Saturday, The day of Saturn
We are all pretending. I see the masks - heavy shrouds we pull tight, hoping they will pin us to something solid, something that isn’t the terrifying, fluid reality of our own pulse. We trade in rituals - the hawans, the smoke, the rhythmic begging as if the Divine were a clerk in some office, keeping track of our “give” to ensure our “take.” I watch them, the seekers near my house, and my eyes fill with tears. It is not pity. It is a scream of recognition. It is the tragedy of a Mother exploited, a Goddess turned into currency. They want her as a shield; they do not realize she is the sword. They want Maa Tara to bypass the storm, forgetting that she is the storm.
Tara. The ferrywoman. But how can she carry you across the ocean if you cling to the wood of the boat?
To meet her is to meet the mirror. And the mirror, finally, is a horror. It shows the coward, the hypocrite, the bitch, the shattered porcelain of a self we have spent a lifetime gluing together with virtues. The Mahavidya does not care for our morality.
She is the darkness in which light is born. She is the void - the Akasha that holds all things only to devour them with a cold, divine indifference.
My life is a twin to this thing I dread called mrityu. Death. I die every day. I change. There is no shift in the world outside, yet inside, the munda mala grows, each severed head of my ego hung upon the necklace of my internal becoming. Tara’s intensity, her smile, her truth - it is a terror. She will not let me sleep. She will not let me imagine, for Satya breaks everything that is merely a dream.
To not shatter at an insult or bloat at praise. To be unaffected. Sovereign. This is the visphot - the explosion of consciousness. It is the raw Shakti, vibrating behind the curtain of the mundane. But watch the demon of the ego - it is a master of mimicry. It wears the mask of the seeker, the ascetic, the wise one. The bali, the true sacrifice, is the thought “I am something.” Even that, that claim of being, is just a costume, a vanity dressed in wisdom.
Realization is the badal becoming the varsha when it is finally unafraid to fall. It is the state of Shunya, to be so vacant, so hollowed out, that the nectar can finally fill the void.
Siddhi versus Bhakti. They ask what power I have. The true sadhak does not want it. Those who crave it take the trap; they buy the cage. When everything is emptied, life becomes a shmashana - mrityu everywhere. Mrityunjaya. Today, in the sanctum, the priest’s helper saw me crying and told me to garland him. I opened my eyes and saw the deities crying too. Their eyes were wet. They took it on from me into the agni. I saw it with a consciousness that has nothing to do with these physical eyes. Everything leaves. I am empty. I want what does not leave.
Be the river. Let what goes, go. Allow what comes. Samarpan. Surrender. Faith in the Creator, Prakriti, Manushya. Born on the 17th, on this Saturday of Shani, I write: I am angry. I am controlling. I have stared at it. I love control, and it hurts to lose it. Krodha is the air I breathe. But now, the split. The anger is a temporary thing. I am what is watching.
My theory of awakening is simple, and it is a terror: it is the acceptance. I do not fear that I am a coward. I fear the terrifying stillness of admitting it. I fear that if I stop fighting the darkness if I stop trying to “fix” the bitch, the liar, the small, grasping thing that I am - I might disappear. And in that disappearance, there would be nothing left but the truth.
Tantra is not a path away from the mud; it is the realization that the mud is the throne. You cannot have the light without the darkness that creates the shape of it. The enemy is the one who is your biggest lover—the bhaya, the fear. It is the gatekeeper. It is the fear that forces you to stand before yourself, without the mask, without the excuses, without the transactional prayers.
I stand before myself. It is a desolate, violent, beautiful place. I have no more contracts. No more “goodness” to trade. I am here, in my cowardice, in my total lack of worthiness, and I am waiting. Not for a boon. Just for the hand of the Mother to reach through the dark and show me that this - this raw, ugly, trembling “me” - is the only place she has ever been.
The awakening is not an ascent. It is the descent into the axis of the shadow, until the shadow and the light stop arguing and simply are. I stop the trade. I start to be. And in the silence of that surrender, I find the Sakshi- the witness - always listening, knowing. She has been holding my hand all along; not to lead me away from myself, but to bring me home to the emptiness where I can finally begin.
It is not that I fear being a bitch; I fear I might never be able to accept it. But today, under the gaze of Shani, I accept the bitch. I accept the coward. And in that unmasked, shivering surrender, the Sakshi remains - unmoved, sovereign, and finally, finally awake.
Do not mistake this for kindness. Her compassion is a wrecking ball. It is the Karuna that demands total demolition -
it will break you, not to destroy you, but to strip away the calcified ruins of the self until there is nothing left to hide behind. It is the terrifying love that refuses to let you stay hidden in the lie.
Pleased to meet you. I love the way you don't flinch. Accepting the discomfort is the only way. In my experience, it comes in waves of contractions, and both takes a long time and no time at all. This is the courage required right now. It's happening whether we have courage of not. That's the good news.