Is God A Woman?
THE SHAKTI PRINCIPLE
Is God A Woman?
Shakti literally means power but a different kind of power—the power of beauty, intuition, nurturing, and tenderness.
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No God is not a woman, but God's feminine face has been ignored for too long. The masculine energies have dominated our culture for centuries and because of that we have become a predatory species. We are the only animal that kills our own kind most frequently in the name of God. The feminine forces of the universe are desperately needed if we have to evolve into our next stage of development.
"The whole universe is a gesture of erotic love and every dancing molecule is moving in longing for an unseen lover."
God, being infinite intelligence, cannot be squeezed into the volume of a body or the span of a lifetime. Nor can God be conceived of in human form. Nevertheless, God can be symbolised in masculine and feminine forms. The masculine form needs to be put to bed for a while. It is no accident that our weapons of destruction, missiles and warheads, all look like penises. In Hebrew, the feminine energy of God is called shekhina. In Sanskrit she is shakti. Shakti literally means power but a different kind of power—the power of beauty, intuition, nurturing, and tenderness.
Shakti is the visible creation; she is like the mother tending to her child, aware of every movement, however minute, in the manifest universe. In our sexual love, we re-enact the union of the two forces, masculine and feminine, and whenever we feel loved, we are actually feeling the attention of the cosmic mother, consort, seductress and lover.
Shakti is portrayed in all these forms and countless more. The tender cosmic mother is Shakti, but so is the fanged destroyer Kali with her garland of skulls. Many of Shakti's forms are sexual—it is Shiva's passion for Shakti that inspires her to perform her cosmic dance of creation to delight him. The whole universe is thus a gesture of erotic love and every dancing molecule is moving in longing for an unseen lover. Rumi echoes this notion when he says:
There is someone who looks after us
From behind the curtain.
In truth, we are not here.
This is our shadow.
The divine love of Shiva and Shakti is the only thing that is real; all else is appearance—costume of the dancer rather than the dancer herself.
But what is Shakti outside mythology? Shakti has no simple equivalent in English—she includes the infinite energy of the physical universe as well as the spiritual energy our modern physics does not yet recognise. Galaxies spin through space propelled by Shakti, but she also carries silent prayers to God's ear. Shakti flows through creation as the evolutionary impulse that keeps order from flying apart into chaos, but her existence is so intimate that no instrument yet devised can detect it.
When the Bible speaks of "the light" emanating from God to create the world, Shakti is being described, though stripped of her gender. But Shakti didn't appear only at the moment of inception. Creation continues as long as the universe exists; it is the spirit's unending expression of love for life.
Shakti is cosmic passion and whenever you feel passion for anything you are expressing Shakti through yourself.
Although most of us consider ourselves fortunate if we can still feel passion about anything as we grow older, feeling passion for your work or politics or even sex is not the same as having a passion for life. It is not just that life is bigger than work, politics or sex. Shakti is life itself; it is present in every rhythmic pulse of existence. A passion for life implies that you are passion; it is in your very being. Therefore, the most natural way to be is passionate; the slow ebbing of passion is unnatural.
If you mourn the fading of passion, realise that nothing endures on the surface of life, where change is the only constant. Things come and go, people come and go, and although they once stoked the fires of enthusiasm, eventually the temperature cools. This is particularly true of sexual desire.Erotic attention is not a permanent state of affairs but an opening that allows us temporarily to step outside our ego boundaries and enter into the love affair of Shiva and Shakti. What this means is that sexuality is an opportunity to be in unity, outside the limitations of the ego-dominated self. The opportunity must be taken when offered or else your Shakti—the energy released in sex—will be wasted.
In spiritual terms, Shakti flows in any situation, not just sex, that arouses interest, excitement and attraction. The greatest waste is to expend passion on needs and drives that are selfish and without spirit. Among these wastes would be material accumulation, greed, love of money and power for its own sake, loveless sexual activity and obsession. Shakti is the raw ore of life, waiting to be refined and shaped. Insights about passion, therefore, all have to do with sustaining Shakti in yourself and transmuting it in your relationship to love and union:
Passion is the energy that love creates with no object other than itself.
The energy born of love is creative—it makes everything it touches new. To see how passionate you are, look around at what you have created.
The source of passion is within yourself. When passion wanes, it must be rekindled at its source.
Source: Redirected From : OUTLOOK
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