We recently finished a Hindu holiday - Navaratri - nine nights of the Goddess. This celebration has helped me understand my own cycles of creativity. Three different goddesses are celebrated for three nights each, as we honor and attune to their elemental energies.
Our next kirtan will be a celebration of these Goddesses: Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati. I hope you will join us Friday October 25 for a transformative Goddess Celebration!
Durga is the warrior goddess and loving earth mother. Her energy is fierce, defending us from destructive forces in the world and our own minds. Durga energy clears the field, cutting away what no longer serves our growth, the old that inhibits the new. This part of the creative process is necessary and usually uncomfortable.
Lakshmi is the goddess of abundance, generosity, and true wealth. Her energy is a flow of giving freely; as we give and let go, we make room for what can be received. She and Durga both hold us in the mystery, the void just before something new is created. There is an element of faith as we take creative action while releasing control of the results. Lakshmi encompasses material and spiritual abundance, as a full life has both.
Saraswati is celebrated at culmination of the holiday. She is the “flowering one,” bringing fruition, beauty, and manifestation of our actions. Saraswati is the goddess of learning, arts, music, language, all pursuits that have an expansive creative reach. She is also a holy river of ancient India, invoking this quality of creative flow.
Here is a full creative cycle: clearing the land, tending the seeds, and nurturing them into flowering. Eventually, the flowers and leaves die away, having served their purpose, and the cycle begins anew. It can be easy to limit creativity to only the flowering, obvious results. Like our own breaths arise and subside, creative energy rises and falls. Like trees change through seasons of growth, it is necessary to go underground, to rest, to replenish the nutrition of the soil/earth.
