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What is Shakti?
Shakti is the ultimate creative power of the universe. Shakti creates, she is not created. To be able to tap into this creative power is one of the goals of yoga and tantra. The realization of this power in us leads to freedom from limitation and the awakening of a higher life.
Shakti is pulsating, vibrating, throbbing creating power or force. These vibrations create the universe, the Big Bang, and all names and forms. These vibrations are represented as mantras, and when a series of sounds, a garland of letters, is infused with Shakti, the sound is transformed into a potent tool that can awaken the higher mind and reveal knowledge which leads to higher experience.
The innate, awesome and wonderful creative power of Shakti is our own life-force, bursting with potential. Shakti powers our body-mind, all of our perception, cognition, thoughts, behaviours, desires, drives, feelings, experience and humanity.
Shakti is also the force that liberates us from individual limitation and takes us to higher levels of awareness and experience; transpersonal levels of existence.
Shakti as the Goddess
The word Shakti is often translated as ‘Goddess’. From the yoga-tantra perspective of inner experience, what is implied by the word Goddess is not religious or theological doctrine. The goddesses within yoga-tantra are extremely subtle creative luminous principles and are generally beyond our perception. They are beyond normal social human experience and beyond the capacity of the little mind to cognise.
Yoga and tantra provide practices which enable us to develop higher awareness to more directly cognise and experience these subtle forces. This results in direct experience of Shakti, a direct experience of our self which is a transforming and life-affirming. Consciously touching our own inner depths unleashes energy and strength. We become connected to abilities and skills that we do not usually tap.
The forms of the goddesses are symbolic, mythic and archetypal representations of Shakti. We can study these forces through many different methods. For example, we can translate the word Shakti into a western psychological context so that we can better understand how these forces operate in our lives.
To study the manifestation of Shakti within us and to develop a relationship with Shakti is to develop true psycho-spiritual health. To ignore the forces within us or deny them is to allow the powerful energies of our own being to become unruly, negative or even destructive drives which are capable of reeking havoc.
This is why, in the Indian pantheon, Shakti is said to be divided into two main groups of forces: the light, gentle and benign goddesses who are easy to approach, which include the goddesses Lakshmi, Saraswati, and Parvati, and the dark and fierce goddesses, which include Durga, Kali, Chandi and Chinnamasta. We are taught that we should not approach these terrifying aspects of the goddess without a great deal of psychological preparation, lest we are burned by their awesome power and energy. An analogy of this is that we should not play with fire or electricity until we are old and wise enough to know how to handle these energies.
About the Author(s):
In 2004, Dr Swami Shankardev and Jayne Stevenson decided to pool their talents to create Big Shakti. They co-create various seminars and workshops, which Swami Shankardev presents throughout Australia, USA, Europe and India.
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