The Festival of Shiv 2011: Kundalini Yoga, the Shiv and Shakti and Shiv as Potential Energy

UCP/Meady's Musings Production does not own the rights for this image.

A friend came over to the Meady's Musings Production House and the Purple Elephant quickly threw his long purple trunk forward to open the door. The friend entered and said hello and then quickly went over to the guys at the UCP desk and asked them if they were interested in a course in kundalini yoga. It was quite an interesting course but seeing as the owner of the Production House hardly ever pays the guys at the UCP desk a single penny even...no one unfortunately could afford the fees! :( But it got the guys at the UCP desk who are currently writing about this Festival of Shiv 2011 to thinking and they went over to the guys who write the Tumultuous Thursdays blog posts on Meady's Musings and well...this joint blog that is both about religion and metaphysics was born and today appears on both UCP's Festival of Shiv and Meady's Musings' Tumultuous Thursdays! :)

Now kundalini yoga and yoga as a whole is often associated with Baba Shiv as he is seen as the mahayogi and in the image at the start of the post you can see where Shiv's iconography itself can be used to describe the elements of Kundalini yoga and as a whole the key body/energy points in yoga. And this website titled Kundalini Awakening appears to be a very good research source for anyone wanting to know more about the theories behind kundalini yoga.

However the rest of the blog post will delve more into the shiv/shakti relationship that comes out of the study of kundalini yoga and more so the concept that shiv is potential energy and shakti kinetic energy.

Let's define the two terms in Physics as defined by the Free Dictionary:

POTENTIAL ENERGY: (noun)The energy of a particle or system of particles derived from position, or condition, rather than motion. A raised weight, coiled spring, or charged battery has potential energy.

KINETIC ENERGY:(noun)The energy possessed by a body because of its motion, equal to one half the mass of the body times the square of its speed.

Now in Hinduism it is not only seen that Shiv is like potential energy and Shakti like kinetic energy...it is also seen that both Shiv and Shakti are one...so really it is one being that is at one point potential energy and then at another point kinetic energy.

So let's see it as if Shiv is sitting there in meditative post and then while in meditation he thinks up Shakti as this moving dancing female being...then after she manifests from his thoughts as dancing kinetic energy before him he eventually is also aroused and starts to dance with her...his potential energy is converted to kinetic energy!

Seen in the dance of Shiv and Shakti it would look something like this:


Seen in the metaphysical sense as it's impact on the creation and/or destruction it would be something like this:


Think about it is all the potential energy is eventually converted to kinetic energy ...it you have a coil of string and it has this potential energy in it as it is all coiled up but then begins to unravel as its potential energy converts to kinetic energy...what happens when all the string is unraveled? Well you no longer have a ball of string?

Hey but this is no doom's day blogpost or anything...after all this is a joint blogpost on Tumultuous Thrusdays and UCP i.e. Universal Collective Prayer...but we are just analysing some of the aspects of Shiv here and realising more so now how he might be seen as the God of destruction and how his cosmic dance of destruction...or the Nataraj dance has become so world famous...as he gets up from his coiled potential energy position and dances uncoiling as kinetic energy flows! But remember that energy is neither created nor destroyed so the kinetic energy again can become potential as another ball of string or the cosmos is reformed....Jai Bholenath! :)

Maha Shiv Ratri-A Night of Sitting for Lessons from the Supreme Yogi of the Universe!

For some on my island the carnival begins
For others with Shiv we will sit and pray
Shiv is for me the supreme yogi
And also the dancer
And we the dance
He is also an animal protector
A real hippy master
Of him I now blog on my Universal Collective Prayer!


On Sunday night Trinidad time which is the closest equivalent time at -4GMT to the festival being celebrated on Monday night in India I and other Trinidadians will be celebrating Maha Shiv Ratri 2009. For me it will be a time to sit in pray and meditate on the lessons of someone I consider to be the supreme yogi-Shiv himself. To me you can want no other guru in the Art of dance, meditation and yoga. Those of you following my blogs will be fully aware of my obsession with the great one when I started this blog in Aug of 2008 going on about how a friend I made on Flickr from a place one may not normally associate with Shiv-Estonia, gave me full rights to use his beautiful picture of this beautiful statue-murti of Shiv sitting in meditation himself at Rishikesh in India. Jarmo went on to explain to me that the murti is a little bit bigger in size than the average human being so large enough to be awesome but not too large to become distant...I felt the murti so lifelike that I could see myself sitting at his feet and learning the art of meditation and yoga straight from him! :)

