Mother Mary
Jai Ma Siddhidatri — Celebrating the divine feminine
For Mother
How you have your visible and invisible ways
to quietly step into my dark dungeons and light
up my entire existence, is an easier thread to
unravel. As Kali, as Mary, as Sita, as Parvati,
my Maryam, time and again you come to
remind me of my soft flower that needs to
bloom to show the worlds lost in their path
looking for suns of freedom. What is difficult,
my mother, is to find out your mystery
of light that shines even when hands of
power play with your skies and fire. How
is it that you still hold us as your only child?
~
Vaishali Paliwal
Navratri (festivals of nine nights) to celebrate the divine feminine ended three days back. I was to write my ninth and last piece piece of the series I have been writing to celebrate the nine forms of the Goddess. I can’t really explain why I couldn’t get to write the ninth piece on Ma Siddhidatri.
This morning when I woke up, I knew the answer. It is because I was to cover the ninth day with another form of the Mother different from the image I had started with. She had arrived with some questions and answers that were important for me to reflect upon while I concluded this series of celebrating the divine feminine.
I share this subject article with utmost honesty and transparency with respect to all faiths and religions; each of which I believe we can learn something from. But it will first require us to keep our biases and lifetime of conditioning aside. Without it, this article will be catastrophic to all.
The formless divine feminine
Can be found anywhere and everywhere for inspiration, reminder and worship. It is genderless. Just like sacred masculine. It is in nature in moon’s pacifying light. It is in the man standing next to me with his biggest kindest smile offering me compassion and empathy in my most difficult days. It is forgiveness for Trump. It is unconditional love for the lover who betrayed you.
It is all the goodness of the softest flower existence has ever seen. In its tenderness and sacred feminine traits, is its highest strength and power.
In this light, that one moment, had Hitler shown even one act of kindness, would have divine feminine in him. Which is exactly why formless is a difficult concept for humans to carry. We will fail at it again and again because the formless behind a body is difficult to reach with our human eyes and mind. This fluidity and limitlessness is a difficult river for us to experience.
Hence the perfect and beautiful forms
The forms of perfection and beauty are introduced to us by our religions and spiritual paths for easier grasp. It can be Parvati of Hinduism or Mother Mary of Christianity. It is so easy for me to meditate on either and reach the sacred feminine in me. Just looking at their image softens and opens up my heart immediately. It lets me be forgiving and loving in places not expected.
For this ninth piece she comes to me as Mother Mary vs Ma Siddhidatri I had earlier thought would be my form of focus. But she arrives in any form, any body. It is for us to see the divine feminine in her. Finding the formless in her physical manifestations. It can be my brother protecting me from a falling roof of a hurricane. There in his shielding arms is my Mother.
I do some times think about spiritual consequences of if I could worship her in only one form like Ramakrishna’s love and obsession for Kali. He runs to a river almost drowning and shouting “where is my mother” “i need my mother”giving him a mad man status by his villages. Such attachment for a one point and one form is very attractive and perhaps eventually something I could deviate to it. Currently I enjoy many physical manifestations of her.
Distortion of Mother and possible distortion of Holy text
Unfortunately humans are slaves to fears. Not only we miss the formless in the beauty, we work on distorting the beauty to secure our ideas, agendas and ideologies. Fearful men were afraid of the power of Mother and so distorted her softness and forgiving nature into concept of obedience, her unconditional love and kindness into concept of a needed sacrifice and so forth.
Sita is even today being used as a symbol of ‘sacrifice’ equating to goddessness when she had to jump in fire to prove her ‘purity’. Ram was apparently being at his moral most behavior by agreeing with society to ‘test’ his wife. Ramayana is the most important book for Hinduism. While there are many beautiful lessons for life in the book, we have let Sita burn in the ill agendas of society to keep women oppressed by worried men.
However. However. I have time and again questioned ill interpretations of religious texts by the ones who use religion to stay in power. In that light I am studying Valmiki’s Sita and Ram as originally written; out of the bubble of mainstream and accepted viewpoints. I am not supporting Sita’s test. I am just suggesting that there is a possibility it was written from another angle that could be enlightening. Many of my friends will be very disappointed with my this approach. But as I continue to readopt Hinduism, it is important for me to find answers that have baffled me earlier. I have not given up on our religions. Not yet. There is an ancient wisdom in these texts which could be the most valuable for times like these.
In the similiar lines, I want to study Mother Mary. For me she has stayed as the perfect image of sacred feminine with her ever forgiving eyes even for a world who has very likely misinterpreted, misunderstood and used her to bead a story convenient for the men of power. Again because of my lack of education on her life and associated religious references, I will not add more here. I will just say that we need further investigation before concluding what she is and what she is not. In either case, she continues to be my Mother this ninth day and many more to come.
Jai Ma. May we all find the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine in us always.
Vaishali Paliwal
