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.