What Do I Stand For?

Lately, life has been asking the big questions.

With the word “collapse” now part of our everyday consciousness, and the divide between the have-nots, the haves and the have-a-lots growing increasingly wider, and the people supposed to be leading us playing war games for financial gain while setting the world on fire. With machines created by young men out of touch with humanity providing yet another opportunity to divide and conquer us, and Christian nationalists turning the name of Jesus into a weapon against everything he stood for, the world can feel like a torrential river, carrying you far downstream and leaving you scared and disoriented on an unfamiliar riverbank.

And so, lately, I have spent time alone, withdrawn from the world, contemplating the big questions. In particular:

Because I need an anchor right now. Something to keep me standing, rooted, grounded and strong, so I can continue to share my light.

As I have moved through my days, I have felt the presence of Kali, the fierce Hindu Goddess of time, death, dissolution and transformation. I have seen the evidence of her work in the chaos of our dying world system. As she tears things apart, I sense her invitation to look for the keys of life amongst the death and destruction.

Kali’s destruction is not destruction for its own sake, she is the force that comes when something has reached the end of its life.

In the Devi Māhātmya, one of the great texts of the Hindu Goddess traditions, Kali emerges in the midst of a cosmic battle when the forces of destruction have become so powerful that ordinary means of resistance are no longer enough. She is fierce, wild and terrifying. She is the dark face of the Divine Feminine, the force that comes when something has gone so far beyond balance that it can no longer be reasoned with, negotiated with or politely reformed.

There is a story in the Devi Māhātmya that I want to share with you today. In this story, the world is at war with a demon called Raktabija, who possesses a terrible gift: every drop of his blood that falls to the earth creates another demon exactly like him. The more he is wounded, the more numerous he becomes. Every attempt to defeat him simply multiplies the problem.

So Kali is called forth.

She opens her mouth and extends her tongue across the battlefield, drinking the demon’s blood before it can touch the ground. In this way, she does not simply overpower him; she interrupts the system that allows him to reproduce himself.

I find something profoundly relevant in this story right now. Can you see it, too?

I believe we are living in a system that has become so deeply diseased that fighting its individual symptoms only creates more of them. We argue with one another while the machinery that keeps producing division continues unhindered. We fight over the symptoms while the source keeps spilling its blood into the world.

I think Kali is asking us to look at our situation in a different way.

She is asking us not to romanticise the destruction (a trap that many of us unknowingly fall into), and certainly not to celebrate the suffering we are witnessing, but to recognise that we are in a time when the structures we have built can no longer continue as they are. She is asking us to pay witness to the things that have been hidden becoming impossible to hide. She wants us to clearly see the systems that have sustained themselves through exploitation, division and disconnection beginning to reveal their ugliness. She asks us to unflinchingly face the great machinery of a dying paradigm thrashing about, trying desperately to preserve itself.

I know it is frightening, and it would be much easier to look away, but there is something else here too.

When Kali comes, she does not ask us to save what cannot be saved; she asks us to become very clear about what we are willing to carry forward.

♾️What must die?

♾️What must be released?

♾️What must be protected?

♾️What is still a seed?

There is another image of Kali that has been speaking to me lately.

She is often depicted standing upon the body of Shiva, the god of consciousness.

In one telling of this story, Kali has become so fierce in her battle with the forces of destruction that, even after the demons are defeated, her fury continues to move unabated through the world. She is so enraged that nothing can stop her, and she herself becomes the danger.

So Shiva lies down before her.

He does not fight her or attempt to overpower her; instead, he becomes the ground beneath her feet.

And when Kali realises that she is standing upon him, she is horrified. Her tongue slips from her mouth in surprise, and the momentum of her destruction is brought back into awareness.

This feels important to me. Because while the world is in chaos, we are being asked not to become agents of chaos ourselves but to have enough stillness within us that we can stand in the presence of destruction without allowing it to destroy our capacity for love, discernment and hope.

Kali is movement, transformation, death and dissolution.

Shiva is stillness, consciousness, the unmoving ground.

We need both.

We need the courage to say: This must end.

And we need the stillness to know what we are saying yes to when it does.

Not rigidly, nor defensively. Not with our fists and hearts permanently clenched against the world, but with our feet planted firmly enough in our deepest values that we cannot be swept away by every new outrage, every new fear, every new attempt to divide us.

Kali’s foot upon Shiva is a reminder to us that even the fiercest power needs consciousness beneath it.

Here’s another thought to ponder: perhaps consciousness without the willingness to act is not enough either.

Our world needs people who can see what is happening and remain awake.

People who can say no without becoming consumed by hatred.

People who can resist without reproducing the violence they are resisting.

People who can allow what has reached the end of its life to die, while tending fiercely to whatever is trying to be born.

The question I’m being asked right now is not:

How do I stop the destruction?

But:

What will I stand upon while it happens?

And:

What will I protect?

Friends, the keys to life are hidden here, in the seed beneath the ash, the truth beneath the propaganda, the community beneath the competition. Life is here with the Earth beneath the machinery, the human being beneath the ideology and the possibility of beginning again beneath everything that appears to be ending.

I don’t think I’m anywhere close to having a clearly defined answer yet, and because life is changing at such a startling speed, I think it will be a question I will need to ask myself again and again. But some things are self-evident, and here’s a short list of what I have so far. No doubt I will unpack this question further with you soon.

💕 I stand for life.

💕 I stand for beauty.

💕 I stand for the sovereignty of the human spirit.

💕 I stand for women.

💕 I stand for the Earth.

💕 I stand for community.

💕 I stand for truth.

💕 I stand for tenderness.

💕 I stand for the possibility of a life that is meaningful rather than merely productive.

💕 I stand for the wild and the sacred.

💕 I stand for the right to remember that we are human beings, not consumers, data points, workers or political tribes.

💕 I stand for the possibility of beginning again.

In a time of collapse, this is our work:

To become very clear about what we will no longer help to reproduce.

To become willing to let the dead things die.

To stand firmly enough in our own consciousness that the chaos cannot claim us.

And then, with whatever hands and hearts, and skills we have available, to begin tending to the new life.

Kali has come to remind us that destruction is not necessarily the opposite of creation; sometimes it is the threshold upon which it blooms. And if we stand, anchored in our truth, we will be able to see the seeds waiting for us.

With enduring hope for our future,