A Dance with the Divine Mother

Shiva Nataraja dances for Karaikkal Ammaiyar

I have lived and I have wondered all the time, what's the real point of this life. I don't see much sense in it. I just move from one whirlpool of human interaction to another, how does it help me. I get moralistic messages every morning advising me on how I should lead my life but isn't all this just a bunch of points of view? What is the real truth?

I am currently floored by one person, always been her admirer but now there is even deeper regard for her. The demon devotee of Lord Shiva, once a devoted wife to a man, but fate had other plans for her. Her life is about her transformation from a woman bound by social rule to her release into the darkness of the cremation ground seeking her enlightenment. How ironical is that, that she entered her blissful world in a place we consider "damned".

Karaikkal Ammaiyar taught me the existence of a world that is without bias, where every being, human or animal needs to be respected because they are a version of the supreme, just like me. She also taught me that Bhakti knows no gender. She taught me a strange kind of freedom, one that all of us fear, but well, since I have had a wind of it, I WANT IT. 

Through her journey I asked a few basic questions. How do looks matter? How does age matter? How does gender matter? How does race matter? How does education matter? How does wealth matter? How does ego matter?... when am going to discard all these eventually in my spiritual journey. The great Mother, the Ammaiyar of Karaikkal, sings her songs to the great lord, not in love as we know it but in divine adoration. She doesn't apply a relationship to her love. She doesn't call herself a lover or a slave. She is just devoted, period. If we ever understand the truth beyond relationship, we stand a chance towards emancipation. 

I have had deep moments of frustration, just attempting to answer "What is the purpose of my life". This has been the single most hard hitting question I have not yet found an answer to. And my inadequacy lolls it's ugly head out at me...all the time. What is it that am doing wrong which I need to fix to move on in my spiritual career. My regular life has hardly been an issue. Am not trying to scale greater heights in materialism because I simply lost interest in it. I have just one point of concentration and a few jobs to complete before I call it quits. And hence, I have made my rules, my world, my universe inside my head, geared to see me complete my tasks. 

The Ammaiyar of Karaikkal has called on me, by stepping into my mind in the form of thoughts. She is my guest, seated at the center of my thoughts in a profound conversation on living, on death and on the in between world in blissful adoration of the Lord. 

In the fires of the cremation ground
That light up the mystical stage
A sacred ground where life meets death
Face to face, the great Lord dances in Ananda

Time freezes into non existence
A different world erupts
And devotees from all realms
Come to witness a vigor of consciousness 

Space has a different meaning
Its secret hosts different dimensions
Different realms that we don't know
Even exist deep within ourselves

The beat of the drum
The rhythm of the cymbal
The echo of the damaru
Oh watch Him dance

I am but a part of Him
I am but a part of her
I am but a lost speck of dust
Blown away by time, by illusion

Oh wasted me
What depth of bliss is this
That makes me fear nothing
That makes me want to quit

The great Mother sings
The great Lord dances
Am I spiritually handicapped
To dismiss this bliss, to sink into oblivion?


Photo courtesy: arjuna-vallabha.tumblr.com via Pinterest