The following is excerpted from Shakti Rising: Embracing Shadow and Light on the Goddess Path to Wholeness by Kavitha M. Chinnaiyan MD, published by New Harbinger Publications.
The path of spiritual practice, or sadhana, is mysterious and unpredictable. Expertly orchestrated by an unseen hand, it often makes sense only in retrospect. Some summers ago, my sadhana took a sharp turn that later became memorable as the one that changed everything.
The day had begun like any other. Conforming to a lifelong habit, I had risen well before the sun. Retreating to my cozy medita- tion room, I lit a candle and settled down, already at peace in the semidarkness. Soon, a deep sorrow made its presence known, gath- ering in the chest and bubbling into the throat. It morphed into such great pain that I gasped for air and, abandoning practice, lay down on the floor as tears arose.
The racking eased after several long minutes as I lay still, observ- ing the waves of sadness as they swirled and ebbed, and was startled by a thought that said, I should take up Sri Vidya Sadhana. This was puzzling because I knew nothing of this practice and had no memory of having heard of it. Nonetheless, the thought recurred with increasing intensity. Curiosity piqued, I began to research Sri Vidya Sadhana and discovered that it was a tantric practice.
Tantra had never held any appeal for me, as I had heard that it was a path of indulgence, with spooky practices and lovemaking techniques. Since I had decided to take up Sri Vidya anyway, I was relieved to find that it has nothing to do with pop tantra—it is an ancient path of self-discovery. Peculiarly, a certain Sri Vidya school came up again and again in all my queries. Taking this as a sign, I reached out to the guru and was soon initiated into the practice. It was immediately engaging, and the pristine teachings of tantra quickly began to draw me into their fold. They polished the lens of clarity where my beloved paths of yoga and Vedanta began to explode into a living, vibrant understanding.
It soon became clear that this sadhana is profoundly relevant to what we humans have in common—incessant striving for happiness.
What Are We Seeking?
No matter who we are or what we believe in, each of us is seeking happiness. This deep longing isn’t limited to humans, the most intelligent of life-forms. All living creatures seek balance and homeostasis. We aren’t only psychologically wired to seek happiness; our very physiology is built to seek equilibrium. The trillions of cells in our body strive for chemical, hormonal, metabolic, and electrical balance. It is thus natural that we innately seek equilibrium in all spheres of our life, be it physical, mental, emotional, or material.
We are wired to seek equilibrium because our very identity is rooted in a sense of lack, a vague feeling of wanting an indefinable something. In an effort to feel whole, we chase material objects, like cars, fashion, and wealth, or psychological rewards, like recognition, success, relationships, and self-worth. In every instance, it is the underlying sense of lack that drives us to seek completion. We feel that we will become whole if and when we get whatever we chase. Although we feel happy and whole when we get what we want, these feelings are always temporary. Soon, the sense of lack returns, and we start seeking again.
My life was the perfect example of persistent seeking until I turned thirty. The deep sense of lack drove me to seek one success after another, but no achievement brought lasting peace and instead created an escalating inner conflict. Even the beauty and purity of motherhood didn’t erase the conflict and restlessness, which were intensified by sleepless nights and an exhausting workload. My youngest child was about a year old when the dissatisfaction reached a fever pitch. One morning I woke up early, cherishing the quiet of the dawn. As the coffee brewed, I began putting away clean dishes from the night before when my eyes fell upon the block of kitchen knives. I casually wondered what it would be like to die. I wasn’t suicidal or depressed—the thought was one of innocent curiosity. As I contemplated this possibility, I had a vibrant vision of the trajectory of my life on the path of habitual seeking. I saw myself as an externally successful but deeply unfulfilled middle-aged woman who was worn-out and unhappy. She looked like she had missed out on the most important thing in life. The vision faded.
As my attention returned to the kitchen, I noticed that several minutes had passed and my hand was frozen in midair, still clutch- ing a utensil. A stream of joy bubbled up from the depths of the ennui that had enveloped me until then. Finally I knew! What I was really seeking was the end of seeking. And it had nothing whatsoever to do with gathering, achieving, or acquiring.
Seeking the End of Seeking
When we start looking at an object or an experience to complete us, or to fulfill our aspirations, we hope that this will be “it.” For example, we might feel that getting a coveted education or marrying the person of our dreams will end all our suffering once and for all, and we will never have to seek anything else again. When the inher- ent sense of lack begins to poke through the bubble of temporary contentment, we gear up for another “it” that will end the seeking. In everything we chase, we seek the end of seeking, for a time when we can live happily ever after and not ever want anything again. However, such a time never comes.
I deduced that if nothing obtained from the world was making me permanently happy, I was probably looking in the wrong place. Since nothing in the external world was leading to lasting fulfill- ment, it was time to “find myself.” I began to practice meditation and self-inquiry, and study the non-dual philosophy of Advaita Vedanta.
Over the next few years, my perception began to shift so that my identity no longer rested on attaining and achieving. Along the way, I came in contact with several teachers, in both the physical and nonphysical realms—Mahavatar Babaji was one of them. The most telling example of his guidance was the thought to take up Sri Vidya Sadhana because the school that kept coming up in my queries has strong connections with him.
A year after taking up Sri Vidya Sadhana, I came across Standing as Awareness by Greg Goode. Halfway through the book, a shift had occurred. Who I had thought myself to be was only a mask that arose and subsided in awareness. “Awareness” here refers not to bio- logical sentience, but a global clarity that unifies all things. This clarity is awareness itself, and this awareness is our true nature. What great freedom to see this!
