Kali's Sword

I wrote this piece for the Winter 2004 issue of Ascent Magazine.


It began innocently enough. It was 1983 and at a routine physical my doctor noticed a slight swelling on the right side of my neck. It turned out to be an enlargement of my thyroid gland, otherwise known as a goiter. At first, it was not that pronounced; the only people who noticed it were health-care professionals. Once cancer was ruled out, I opted for annual checkups, alternative healing, and learning to live with the goiter.

Some physicians I saw suggested surgical removal but throat surgery, with its attendant risks to my voice, was out of the question. I am a musician. Singing is my lifeblood and my joy, the way I channel inspiration and process all the twists and turns of daily life. At the time of my diagnosis, my career as a kirtan singer and workshop leader was beginning to take off. I was getting a lot of praise for the beauty and power of my voice. There was no way I was going to subject my throat to a surgeon’s knife.

While I do not subscribe to the notion that we create our diseases, I do see illness as both a messenger of the body, alerting us to something within that needs attention, and a metaphor, loaded with information about the hidden terrain of the soul. While no physician or healer I saw could diagnose my goiter’s root physical cause, at the subtle energy level, it sure seemed to suggest an obstruction in Vishuddha, the throat chakra gateway of the human voice.

I did copious amounts of inner work -- painting, music-making, movement, chanting and -- to unravel the blockage. This produced a wealth of insight about myself, but no matter what techniques or medicines I tried, no matter how many mantra repetitions, shoulder stands, or art and healing sessions, the goiter continued to grow. It was as if all the words not spoken and songs not sung were lodged there, held together with impulses squashed so as not to offend, needs ignored so as not to seem weak, questions not asked so as not to appear lacking in knowledge.

The goiter embarrassed me. From the perspective of sheer vanity, there was no getting around the fact I had a physical deformity that was, to put it mildly, unattractive. Worse than that, it belied my image of myself as a woman who spoke and sang from a ground of truth. How much of that precious authenticity, I had to wonder, was actually getting through this jammed-up portal at the center of my voice?

By the time I surrendered to surgery, nearly twenty years after a doctor first noticed the problem, my thyroid had defied a full range of Eastern, Western, traditional, alternative and creative arts healing modalities, growing large enough to make a very prominent bulge on the right side of my neck. I never felt I made the decision to remove the goiter. One day, I simply knew it was time, called my physician and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland that sits over the vocal cord nerves in the middle of the throat. At our first meeting, the surgeon drew a diagram, explaining that if he accidentally severed one of these nerves, my life as a singer was done. Then he asked if I was sure I wanted to go through with the procedure. I choked back tears in his office and drove home sobbing, but I knew there was no turning back.

In the weeks leading up to surgery, I tried to make my peace, grieving the possible end of my life as a singer. I scheduled kirtan gigs all over town and sang as if every performance would be my last. Singing felt like the most precious gift and I seesawed between that sublime awareness and worst-case scenario fears that I would suffocate during anesthesia or wake up in the ICU without a voice.

Of all the deities I’ve studied, it is the warrior goddess Kali with whom I feel the most rapport. One way I think of “her” is as a blazing sword of light, liberating innocence an truth from the choking darkness of fear. I once had a startling vision of Kali. She wore a mask and veil, but I recognized her instantly, sensing that her face was covered, not to hide, but to protect me from burning in her fire. She was calling me into herself and I knew singing was the way, but when I opened my mouth, no sound came out. Terror froze my voice.

This vision haunted me for years. I might feel a subtle Kali presence, but nothing so graphic or dramatic ever happened again. I wondered if I’d ever have another chance like that. Then, the night before surgery, making my best effort to keep things light but actually filled with trepidation, I heard that Kali voice loud and clear, saying ever so sweetly, but with just a bit of consternation, “What have you been so worried about? Did you think I’d let you go through this one alone!” That was when I realized this surgery was not just a routine thyroidectomy. It was downright shamanic. This was Kali’s sword, in the form of the surgeon’s knife. I knew then, there was nothing to fear.

Twenty-four hours later, after nearly two decades of living with my goiter, it was gone. As it turned out, the right lobe had grown to the size of a grapefruit, wrapped itself around my throat and was beginning to strangle me. But the biggest shock of all, buried where no diagnostic test or exam had ever seen it, my goiter held a secret: thyroid cancer. Years of inner work had been ineffective in healing my thyroid gland. But the instinct to remove it had been exactly right.

