During this part of Navaratri, it is customary to celebrate and honour Maha Laksmi. She is ‘Sri’ - auspiciousness itself - and the embodiment of beauty, fertility and abundance.
It feels so fitting that where I am it has rained for the past two days… A delicious soaking rain, that has made the ground all muddy. Laksmi is always pictured with water sprinkling around her (sprayed by white elephants usually, as she floats on a lotus), symbolising Her as that energy which nourishes the Earth and brings vitality to life. She’s the creative energy of gardening and cooking and wildlife and forests. She’s that blessing force which causes a bud to bloom and fruit to ripen. She is a mesmerising beauty and when you see her pictured her face is always serene and she is dressed in beautiful silk saris and adorned with golden jewelry. Often she’ll also be dripping gold coins from her hand.
Honouring Lasksmi is about honouring all the goodness in your life. It’s about taking in the good, noticing, respecting what richness and abundance is present in our lives and acknowledging all the ways we have been provided for. Often I think of a gratitude practice as a fitting way to call forth Laksmi as her myths tell of how if you take her for granted, she retreats, taking all the colour and lustre from life.
I feel as though on one level, this is a practice that comes naturally to me. I’m often pausing to admire the beauty around me. It helps that I feel as though I’m living in the lap of Laksmi right now - the abundant natural beauty around me often stops me in my tracks. I’ll often pause on a walk, mid chat, to just say ‘Wow - do you see the mist?’ ‘Look at that sky!’ And, ‘Wow, look at how the trees sparkle with their wet leaves twisting in the wind.’ And I make a habit of getting up and going deliberately to marvel at the world before breakfast. So I do feel connected to the wonder of it all, most of the time. However, I’ll also own that there are still times when I’m kind of a brat. Not a brat, exactly, but just a human I guess. And I get a bit bogged down in my tasks and I get tired and in those moments I might only be half heartedly taking it all in… “Yeah, yeah, beautiful sunset, ra de ra de rada.” Being rested, definitely helps me to be more open to the wonder and delight of the world. When I’m tired, or feel like I have too much on my plate mentally, it’s hard to let myself be moved.
But mostly, I feel I have the Wow part pretty happening.
The part that I’ve realised lately that is a bit of a struggle is the believing that I am worthy of the goodness.
It’s as though sometimes, while I am totally besotted with the outrageous beauty of my life I also feel an underlying current of ‘who am I to deserve this?’ and this kind of cuts my celebration short.
It’s a bit of guilt or shame, that I have so much magnificence in my life and I know that others don’t.
My friend Nik works in social justice and she advised me once that the thing to do in those moments is to get out of fragility mode and into responsibility mode… As in, don’t be paralysed by guilt and shame of the lack of equity, rather, DO something to ensure that others have access too.
My inclination in the past has been to deny myself full enjoyment, to kind of temper my ecstastic enthusiasm for all that’s wonderful in my life by focussing on what’s not right, or missing…
When we moved to our lovely home here in Mullumbimby, I became conscious of this habit I had of downplaying my happiness, when people asked me about our home, even though I do absolutely love it.
I’d hear myself say “Yes, we love our home BUT there’s still work to be done on the garden” or, “there’s no room for guests”. I even noticed myself doing the same thing when people would ask about the kids… “Oh yes, the kids are great but also totally obnoxious” or whatever. It’s like, an internal tall poppy syndrome, where I kind of feel like I’m not entitled to simply celebrate the good without also adding some criticism or negative… I wondered what it would be like to instead live in full, enthusiastic, ecstatic joy at all that’s undeniably beautiful in our lives? To say “I LOVE our home. I LOVE our kids. We are so GRATEFUL.”
As Meister Eckhart said:
”If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
Now, as I write this, I feel concern arising that perhaps what I’m suggesting sounds like a kind of bypassing… You know, it sounds like I’m saying that I should be just dropping the negative comments and only allowing the positive. But actually, it’s not that at all. For me, the co-arising of ‘beauty and terror’ (to borrow Rilke) is life. And embracing that, is living truthfully. In fact I’ve found being able to hold both “my kids are delightful and exhausting” is a relief. It feels like one of those paradoxes that once acknowledged allows me to relax.
But, this is just a little different from that. This is a realisation that from an egoic place, I’m censoring my joy because some part of me doubts my worthiness of it. There’s some conditioning present that makes me question my right to so much beauty. I remember thinking when we were moving here “Am I allowed to have that? Is it really okay to go for our dreams?”
I think to live in true abundance, would be to celebrate and say an enormous Thank You to all this magnificence.
And then, with a grateful heart, ask: how can I help others to experience this beauty? How can I share this with others.