Every name carries a unique frequency rippling out into the world, manifesting form and experience.
DAKINI
Beloved teacher, Dr Shakti Malan, writes best about the true nature of Dakini:
“In the Tibetan Tantric tradition, a woman whose sexual energy is awake is called a Dakini - which, literally translated, means Skydancer. While traditionally the Dakini is revered as a deity, it’s understood the essence of the Dakini lives in every woman. She is activated through a radical process of spiritual realisation, or returning to the discovery of her true nature.
As woman discovers she is not her ego or her story and relaxes back into a state of Oneness, it is possible her sexuality will awaken as a movement of oneness. This is possible and not definite, as many women who evolve spiritually still keep the door of their sexuality closed so that Spirit can’t blow through and occupy this space. There are many reasons for this resistance, including belief systems separating spirituality and sexuality.
The Dakini comes alive in a woman whose self realisation includes the return of her sexual energy to its Creator - or to our very own Divine Nature. In effect, this is the end of Sex as we know it. Awakened sexual energy doesn’t serve a Somebody - it is the force of Life itself moving through us like the Amazon river, clearing out of its way everything which doesn’t reflect Pure Essence.
Whereas self-identified sexual energy tends to express only genitally, awakened sexual energy moves up through the energetic pathways of the subtle body. Tantric masters over the ages have identified 72 000 nadis or subtle energy centers in our body. These come together in 7 chakras or main energy points along the sushumna or central highway of subtle sexual energy.
The sushumna is located just in front of the spine and is the centralised place that our energy rests in when we enter samadhi or the state of unity consciousness. We can practice resting in this state through meditation or through the practice called Skydancing. Through conscious relaxation of the body, visualisation, directed breath and subtle movement, we activate sexual energy and guide it up the sushumna and into the heart. When sexual energy enters into the heart, it creates a ‘heart orgasm’ or flooding of unconditional love that flows over into our arms and hands, with the result that our entire body, including our arms and hands, starts dancing into the sky. While sexual / kundalini energy keeps pouring up through the body, this movement happens in total relaxation. When it enters out through the crown of the head, we enter into our eternal nature, pure stillness, and absolute ecstasy.
When the energy of Skydancing is activated in a woman, she can bring this quality to her lovemaking. Sexual encounter with her then becomes an invitation for the beloved to meet its own divinity. Entering into the yoni of the Dakini means entering into the temple of the Divine.
When the energy of the Dakini moves through a woman, it will have her bowing down, not claiming superiority or accomplishment, or the right to control sexual partners, and in particular men. And skydancing is not a movement of the body one can learn like dancing the Tango. It is the result of the body’s surrender to Life herself.
Discovering one’s Dakini nature involves the release of obstacles to the selfless movement of life through us as sexual energy, and through the awareness practice of entering the subtle body. When the Dakini wakes up in us, our heads (or our limited ideas about ourselves) come off and we are free to dance in the limitless sky. We become the love we have been waiting for, guided by life herself so as to clear any imitations of love that have come through our over-giving, co-dependent or power-hoarding past displays of love.”
KALI
It's no coincidence my shortened name has always been Callie. Even when total strangers didn't know that, and were introduced to me as Carolyn, they'd immediately default to Callie - so close in sound to Kali. As I've deepened on my Tantric journey, Kali consciousness has begun to manifest - lightening fast, fiery, uncompromising, wild, and primal: totally different to my 'personality' which has a learned submissiveness to it: one of my other nicknames was She-Soft.
Kali insisted I come to her to learn from her, to sit at her feet with beginner’s mind. My Siamese cat, Skye, was her messenger. Every day for months, Skye brought me dead birds, rats, moles, chameleons - and once, a snake. Often I’d step blindly into their sticky entrails or awaken to bloody corpses on my bed. There were other guests in the house, as well as my daughter, but only I was given these ghastly gifts. When the pattern became apparent, I realised Kali was calling me to be her student, to take on her name, not because I embodied Kali - but the exact opposite - because I had so much to learn from her.
Kali is the destroyer of false evidence appearing real, in particular the greatest one of all - the fear of death, which in effect doesn’t ever exist without the polar opposite of re-birth. The false fear of death as a finality, as the end, is a result of patriarchal conditioning; where chronological time is experienced as linear, with a beginning, middle and end; and where youth is worshipped, and old age scorned. However, teacher Kali reveals the deeper nature of time as cyclical; where birth leads to life leads to death leads to rebirth.
The past, present and future are all ever-present in this moment. Where our focus of attention is, is how we perceive time. We can experience this moment by dwelling in the past or in the future. Or we can be here now. The moment infinite, while it lasts.
When the veil of time is pierced, when we experience what the Greeks call Kairos time, we enter into the truth of existence. Kairos (vs Chronos time) is the moment between the moment, where all magic and all mystery resides. It is multi-focused and multi-dimensional, and an aspect of the Deep Feminine. Within Her bounty, masculine, linear time exists as one dimension amongst many.
Kali’s fierce commitment to Truth requires the total destruction of all that no longer serves, taking no prisoners. She is the Dark Mother. And whilst this tongue-pulling, skull-culling, arm-slinging goddess is feared, it’s her vast compassion that moves her to chop off our monkey-mind heads, which to date have lead us to trust in distrust.
Kali Consciousness is fierce yet compassionate. Her destruction of the fear of death, and revelation of the true nature of time, by chopping off our heads, is liberating for our existential egos. It is Kali’s absolute devotion to truth that makes her the ultimate goddess of compassion.
Very few can meet Kali consciousness as the chaotic emptying out of the 100,000 faces of the Feminine. She is not for the faint-hearted. Her purpose is not to comfort us with lies, or make us happy through illusions. Her role is to pierce the veil of fear keeping us trapped in prisons of our own making.
SATYAGRAHA
Satyagraha came from Mahatma Gandhi, who’s appeared as guide to me for several decades.
Satyagraha (/ˌsætɪəˈɡrɑːhɑː/; Sanskrit: सत्याग्रहsatyāgraha), is an adapted combination of Sanskrit words loosely translated as "insistence on truth" or "soul force” coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi. He deployed Satyagraha in the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa for Indian rights.
Satyagraha theory influenced Nelson Mandela's struggle in South Africa under apartheid and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s campaigns during the civil rights movement in the United States, and many other social justice and similar movements.
For Gandhi, Satyagraha went far beyond mere passive resistance, becoming a powerful Force born of Truth and Love.
So I've two seemingly paradoxical names! Fiercely destructive, yet non-violent too. On closer inspection though, they’re actually non-dualistic. As the ultimate goddess of compassion Kali’s destruction is motivated by Truth and Love; whilst the non-violent Truth Force of Satyagraha moves mountains, just as water over time carves rivers straight through rock.
My original wounding was deeply bound up in duality - from parents in an ongoing cold war, living at opposite ends of the family home; to endometriosis (where my monthly moon would flow in opposite directions simultaneously); to many years of severe bipolar disorder, one minute manic, the next depressed.
Kali Satyagraha embraces opposites and integrates them into balance and harmony; into a whole - a holy name! To embody them means to surrender to their profound lessons, no matter how challenging.
WIDD
From my father’s lineage, Widd is a derivative of the ancient Celtic word for Druid, Drus-Widd. Druids were pagan priests and priestesses who worshipped nature, and in particular, the wisdom of trees - the tree of life. Interestingly, on my mother’s side, my great-great-great grandmother was Khoi. So I have northern and southern hemisphere medicine people lineages, from which I draw intuitive guidance.