Within ten days I was singing again. My voice felt wide open and people who came to my classes and kirtan programs said my music had touched them more deeply than ever before. With the goiter and its hidden tumor gone, I assumed that the throat chakra blockage must also have cleared. As it turned out, physical surgery was just the beginning.

I now discovered the energetic form of my goiter. It felt like a demon that had been weaving a snare around me for a long, long time, tightening its hold every time fear, unworthiness or pride tricked me into silencing my own voice.

During the year and a half post-surgery, my entire life seemed to fall apart as every structure and relationship caught in this sticky web was dismantled and pulled down. This was certainly nothing my thoracic surgeon had warned me about. But how could he know the mysterious ways of Kali? How could he know that removing my thyroid would open psychic space for the master surgeon of the soul and her infamous sword to get to work?

Unlike physical surgery, there was no anesthesia for this procedure. I had to stay wide awake. The less I struggled, the easier it was, but I often felt I no longer knew who I was. Friendships gone. Belief systems shattered. Work in ruins. Standing in the rubble of my former life, I began to see how much of my identity had been bound up in a secret longing for fame and fortune, and how much of my persona as a wise yogini at peace with herself was also a cover for pride and desire. I had to face the myriad ways my unfulfilled (and unexpressed) ambition had seduced me into giving my power away.

It was very painful to admit to myself and to others how many layers of self-deceit I’d woven around myself. There was no demon. I was the one who wove those snares. I now saw how asleep I had been, believing my spiritual practice, my teaching, my devotion all kept me on a sattvic path.

The ways of healing are so mysterious. I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand how it was that living with the goiter kept me from discerning what in post-goiter reality became so completely clear. I’d always seen fear and unworthiness as my chief inner demons. But they were actually second tier. It was envy and pride that had been choking me for years. During that long, shattering dark night of the soul, I came out from behind the facade. And much to my amazement, discovered I was standing in the Light. And even more amazing, discovered that the Light in which I stood was simply me.

Kali, Kundalini, and the Dance of Self

This article was originally published in Holistic Living Magazine.

I stumbled onto the spiritual path while sitting at the piano. After years of classical training, I was tired of playing other people’s music. I wanted to find my own. Then improvising late one evening, soaring in the music of my heart, something deep inside me cracked wide open, the top of my head seemed to split apart, and the next thing I knew light was pouring through me. Four years later I would learn I’d had a kundalini awakening. At that point I had no idea what had happened or what the mysterious kundalini energy even was. This was the rather dramatic beginning of my spiritual journey. It was 1973.

Over the next few months I marveled at the way this light — which came now every evening when I sang and played the piano — was changing me. Although I did not yet fully understand it, I knew I was experiencing a process of transformation and found the guiding passion of my life: studying the relationship of spiritual transformation, inner healing, and the arts — first in the laboratory of my own body and later, in all the people I would come in contact with through my work. The reality of spiritual transformation hit me like a brick. That such a thing was really possible, that it could be activated through the arts, and that it seemed to be happening to me, was sheer magic.

Since improvisation had been the vehicle of my awakening, I embraced it completely, exploring myself and my world in the mirror of creative work. I wanted to make art that uplifted artist and audience. I wanted my art to be a conduit for the divine. I suspected that artists could be the shamans, priests, and priestesses of the modern world, but understood that simply making art was not enough. There had to be a spiritual component to the work, some force that would continually temper the artist, clearing out all the psycho-emotional stuff that clogged the inner pathways, so that great shining light could blaze.

A few years later I discovered the dark goddess Kali. I had found my way to the Indian spiritual master Baba Muktananda, whose work would guide me though the next long leg of my journey. It was from him that I first learned about the mysterious kundalini and finally understood what had happened to me.

In the Indian yogic tradition, kundalini is envisioned as the supreme energy of transformation. It can be awakened through yogic practices, contact with certain spiritual masters, and as I had discovered, through the creative process of making art. Upon awakening, kundalini reveals itself as a great shining inner light. Like a fire, it burns through the blocks and obstructions that keep us trapped in suffering and opens us to the blissful well that yogis call, the “inner Self.” Kundalini supplies the fuel for the inner journey and because it is regarded as a female energy, it is often referred to as a goddess.

