NEVER NOT BROKEN
During a dinner with a friend, she described writing about epilepsy, which she suffered since childhood. During her research she found the name of a revered, and not well-known in the West, Hindu Goddess , who helped her reframe her relationship to the disease: She Who Is Never Not Broken. I inquired about this remarkable Deity as if hearing even her name surfaced a need,even a relief.
“She is an uncompromising and profound aspect of The Great Mother Goddess, who manifests in many forms.” My friend said. I sought information. And found her In her dark temple, covered in offerings of flowers. She holds a trident, and rides a crocodile across turbulent waters. She is often depicted in parts; broken. But unlike the belief we have of a wholeness always in need of repair, she is the essence of broken open, non dual, naturally separate and whole in her brokenness ~ akin to the ever changing interdependence of all things. Akhilandashvari is summoned during chaos and crisis. She is sought when we feel personally broken, or in this moment, when the world seems broken. She offers us the solace of ceaseless new beginnings, flexibility and transformation, rather than a desperate desire to suppress, cover over, or fill in the “cracks where the light gets through.” She invites us to remember the nature or essence of things, rather than our interpretation.
She is considered an ancient Deity, a Mother of All of Life.
It is a reversal of how we look at what we assume is irreparable, or destroyed; a seeing that nothing is ever solid or perfect; that all in its constant shifting is beauty. As Buddhism and other spiritual teachings remind us, everything is changing. Everything is effected by everything else. Our suffering stems from our belief in our thoughts and interpretations of reality and not in our innate capacity to be with reality as it is. She gives us a form, to reconnect to our potent nature . We can begin again. Even, in the darkest times we find the source of renewal and luminous unconditioned beingness again and again. She rides a crocodile, most feared of creatures sinking and moving in dark waters, about to pounce, ominous and sinister. The crocodile she straddles with skill rejoices over waves. I am reminded that crocodiles are said to be protective mothers and are often seen with all of her babies riding on her back – an image of nurture and joy. She carries us over difficult terrain, inner and outer, like a mother.
In these radical times of uncertainty awakening from the long storied narrative of our separateness from nature and each other, her image is efficacious for our awakening a radical joy in life. We can align ourselves with trust in the energy of life rather than the solidity of things that in reality are constantly broken. I can’t help but think of the Andersen story of The Nightingale, replaced by a mechanical bird that at first is a source of contentment, and reliability. After all, it sings one song only, and can be switched on and off, never is need of love.
The presence of AI, which contemplates for us, if misused can be even a more insidious authority over imagination and experience than a mechanical bird.. more subtly dangerous then technology we have become familiar with. If we misuse AI, teach our young children to depend on it as a means for a problem to be solved - rather than something that exercises the heart and mind, and engages children is seeking, longing, trying, communicating, creating, making mistakes and beginning anew, finding humor in our human frailties, remaining heart mind open enough to see beauty and fall in love with everything, we will lose our place on the earth.
In a book by Michel de Certo, THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE, the author painstakingly explores how we have become detached from reality itself, and live in a narrative that subverts our intelligence. (I have often thought that Artificial intelligence does not exist. It is a co-opting of a word to blind us to what is taking place. We have forgotten the difference between intelligence, intuition and intellect. I translate AI as artificial intellect. It helps me to use it for what it can do, rather than the dream I am sold that it will make my life easier, more efficient, and full of facts without my discernment, seeking, or deep listening.)
De Certo notes that there is a liberation from authoritarian thinking and identity making inspired by media, and most recently the lies of a mad dictator (one of many in the world who equate personal happiness with power; are drunk on accumulation of wealth and control, regardless of tragic consequences.One who needs everyone to agree with them. The ones who shape the world in their own inebriated disassociated personal idea of themselves. )
De Certo wrote ,
“…the only force opposing this position to be a sign is in the cry; a deviation or an ecstasy
A revolt or flight of that within the body, escapes the law of the named.”
The cry of the heart, the incantation, the living word spoken from authentic presence, the image spoken that pierces through fixed concept to a becoming moment by moment, and loosening our grip on interpretation that opens true seeing. Anthropologist and visionary Frances Harwood, once took me on a very long drive to a Blackfoot Sundance. For hours we seemed to move across a flat landscape, unchanging. Suddenly, she saw a handwritten sign, barely readable from the car, and turned up a twisting road. At some point, still not seeing anything resembling a ceremony, we walked upwards. Suddenly everything changed. We heard the heartbeat rhythm of a huge communal drum and voices chanting. Any exhaustion disappeared as we descended into a ceremony of riveting energetic life force.
Entering the doors onto a subway train, distracted by thoughts of what I was about to do, I heard a man’s raw crying sobbing. I turned to see a man, wearing a navy blue jacket, a net of crabs by his feet, wailing. The subway car was a silent cathedral. We sat in devotional stillness. His agony was ours uncovered. His pain split open our hearts. Then as if he had reached beyond this world into the sorrow we all know so well and avoid as much as we can. , he cried out the name MARY from the depth of his body. When the doors opened at the next station, ordinary New Yorkers, walked backwards to the door, bowing as they left, in a gesture of holy communion. The dank speeding subway had become a house of worship, a Temple of rituals, a place where an ancient mourning ceremony was occurring.
Or, reading a book where the authoress attempted to break through the tyranny of commentary and opinion and chronology, into sheer poetry, I stopped. Put down the book. Read again. Then again out loud, slowly shaping words, a seed pod of presence spilling out of my belling, a revolt against disassociation, a cry from the real world.
