World’s most ancient and only Appstore for psychological-showcasing of multiple SELVES — Navratri’s Annual Doll Festival
We are all familiar with Appstores, where everyday billions of Apps get uploaded, upgraded, downloaded and installed for handling day-to-day functions. Just like an Appstore, however, we all have, within us, a SELFIE-store, except these are inner-psychological-images or inner-selfies. Each of us create and maintain hundreds of Selfs, self-authored, upgraded, downloaded and installed, to handle our various day-to-day functions. E.g. we have our Student-self, employee-self, father-self, mother-self, husband-self, wife-self, wise-self, victim-self, warrior-self… and so on.. which we have developed ourselves and made available at various stages of our life journey. In fact every year, we add some additional new-selves that we develop based on the situations we face, and the contexts we handle. But how often, and in how many cultures do we get to show-case these selves? Well at least in India, I have grown-up celebrating this very aspect of life, every year during the Navratri’s doll festival. The festival that helps showcase our psychological-selves on multiple-shelfs.
Symbolic external show-casing of the multiple psychological-selves within.
Positive psychology today has proven, that if we practice daily affirmations, of our inner-most desires, they will manifest in our lives. One of the many psychological interventions prescribed is to draw, craft or physically model/represent our desires, in whatever form. Typically however, if I am representing my various selves, I would prefer a human-form isn’t it? The Navratri doll festival, is nothing but this external showcasing, of the multiple psychological-selves within. In fact Upanishads and Vedas have always said the same both metaphorically as well as literally.
You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
The Navratri festival in addition to providing this ability to physically manifest our inner-desires, it also has rituals to help us surrender to the process of continuously upgrading to our better selves. A social/public ritual itself is symbolic of an inner-psychological process. E.g. A Kiss is a social/public ritual of the inner-psychological process of affection. In a similar way most Indian rituals are outer representations of the inner-psychological processes. Below, I try to articulate some of these rituals.
Pitru-Paksha (Shradh) — Paying homage and annual purging of our old, dead, inactive and ancestral selves.
Have you heard of Appstores, announce their upcoming purge, when they take stock of cleaning up their Stores, to get rid of the old, unmaintained and ineffective apps? Of course you have. Well guess what, in nearly similar ways, Pitru-paksha is the annual purging ritual, of our old, dead and inactive selves, and this precedes the start of Navratri. We all retain psychological images of our fathers, our grand-fathers even our ancestors, and its not easy to get-rid of these conditioned psychological images. Pitru-paksha, which spans about 14 days before Navratri, is about trying to pay homage, and move-on from those old selves, or at the very least reduce their influence on us.
Such psychological-processes of letting-go of our ancestral-selves might trigger psychological imbalances, hence its at least a 14 day long process, and it’s left to individuals to do it at their own pace.
Navratri and Dashami — 10 days of crafting, maintaining, celebrating, show-casing and welcoming new-selves
If you are an App developer, and you are continuously maintaining your Apps, to work with newer devices, not crashing with OS updates etc., usually Appstore purges don’t affect you. Similarly, if you are upgrading your various selves, making sure that they work in newer contexts, and don’t crash with every new life-update, then you should be a happy-camper. However, we all continuously aspire to become the best we can be, and want to showcase our various selves as well as newer aspiring-selves. This makes it important, that we take time to arrange all of our selves. In fact there are some rules of arrangement to show-case your various selves, just like there are Appstore rules, if you want to show-case your apps. They are not complex, in fact just like developer liberty, you have complete liberty to the arrangement that best works for you. However, at least the top most layer is ability to identify which Appstores itself you want to showcase. For e.g. Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Galaxy Apps, etc. You need to, at the very least know the mother-app, that will help handle all other apps. So the first layer is about recognizing the mother-selves within us, which will help us handle all other-selves. Its been a tradition for more than thousands of years to showcase Durga, Laxmi and Sarasvathy within at the very first layer.
Worship of the Feminine — And its significance
The 3 mother gods are symbolic of Tamas(Inertia), Rajas(Activity) and Sattva (Purity/Transcendence). All our selves emerge from these 3 mother-gods of energy. Sadhguru in his post on Navratri and its significance, had made the same reference. In fact the entire 9 days of Navratri are actually celebration of the Feminine energy within. Why? The creative selves within us are all sacred feminine. Creation is largely acknowledged and associated with feminity isn’t it? In fact my own experience is that masculine-selves within us, (both for men and women, and without gender-bias)tend to become entangled with profanity. I recently documented my experience of discovering the Draupadi within, the psychological-fluidity within me, and which helps orchestrate all the other primary-pandava-selves within me, which are my intellectual-self, physical-self, emotional-self, spiritual-self and agentic-self. So, paying respect to the sacred-feminine has been recommended as tradition for thousands of years in India, and it also holds good experientially within me. The arrangement and hierarchy of the various selves is based on each individuals’ personal conditions and life-context.
The choice of highlighting and showcasing the various selves within us, are however left to each one of us. Neelima Sangenini, one of my friends just a couple of days ago, mentions this as part of her Navratri celebration and her personal preference for arrangement.
At the top step we start with the godly selves — mainly Lakshmi, Saraswathi and Parvathi, and the last step is normal household self, even animal selves… when we try to become aware of ourselves and people around us we start climbing steps and finally reach the highest step, which is god and when we are not really aware then we stoop down to the lowest step of even behaving like animals. ~Neelima Sangenini
Indian culture has given us the liberty to not only showcase our psychological selves, but you can associate identities, narratives and even roles to your various selves. In fact story telling, of each individual doll is a critical activity during the Navratri. Narratives around the doll (symbolic of the psychological-self) is a real personal articulation, of what your deepest desires are, to a socio-emotional gathering of friends and family, who will together help usher, with their blessings, your deep desires to manifest and become a reality.
Steps for further Exploration — Consciously try to upgrade, to your better selves
We all have a choice. We can all leave behind those selves which are not relevant to the present times and current contexts in which we live in. Most of the time letting-go of our learnt selves, is hard. While through out, I have given the analogy of Appstores and apps, I wish letting-go and leaving behind our learnt-and-conditioned selves, was as easy as uninstalling an app. Very recently I even co-facilitated a workshop on upgrading to a better me. However I know human transformation and transition from one self to another, is not that easy, but its not impossible either. Psychological process of letting-come will happen if you surrender yourself to the process of upgrade. If you can imagine your best possible self, find pathways to let-it-come, release your own constraints and allow for upgrade, to a better version, you can consciously achieve it. We do that with apps and appstores all the time. We consciously find better apps, we uninstall, upgrade and get latest and better versions of them all the time. Navratri is truly about doing the same with your psychological selves. Rejoice, in your power to maintain, craft, celebrate and showcase your multiple psychological-selves. To install the new version of yourself however, wait till Deepavali. Yes, there is more to it than meets the eye :).