I took to the Indian goddess tradition like a fish to water and from the first time I ever chanted the name, Kali Durge Namo Namah, I was smitten by the dark one, Kali, the black goddess of transformation. Kundalini had claimed me many years before this and I sensed that Kali and kundalini were really one, two aspects of the same dynamic field of energy, the supreme darkness and the supreme light. It’s important to point out that when I speak of goddesses, I am speaking of energy fields. Mythology can be very confusing, creating the idea that gods and goddesses are either made-up storybook characters or divine beings separate from ourselves. Of course on one level, all the myths are stories, but these are stories filled with spiritual power. When we learn how to read them, myths become maps of the inner realm.

One of the most famous myths of the Goddess tells us how Kali comes into the world during a violent battle with a terrible demon army. The gods have been rendered powerless and Durga, the Great Goddess, has been summoned to save the day. The battle is fierce and at a certain point, things get out of hand. This is when Kali appears, leaping from the brow of Durga and demolishing the entire demon army. Kali is the most potent force of the Sacred Feminine, absolutely one-pointed in her task. She exists to restore dharma, the path of righteousness. In the battle that ensues, nothing and no one can stop her. She is the force of truth, perfection in motion, divine symmetry. Victory over the demon army is assured.

The battlefield of course is really the field of our own psyche. The demons are the obstacles to our growth. We know them as fear, doubt, unworthiness, greed, rage, and addiction. They travel with us all of our lives. Kali is the force that devours them, releasing their essential energy, destroying their potential to do harm. She is the alchemical fire, transforming our lead-heavy souls into molten gold. On the surface, the iconography of Kali is terrifying. She is often pictured holding a strange-looking sword in one hand and a severed human head in another. She wears a garland of human skulls, a belt of human arms, and her tongue lolls out from her mouth. Apart from her gruesome adornments, she is quite naked, primal blackness, dancing on the supine corpse of her lover. This outer appearance however is a veil.

Kali is the supreme force of inner healing. Understanding the nature of her radiant blackness is the key to transformational work. We have to trust in the terrifying darkness, surrendering to it in order to receive its many gifts. We have to understand that only by diving into this seeming blackness, will we receive its incredible light. It takes everything from us, then gives it back, tenfold. And one of its most accessible gates opens to us through the realm of the arts.

Most any form of intuitive creative process work can lead us down, into the belly of the goddess. Wandering through this rich and fertile darkness we encounter the demons and the gifts — obstacles, terrors, painful memories, creative insights, healing images, songs of self. This is where the art that heals us comes from.

Kali’s sword is the sword of discrimination, cutting away layers of false self and clinging ego, all the sticky stuff that clogs our way. It also cuts the gems of healing from her garden, offering them to us as gifts for making the descent. The severed head she holds represents those parts of ourselves that keep us down — the caustic inner tyrant, complaining victim, damning judge. Her garland of skulls symbolizes the power to speak the truth, her belt of arms, the power to serve that truth — more gifts for those who make the inner journey. Her lolling tongue grounds her as she dances and the corpse is not a corpse at all. It is her consort, the god Shiva. In their sacred union he represent the state of utter stillness. Kali is the power, the shakti, rising from that stillness.

The sacred syllables of Kali’s name are filled with power. “Ka,” the sound of “ah” opens the heart; “li,” the sound of “ee” opens the third eye. When we repeat the name Kali, we clear the pathway between our head and our heart. So entering the realm of Kali, we enter the mysterious playground of our inner world. Everything we need for healing and transformation is stored there. The sword of our discrimination. The wisdom to know where to place the blade. The courage to stand strong in the face of the battle. The blazing lights — the healing gifts — that guide our way. All the displaced pieces of ourselves are also down there, waiting to be found once again. Our artist self, youthful innocence, carefree lover, wild adventurer, perfect craftsman, all the many aspects of ourselves we’ve stashed away. All of these, the gifts of our life, the gifts of the Self are resting underground, waiting for us to find them in the womb of the dancing goddess, the black one.

We call her Kali. Her name means “time.” We know her by diving into the fire of our own great heart. She lives there singing. Yes! Singing and dancing, singing and dancing, singing and dancing, the force of truth in which we shape our lives. Kali Durge Namo Namah, Kali Durge Namo Namah, Kali Durge Namo Namah. Salutations again and again to Kali, the force of transformation that turns our mundane lives into radiant works of art.