, to know what needs to be contained and harvested inwardly and what we can appropriately give to others. The image of Chinnamasta so often shows up for us when we are experiencing a form of inner death and rebirth. In a deep transformative process, we willingly become naked, offering up our excuses, our outworn defense strategies, and our masks for the sake of healing. Anyone willing to look into and heal their own unconscious wounding is actually giving a gift to the culture at large: because they do it, others can share the wisdom of their journey. A stream of wisdom rises up when you have severed the head of your unconscious acquiescence to shadow dynamics. Because you have done it, others can also do it”.

Today was a new day. I woke up to the snow falling lightly and the beautiful stillness that this winter morning brings. There was new possibility in front of my husband and me. A new opening that we had not been able to see  before last night. We could both see ourselves more directly, in our naked, authentic selves: in our true power. Everything we think we know we are being asked to let go of. These times are anything but easy. The old way is dying for real and we are now in the flames of the fire.

I feel many of us are honing our warrior skills for these times ahead. To be a great warrior we must look at our own pain and enemies within and be able to drink the blood as Chinnamasta does. As I spoke of earlier we are all in a process of inner death and rebirth wether we are conscious of it or not. If we choose to go in and face all of ourselves, we can then use our powerful life-blood, awakened kundalini energy to nourish ourselves and those around us.

So I leave you with these questions for yourself in these uncertain times on the planet:  Who are you without your normal roles, without the head of your thoughts? What is left when you let go of your mind?  Can you tap into your stored passion, your life force and drink the bliss of your own blood?

Blessings all ways,

Alison

I feel many of us are honing our warrior skills for these times ahead. To be a great warrior we must look at our own pain and enemies within and be able to drink them as Chinnamasta does. Then we must use our powerful life-blood, awakened kundalini energy to nourish ourselves and those around us.