Mahakali

Month 5 Butterfly Journal Prompt: Over the last few months we’ve had to take a long, hard, and realistic look at ourselves. We may, or may not, have liked whom we’ve seen, but we have a good foundation to build upon. Acceptance of who we have been and who we are allows us to surrender into this process of metamorphosis. We are now tucked away inside our cocoons healing, growing, changing, and transforming. For most of us, the darkness is frightening, but remember to keep faith and not give up, for we are well on our way to becoming beautiful butterflies.

For the fifth month, meditate on the aspects of yourself that have been difficult to accept. Once you acknowledge them, accept them, and surrender them to the process of change. Things will shift. Again, asking yourself “why?” may be helpful. 

Before beginning this post, I decided to see what I wrote for Month 5 during the last round of journeying through Butterfly Journal. (See all journal entries here.) The old posts were about accepting, or at least trying to accept, situations that were causing me great frustration and irritation. Much has changed in my life in the past almost two years since then. On the surface, those situations no longer exist; under the surface, I have grown, learned, and healed tremendously.

This current re-journeying through Butterfly Journal is a much deeper healing and understanding experience, and in the past several months I have been working on and acknowledging and accepting the shadow aspects of myself, or my shadow side.

The shadow is the person we’d rather not be.  – Carl Jung

There is a side to me that is very feisty and fiery. This side of me comes up when situations occur where I feel attacked, especially for no logical reason, such as a stranger yelling at me on the street because I have dogs, or a woman nearly running me and my dogs over because she didn’t want to wait at the stop sign. Now, I understand that it is a normal reaction to feel upset when these kind of things happen, but for me it’s like Kali comes out of the shadows and wants to sever peoples heads (figuratively, not literally!)!

Kali with necklace of severed heads (egos).

On the surface I may still look like the creative and intellectual Saraswati, my gravatar and muse, see here, but inside I am inflamed…fuming…and this heat heightens my intuitive ability to zero in (sort of like when the bionic woman was under distress and her bionic ear would zero in on a conversation) on the issues and struggles in people’s minds and I want to just rip them and their egos apart by pointing out all their problems and suffering that they create for themselves. I want to severe their egos like Kali, but I don’t. I walk away, because even though I “see” everyone’s suffering, I know that pointing it out to them in those moments to shame them would not help them, but harm them. Ahimsa.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.  – Carl Jung

Though Kali severs heads, she does not act out of violence. She is an aspect of the Divine Mother (I just realized this – tonight begins Navaratri, Nine Nights Celebrating the Goddess, including Kali!), and she helps us learn, grow, and heal. It was several months ago, maybe a year, that I really embraced and accepted the Kali within me. I used to keep her hiding in the shadows afraid of her anger, only for it to spew out on someone else or myself for no logical reason. Then I realized that Kali comes into the light to help me to sever my own head, my own ego-mind. I am presented with situations like above to provide me an opportunity to learn, heal, and grow continuously in this cocoon called physical life. Now when Kali arises within me, I smile, accept, and thank her for assisting in the severing of my ego.

When an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in other people—such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions… If you feel an overwhelming rage coming up in you when a friend reproaches you about a fault, you can be fairly sure that at this point you will find a part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious.  

– Marie Louise Von Franz

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