Have you ever heard of Shiva and Shakti?

Shiva is the Hindu God who has a blue body, several dreads, and a serpent coiled around him. He is also known as Nataraja, in his representation as a dancing God.

Shakti is his consort and one of the representations of the Divine Mother, the Goddess.

Shiva represents the universal consciousness. The consciousness that allows everything to flow in a spacious way. Everything, without eliminating anything. What we think is bad and what we think is good, for the consciousness, there is no duality. And that is why Shiva opens space to be conscious of the creative principle of all that is, Shakti. The feminine is creation. It encompasses the whole world of matter in all itsmanifestations.

To choose one form and exclude others is to ignore the feminine in itself, which is the creation of everything, forever flowing, unexpected.

It is the ego that chooses what from this feminine force should be seen or not. The ego, in a certain way, when it wants to frame the feminine, nature, the phenomena of matter, ends up ignoring the feminine principle itself. This dishonors the Goddess, the mother.

Shiva is the great consciousness that makes room and lets Shakti be who she is.

Tophan Singh/123RF

The whole plot of the tales and mythology, as in Greek mythology, is a representation of our psyche, of our self.

We are all pure consciousness and have the power of Shiva, to observe and contemplate everything that arises. And we are all Shakti, we are matter, and we manifest our existence in the same fluid, ever-changing way.

The union of the two is the balance, the perfect union, that happens inside our being.

This happens when we adopt contemplative practices, such as yoga and meditation, with the intention of making room for what is manifesting, holding that space, honoring the feminine, the creative force, the Goddess, and life itself, which is us incarnated in matter.

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We can only do this exercise of seeing through the veils of ignorance, which judges, separates, dualizes, and excludes, when we have the veil to be seen. That is why we are here, because our role is nothing more and nothing less than to unite, within us, Shiva and Shakti, to be conscious and present.

This whole story serves to tell the same thing once again: the only thing that matters is the present moment.