KALI, THE COSMIC POWER-I

Kali represents creation, or life being divine in female form. She also represents time, the ultimate destroyer of life. Death and destruction are wrong, the cultural message screams out in my head. Destroyer of life - that sounds terrible doesn’t it? But is it? None of us personally like to think about our own death, or the death of loved ones, and this is natural. At times an individual death can be quite tragic. And so we should consider it. But think of the alternative. Think of life without death. Destruction of life is necessary and important part of creation. It is just as sacred a part of creation as the miracle of birth. Can we celebrate this aspect of our life too?

Indians of hundreds and even thousands of years ago recognized that it is part of our human condition to cling to life even if we intellectually understand destruction’s necessity. And this is the balance that Kali offers us - poised, frozen in time in the middle of that wonderful myth of her birth and war with demons, her moment of recognition that she, life, had survived and could cease her raging war.

In this image, there is a great message - WAKE UP! Wake up and realize the sacred balance of creation and destruction of which you are a part. You cannot separate yourselves, extricate yourselves from the balance of life and death - you can not extricate yourself from time.

What does this mean? I think we must be reminded vividly that even with all our technology, innovation, elaborate patterns of human life and culture we are still inexorably a part of the balance of life on this planet.

Because we are unwilling to face the cruelty of death, we are very unwilling to face the natural and vital element of destruction which we depend on for survival. And so we shove it away into the dark alleyways of our existence. The meat we eat is factory raised and factory slaughtered, our hands are not bloodied.

Much of our consumer based society is based on the destruction being invisible to us - so that we don’t have to think about it, and therefore it doesn’t matter, and we can just buy what we want to, when we want to and go on with our lives.