Surrender to the Mother - Part One
Transformational experiences in India
“Its time to meet the mother….”
“Huh?” I thought.
“Its time to meet the mother,” repeated the inner whisper of intuition.
Its December 2023. I’m at the tail end of a monumentally difficult year, which followed a very challenging 2022. I’m looking at a message on my phone, an invitation I’ve received from my friend Ed to join a group trip to Southern India in a few month’s time. I hear that inner voice, and feel the answer rising from my gut. I immediately type out my reply: “Yes, I’ll book my flight today”.
I’d first heard of Sri Puram, the temple complex I had just agreed to visit, nearly four years prior - a friend of mine told me of this wonderful place he’d been going to for the past decade. This friend had lived as a monk in a monastery in Bhutan for several years in his twenties, and I’ve always trusted his insights.
He spoke of a charismatic male teacher who embodied a divine Goddess – indeed this teacher was referred to as “she”.
“Finally some modernity in the ancient spiritual traditions,” I thought. Not needing or wanting any further spiritual pilgrimages at the time though, I had parked it in the back of my mind.
In the intervening years, I’ve experienced a dismantling of sorts. Very typical around the age of 40, what we conventionally refer to as the mid-life crisis is an opportunity for a reimagining and realignment within our paths. Astrologically, some people experience some kind of Pluto transit during this time – a cycle of metaphorical death and rebirth. It can be challenging, but the knowledge that its just a cycle and will pass should offer some comfort.
In the midst of a lot of personal change, I knew that enforced surrender was necessary to make room for something else. It seemed like so much of my life and identity was being completely deconstructed. I knew that so much change was making me stronger, and that constant instability was forcing me to create a sense of stability in myself.
In fact, in many ways I had called it in – I had been a Shaivite devotee, knowing on a deep level that in order to embody the liberation which is central to my philosophy of life, intense transformation was par for the course.
But it seems impossible to go through such a process without the inevitable wonders of “why me?” Some anger at God during the lowest moments is something many, including myself, succumb to. The irony of all of this is that I had thought I was above this kind of thinking; that I had transcended and found a level of inner peace that was the blessing of divine grace.
I’ve always remembered a core teaching of Eastern mythology: that after the dissolution, when total surrender has set in and the air is still and empty – the Goddess comes. Like blowing a kiss, she breathes new life into the stillness. The creative force she bestows nourishes previously planted seeds, and reveals new ones. This kiss of life marks the beginning of a new chapter, indeed perhaps, even an entirely new script.