Dancing as Shiva
When we first started this series, the ideal was that we were going to talk about wrathful deities. Almost from the beginning, I began to realize that first we really needed to recognize the possibilities of connection in Deity Practice. Our foundation really needed to be involved in what we can do in Deity Yoga before we step into dealing with dramatic things. We need to get into dealing with the way we want to be and discovering a continuity of being within ourselves.
So, we have kind of become progressively, through our talks here, more and more aware of the ways in which we are utilizing techniques of Deity Yoga to entrance us and keep us in a very limited scope of opportunities and options in our lives. Now we have begun to say, “Okay, now I can use the same techniques that I’m already using, that I’m already familiar with, and I can do it with something positive. I can do it with a sense of Wholeness. Or, in the sense of using Shiva, I can do it with a sense of change, within a Continuity of Wholeness.” This is really great stuff.
Then we took it a little bit further and said, “Don’t whisper. Don’t say this silently, but say it out loud.” Earlier, you mentioned doing it personally, and, yes, we need to get personally involved. We need to say out loud, “A sense of me, that I feel, is arising in the center of the circle as the Deity.” As I describe the actions of the Deity in the circle, in the ring of fire, I’m using the first person. I am saying, “I, as Shiva, am doing this. I am doing this. This is my experience. This is my expression.” This is making it progressively more and more involved with the depths of our psyches and with the depths of who we are.
Then we took it one step further. That is, to begin to realize that it is not just using the images or the mantra. Not only can you do this practice when you are sitting in a temple, facing the image or the statue, but you can actually take these songs and these mantras, and begin to sing them during your day as you are interacting with people. Use them as a reminder, as a physical action that aligns me with the qualities that I want to bring into being. It becomes something that you can actually live the quality of the Deity all the time.
Yogi Sean and Swami Ramanada have studied with Tagore, Krishnamurti and Ghandi. Together they created the Sadhana Society in the U.S.