How the Feminine Power Became Sidelined
Sri Vidya Sadhana is the path of the divine feminine. This path has opened me to a fuller understanding of the feminine archetype and how she has been sidelined. This understanding was catalyzed when I visited the ancient Palace of Knossos in Crete, where the high status of women in the Bronze Age Minoan culture is evident. There are large murals depicting female acrobats, the high priestess, and the all-powerful goddess, but as I explored more recent archeological sites, I made an interesting discovery. The temples and shrines that honor male deities had originally been built for female deities and became reassigned over time. Over the centuries, the earth and snake goddesses of the Bronze Age were entirely replaced by Zeus, the king of gods. Female deities, including the wise and powerful Athena, assumed secondary and often subservient roles.
A similar theme unfolds when we consider the history of yoga, which is said to have been discovered and propagated by women of the Indus Valley civilization. Cyclical changes of bleeding and birth- ing gave women the advantage of being able to observe their physiology and its effects on the mind, emotions, and behavior. Curiosity and desire to gain control over physiologic functions like menstruation, ovulation, conception, childbirth, and menopause led women to explore the various practices that are now part of yoga and tantra. Figurines unearthed from the era demonstrate women in postures now known as asanas, with expressions that hint at their transcendence of suffering.
Once they had explored their own inner spaces and gained mastery over their bodily functions, women taught these practices to their male partners. Originally revered as learned yoginis steeped in knowledge, bliss, and ecstasy, these women were gradually overshad- owed by the establishment of patriarchy. Eventually, women were banned altogether from yoga due to the very physiological processes like menstruation that helped shape it. Over the centuries and influenced by the pervading culture, women have come to view themselves as inferior. Bodily functions like menstruation are treated with disdain, and it is not uncommon to refer to it as the “curse.” Unknowingly, we teach our daughters to hate or fear it, entrenching ourselves in the perception of inferiority.
Only over the last one hundred years have women been allowed to practice yoga, but often with restrictions. Even though women make up the overwhelming majority of yoga practitioners across the globe, it still largely caters to the needs of men. Until recently, most easily available yogic texts provided no methods or techniques geared toward the particular biological processes of women.
We see the same curious phenomenon in major world religions that dismiss the feminine and revere the masculine. The feminine principle has traditionally been rejected as being soft and useless for true progress on the spiritual path. For example, discrimination, or the intuitive ability to distinguish between real and unreal, is considered the prime qualification for progress in Vedanta. It is labeled as a masculine trait and favored over devotion, a feminine quality. In certain other traditions, the only spiritual progress women can hope for is to be born as a man in the next birth because it is believed that only men can attain liberation or freedom from suffering. The path of Shakti is very different.
Shakti: The Divine Feminine
“Shakti” means power, energy, or dynamism. Without Shakti, there can be no creation. As the energy that holds the cosmos together, she is the movement of the galaxies that creates new stars and black holes. As the digestive fire, she transforms food into nutrients and strength. As the waking state, she appears as every thought, emotion, and action. As the dream state, she is the play of the unconscious mind as it lives and acts out its fears and fantasies. As the deep sleep state, she is the absorption of consciousness into rest. As the evolu- tionary force of the planet, she is the movement of the tectonic plates that creates continents and oceans. As the great change, she is the earthquake, the tsunami, and the volcano.
There is nothing in creation that isn’t a manifestation of Shakti, the divine feminine. In a particular tantric tradition, Shakti is venerated as the forces of creation in ten particular forms known as the Mahavidyas.
Shakti’s Ten Great Cosmic Forces: The Mahavidyas
In tantric philosophy, the masculine force is called Shiva, and Shakti is his dynamic energy. In the beginning, there is only undifferenti- ated, timeless potential, or Shiva-Shakti together. The first move- ment in creation is that of self-recognition—Shiva turning to look at himself is Shakti, his I-Am. Shakti is Shiva’s power to experience himself. Creation is said to begin at this instant of seeming separation of Shakti from Shiva. Seeming because they are inseparable, just as fire can never be separated from its heat.
Shiva is unchanging awareness while Shakti is his dynamic force who brings creation to life. While he provides the backdrop for creation, she performs all its functions as Dasha Mahavidya, which translates to the “ten wisdom goddesses.” They are Kali, Tara, Tripura Sundari, Bhuvaneshwari, Tripura Bhairavi, Chinnamasta, Dhumavati, Baglamukhi, Matangi, and Kamalatmika. The Mahavidyas are not mere consorts of male deities—here, Shakti takes center stage to bring forth time, space, evolution, and destruction.
The Shadow and the Light
The Mahavidyas make up not only the creative forces on the cosmic scale, but also the forces within us that lead either to suffering or to freedom. Just as Shakti creates the cosmos, so she gives birth to our identity. And just as the cosmos limits the unlimited divine Shiva- Shakti, our identity limits our true limitless nature. This limitation is the root cause for our pervasive sense of lack.
Each Mahavidya represents an aspect of our limited identity maintaining our sense of lack and keeping us on the path of endless seeking. As the corresponding light, she awakens us to our true limitless nature.
Our natural mode of operation as limited beings is to chase pleasure and push away pain. In the sadhana of the Mahavidyas, we learn that this dichotomy keeps us bound to suffering because we can never be guaranteed of pleasure all the time. We learn that our suffering doesn’t arise from not getting what we want or getting what we don’t want. We dive into the very source of suffering and find that it arises from our mode of operation that in turn is birthed by who we take ourselves to be. Instead of pushing away our pain and perceived limitations, we learn to welcome them into our loving embrace.
With this brave step, the very limitations that hold us back become the vehicles for transformation and awakening. This is one of the many paradoxes along this path where doing what we fear or abhor gives us the results we want. When we allow our greatest fears to arise and simply be, they crumble and disintegrate into unreserved self-love. This is an alchemical process where we become love, radiating and including everything into our being. This is the end of seeking.
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