Reflections on the Dark Goddess
This past Monday, while teaching the first part in a series of sensual yin yoga classes, the Dark Goddess reared her head and moved through my body and my being. She doesn’t come often, but when she does I brace myself and surrender fully to her fury. A perspective student had been calling incessantly all day from a blocked number, for which I have a no-tolerance, no-answer policy. The same person left me lengthy phone messages and followed up with inappropriate emails. I clued in later that this person had been harassing another practitioner several months ago and was asked to not attend workshops because of their stalkerazzi behavior. After incessant repeat calling from a blocked number, I eventually turned off my phone for the last hour up until the yoga class I was teaching that evening.
At 7:30 pm, as usual, I locked the doors to the temple and nestled in with my students for a sensual yin yoga class in the buff. After creating safe space, moving through a disrobing ceremony and into some basic yin yoga poses there was a ring at the doorbell. There is a VERY clear policy on our website and in our welcome letter that states there is no late entry to class. Ring,ring, knock,knock. I slipped to the back of the room unlocked the door poked my head around and told the man on the other side of the door that class was closed and relocked the door. I opened my mouth to instruct the next sequence when I hear, ring,ring. RINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRING. I drop the class down into child’s pose. Grab my clothes from the front of the room, dress, and go to the back. As I unlocked the door, I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up and rush move through my body that I can only assume would be similar to the first time a person tries heroine. My animal self moves to the surface of my consciousness and I feel the Dark Goddess awaken from the void of my inner universe and activate in every cell of my body. I fling the door open and I can only equate what happened next to the raw instinct a mother lion feels when protecting her cubs and a predator feels when it slaughters its prey. The verbal and energetic attack I unleashed was beyond morality, right or wrong doing, something simply opened up in me and took over. I embodied the curse of the witch, the primal protection of a mother for her cubs, the feeling a predator gets when it tears that first still living piece of flesh from its supper.
The stalker student who disrupted my entire day was annoying, but when it came to jeopardizing my class and my students journey and their safety, students who are trusting me to hold safe space for them in what is already a vulnerable practice, the Dark Goddess rose.
In our lives, most of us only really ever catch glimpses of Dark Goddess energy. Her power and wrath are often misunderstood and subsequently have been repressed and feared for as long as we could give voice to what she was. A common misunderstanding is that she is cruelty or hate. She cannot survive in either cruelty or hate for those stem from unconsciousness and separation. She is a ferocious kind of love what Buddhists call fierce compassion. She is unpredictable, formidable, wild and unforgiving. She lives like nature, without anything as superficial as morality or common niceties. She is the elements in their fury, taking lives, destroying homes leaving her mark without grace or regret. We cannot begin to understand her, only respect and accept her for what she is. Her power is one so ancient that when she activates in our system, even in a conscious way, we often wish her away with the "I don't normally act like that, I don't know what came over me" syndrome talking away our power and animal instincts. But the destiny of the Dark Goddess is that she will always return. She lives in each of us and we catch only glimpses of her in our lives in moments of ruthless honesty, ferocious compassion, adrenaline infused protection and the summoning of the true revolutionary warrior spirit.
I invite you to ask yourself – How does the Dark Goddess show up in your life? What activates her? Have you surrendered to her fully? Is there fear that echoes in your system when her power is activated? Where is your judgment about this energy and where is the freedom in living in the energy consciously?
