Kali

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The appointment for my first chemo session was quickly approaching, and I wanted to be prepared for it on every level. Physically, I have been working with a homeopath and a Tibetan amchi (physician), and they are both doing a great job of strengthening my organs so that my body can accept and integrate such powerful substances into my system. Emotionally and mentally, I have been working with Devi and Scott to release old patterns and transform my consciousness. And spiritually, I've developed my own particular meditation practice that focuses on healing and unifying my body, heart, mind and spirit. In addition to the Green Tara, several other archetypes appeared to me as I was developing this practice, and in my own active imagination sessions, I communicated with them and learned what they had to offer me.

The first, and the most frightening, is Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and transformation. She is the most demanding goddess of the Hindu pantheon, and there's no getting around some sort of sacrifice and transformation when she arises from the collective unconscious to pay us a visit.

Kali

She wears a necklace of skulls and carries a scythe to cut off whatever part of us she demands in sacrifice. If we fight against her, we inevitably lose, and fall into bitterness and despair. But if we willingly offer what she demands, we enter into a relationship with her in which she aids our transformation. To sacrifice means to make holy, and by offering what must be given up with an open, accepting heart, we transform our loss into a Sacred Wound.

Jan Goldstein, author of the wonderful book, Sacred Wounds, lists the following signposts within our pain that can allow us to transform a wound into a Sacred Wound:

• The need to drop our illusions of a perfect life
• The recognition that we have the capacity for joy and can embrace it more fully after having been wounded
• The ability to see clearly what is meaningful in life
• The desire to express appreciation for the wonder all around us
• The importance of living in the present.

It is always a great challenge to transform a wound into a Sacred Wound. Every type of wound offers its own unique set of circumstances that has been offered to us by our soul in order to learn, grow and transform. As I am discovering, the challenges of breast cancer extend beyond the physical disease itself. Any woman diagnosed with breast cancer faces a type of disfigurement that can deeply impact her sense of her own beauty, her femininity, her self-image, and her self worth. The way I see it, transforming this disfigurement into a Sacred Wound is the only way through the horror of the experience. The archetype of Kali is here to remind us that our body is an ephemeral home, and we are all subject to its degradation and ultimate destruction. It's her job to wake us up to the fact that we are spiritual beings only temporarily ensouled in matter. For most of us, a brush with death comes as quite a shock. Death and loss go together, and that same shock comes upon us when we lose someone dear to us, go through a divorce, lose our life savings, lose a home...the list goes on. This is all the domain of Kali. A journey through Kaliland is the last thing any of us wants, but it is a journey that we will all be taking one way or another. There's no getting away from it. It's a blueprint built into life on Earth. So my philosophy is to dive into the center of the hurricane - to relax into the eye of the storm, open our senses, and listen to what our soul is trying to tell us.

Every morning in meditation, I release my attachment to the beauty and form of my body that I have known so intimately my whole life, and I let go, I die into the process of transformation. I surrender my breast to Kali, thank her for the soul growth I am experiencing, and then I imagine my rebirth into my new post-cancer body. For me, working with archetypes such as Kali helps me to organize and define the deeply transformative forces at play in my life. I'm doing my best to understand how this demand for my sacrifice came about, and to access the most wisdom from my healing journey as I am able. And I hope that by sharing my process, I will inspire others to do the same.

For most women with breast cancer, a mastectomy is the first step, followed by chemo and radiation. My case is a little different because the tumor is attached to my muscle, so I will be undergoing chemo to shrink the tumor before my mastectomy and radiation. Chemotherapy is sort of like sipping on a Kali cocktail - it's a paradoxical elixir that can harm us as it helps us. There is one very special gift that Kali gave me in one of my meditations, and that will help me to deal with the trials ahead of me. It is a drop of her immutable, indestructible blood to strengthen my body and carry me through my transformation. And to help me deal with the side effects of chemo, I am receiving help from two other archetypes, Tibetan deities who I will describe in my next entry.

I'd like to share a poem I wrote about my experience of Kali:

Kali

Darkness

claws at

my heart,

its steady,

pink throbbing

hunted by Kali,

Queen of Death.

With wings of fire

and eyes like rubies,

her wolves feast nightly

at my breast.

Too starved to suckle,

their teeth tear

wildly through

my flesh.

O Mother,

Mistress of Chaos,

I surrender to you

this plain tabernacle

of dust and sweat.

My skull is yours

to pick clean

and polish

until it is worthy

to hang around

your neck.

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