I had the picture up on my computer in work...at first it was a bit intimidating for me...after all snake and all and so serious...but then as I watched and watched...I realised look at the form look at the discipline...look at those abs....look at the positioning of the back...the fingers! And to me he look so focused so at peace...such a supreme yogi! It more and more dawned on me that when he is so immovable so at peace so engrossed in his contemplation of the universe well his hair just grows...all manner of things sit on him...so even if a cobra wrapped his neck while sitting there he would not be disturbed...a normal person would have felt fear, danger at such a poisonous creature poised on his neck...but not him such a Super Supreme Yogi is he! Of course I know officially Hinduism has a list of reasons for the iconography but this is my journey...my story...and in my contemplation of the murti is what I saw...what I learnt...

Then one night when I had moved away from the desktop image...I had a dream of him...I saw myself in my room as it is and it was as if I could see myself asleep on my bed yet I was in a dream and at the top of my head there was water flowing and I could hear the water falls...and the swirling spiralling from up above...He sat at the top of my head at the top of the fountain...and as he sat then a snake wrapped his neck...I recalled the coil...I recall the actual path of the swirl...I noted the shape on my white board at work...what did it mean I still do not know but it was so profound an experience and incredibly refreshing and inspiring...also when I awoke and I looked at my clock it was 3:33 AM. Some say that numerical combination is a sign that the gurus are among us! All I can say is that it was one of the most profound, refreshing dreams I've ever had!

Hinduism as it is practised in Trinidad is mostly Vaishnavism but I believe Shiv was such a strong character that when the Aryans invaded India from the North and they started to move to the South and I believe eventually to Lanka (hence the Ramayan epic)...they couldn't help but embrace the Shiv form. So the Vedic civilization that formed very much embraced Shiv as an integral part. He was that supreme you see! :) But yet still most of the North are the Vaishavites...the South the Saivites. My ancestors came from the North as most of the Indians here and so we are mostly Vaishnavites but we all hail the supreme yogi!

Shiv is so much...he is the dancer and we the dance...he is a protector of animals and perhaps in the local folk lore of Trinidad he would be like Papa Bois a bit...is how I see it...he lives in the forest at one with it and with all its inhabitants. My grandfather the late Pandit Parasram Maharaj used to always tell us that story on Shiv Ratri night about how the man who was a hunter got lost in the forest on Maha Shiv Ratri night...the story unfolds about Shiv's love for animals and compassion for all living creatures...

I always knew of the cosmic dance of Shiv in Hinduism but I never fully understood the concept of 'God' or 'The Universe' being the dancer and us being the dance until I was reading Paulo Coelho's The Witch of Portobello and he was saying that and it baffled me...but on contemplation over a year or so I fully appreciated it...it also made sense in terms of this picture the Hari Krishna's have in their Gita in one of the pics describing the universe as this big body...showing a planet as a knee...a sun as an eye etc...Vaishnavites and Saivites combine...one cosmic dance! One Universe...learning from all...Universal Collective Prayer! And it just makes you want to swirl with it all like the dancing dervishes of Rumi and Sufi mystic fame! :)

I used the dance idea in my theatre production Me Eat Manicou?....my character Maa Chinee - Mother Sugar (to represent the Indo Trinidadians as the last people who worked in sugar in Trinidad and still live mainly in those areas). She is a cosmic mother of sorts and combines forces with Papa Bois (the old French Creole character who guards the forest and its animals.) Well she does this dance to show her anger at how things were unfolding...and while it wasn't exactly the cosmic dance it drew on that energy and I show you it here!



And as I leave you in Universal Collective Prayer I attach a vid I've shared on these blogs already when I prayed for the Dalai Lama's health in 2008...here it is again on Universal Collective Prayer...Shankar Sahney reciting the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra amidst some of the famous Shiv sites in India. The Maha Mrityunjaya mantra sits in the Vedas as one of the great mantras next to the Gayatri. Again an indication of how the Vedic civilization was one for incorporating the best from all parts and corners of the land at the time. I have my own personal story with this mantra as well but I will leave that for another time. Hope you enjoy the lessons with the supreme yogi on Sun night Trinidad time. Blessed Maha Shiv Ratri 2009!