All light on earth is sunlight. When we turn on a lamp at night, the light from the bulb might have taken an eons-long detour through fossil fuels, the power plant, and the utility grid; but it is sunlight nevertheless. Similarly all beauty, joy, and pleasure are refractions of her bliss.
She is everything, the primal substance which masquerades as all the various forms in the universe. Just as all the characters in a dream are ultimately the dreamer and composed of the dreamer’s mind, so too are we all composed of her. Appearances to the contrary are simply a trick of the dream. Intimacy requires an “other”, yet only she exists. Since she is the only entity in existence, she parted herself to play numberless roles—created the trick of the dream—so as to experience intimacy.
The primary mechanism of the dream is the ego. For an organism to survive and propagate its genes, it is beneficial to make decisions as though it were an independent being. Thus, ego was naturally selected on a mundane level, and instituted as a mechanism of forgetting on an ultimate level. If dots are drawn in the shape of a square, the mind sees a square—a gestalt—even though nothing connects the dots. In like fashion memory, sensory experience, and mental processes together form a gestalt that is perceived as an “I”, even though these are simply separate processes.
It is her looking through our eyes and initiating our actions. It is in the field of her awareness that all of our mental processes take place. It is impossible ever to be lost, because she always knows where we are. It is impossible ever to be alone because she is closer than the blood in our veins. It is impossible for life to take a wrong turn because all happens according to her will.
All feelings of being lost, lonely, or frustrated arise because we view experience through the illusory “I” rather than our true nature. The spiritual journey is one of shifting perspective from the illusory ego to the ultimate through practices like devotional ritual, study, meditation, cultivating love in our personalities and lifestyles, and community with fellow travelers.
For most of us, there are times when there is no experience of “I”. All things and people feel like images from the same divine projector lens. We experience love for all the way we would for our own children and lovers. Much of the time ego does seem real, and other people feel like separate beings. During these times surrender of the ego to the divine is the most authentic experience, and the image of the divine must be a meaningful one since it is challenging to feel love or surrender to the formless ground of being.
The divine is mostly conceptualized as masculine in the dominant culture of both East and West, but there have always been those more attracted to the ultimate mystery as female. The archeological evidence indicates that the divine feminine was once our main symbol for relating to the ultimate. The ground of being comes to us in the ways we find most meaningful, and she has been returning to our cultures for centuries.
The purpose of GoddessDevotion.com is to share travel notes from devotees on the the path of the Goddess so that others may benefit in their journeys. Please message us with any questions or comments. We look forward to the conversations and will do our best to research and answer any questions. Our hope is to grow GoddessDevotion.com into an online journal of Goddess spirituality and so if you have any articles or essays you feel would be a good addition to this blog, feel free to contact us. We will happily post them with full attribution.
Our perspective is Perennialist in that we view the mystical core of all spiritual traditions to be intimately connected to the same ultimate reality. Thus, the mystical traditions of Buddhism, Vedanta, Tantra, and Yoga as well as the Goddess-centered traditions of Neopaganism and Shakta are likely to be given special attention. Since recognition of the divinity in all necessarily implies the need to work for the betterment of others, our perspective is strongly informed by concerns for social and economic justice, feminism, LGBT inclusivity, interculturalism, interspirituality, and postcolonialism. While individual posts may deal with specific lineages, traditions, and teachters, we do not represent any lineage collectively. Our path is surrender to the Supreme Mother. Anything useful on this site is from the Goddess, and only the mistakes are ours.
Goddess Devotion 