Kali, the mother goddess, has a distinctive energy that focusses on destroying the ego and other malafied forms in your personality and she does it with ruthless precision and doesn’t worry about trampled egos and feelings. I read this in a book and nodded my head in agreement. Speaking of trampling, the goddess image has Lord Shiva lying beneath her feet. Albeit, in divine bliss. She holds the head of a demon in one of her hands and albeit with a smile on the face of the demon. Her own form can be seen as terrifying. And still she is called a mother.
We come across some mothers, who are not exactly like Maa Yashoda, the mother of Lord krishna who would indulge him in his naughtiness. These mothers are focussed on discipline and the longer term well being of the child and they do not hesitate to be rude or punish the child, if the child strays from the path. Do they make them less motherly? Absolutely not.
Kali worship is not for everyone. It forces each individual to surrender their previously held notions and start with an infant like demeanor to rewire their brains to learn everything afresh. The things that were seen as bad and terrifying need to be treated with calmness and no judgement. The things that were good and pleasing need to be discarded. In other words, there is no good or bad. Everything needs to be treated the same. There is nothing that is inappropriate for worship when offered with devotion. There is no time thats inauspicious for worship. If you want, you can worship mother at day and at night. You can worship mother on amavasya or on a Tuesday. There is no offering thats unacceptable. And why should it be? Mother created the entire universe and everything is her creation. So, lemons, ginger, sesame seeds, everything can be offered to mother. Ah, what seems as terrifying to many can be seen as liberating to some.
And while its liberating, mother worship doesn’t give you what you want. Instead , you get what mother wants to bestow you. You don’t get to prostrate near mother and ask for more money and status. You don’t get to ask for progeny or peace. Go ahead and ask them, but mother offers all of these things only when they advance you to spiritual progress. If they are harmful, mother wouldn’t hesitate to snap them away from you in a split of a second. Your short term cries are ignored at the behest of longer term spiritual growth. But, while this can sound terrifying, mother doesn’t do these things in a sadistic fashion. Mother gives u the strength and courage to bear troubles before she bestows them on you. In other words, she first strengthens you, lets you go through troubles and then viola, you are better than where you started.
A comforting thought: in the entire cosmos, where there are billions of galaxies and an unfathomable number of beings, who else would go through the trouble of thinking of you and being concerned about your spiritual growth except for a mother? Only a mother thinks about her child, all the time and hence rightly she is called “Mother Kali”. So, next time, you are faced with a trouble, don’t instinctively raise your hands and ask mother to remove it or blame her for it, but instead send out a prayer saying that mother, thanks for thinking about me, despite me being a tiny speck in the entire creation and pray for her to give you strength, wisdom and a little bit of humour to overcome this trouble. For she never gives you anything that you are incapable of overcoming.
Jai Maa!
