Kali: Cutting Away
Cutting Away
March 2008 marked the end of an almost six-year relationship with another transgender man who was closeted about having been born into a female body. For the sake of the relationship, I had chosen to be closeted about being transgender. Because of my height and masculine build I often passed as a cisgendered male even before medically changing my appearance, whereas due to his short stature and build, my ex-partner did not. As a result of this physical limitation, my partner deeply feared my being out would essentially out him as also being transgender.
I quickly realized the hardest part of our break up was not the emotions connected to the loss of him, but the loss of the familiar. Short of three months of my life, I had never lived alone. All of my life consisted of shared space with my parents, partners, and roommates. The thought of coming home night, after night alone was terrifying, but I knew I did not want to move, nor was my house set up to accommodate roommates. As a result, the next several months found a significant amount of time spent keeping myself distracted. The minute it would get quiet I would start to have a panic attack. In those moments my chest would feel like it was going to explode and I would be overtaken with guttural sobbing.
Perhaps the scariest moment was when one evening, after several days of actual heart pain and numbness in my left arm, I was overtaken with dizziness, heart palpitations and a tunneling sensation. Fearing I might be having a heart attack, I got dressed and drove myself to the emergency room. I was not having a heart attack; rather, I was having some repetitive stress issue much like carpal tunnel, but as I sat in the hospital for four hours, the reality of my singlehood began to sink in. This was a pivotal moment for me. I faced my fears head on that night. I did it all on my own. I did what needed to be done and was in able hands at the hospital. I remained remarkably calm and even in good humor. I not only survived, but I thrived as a result. It was that night that I began to remember my own power.
I had made quite a few decisions that were not in line with my core self during my relationship with my ex-partner. I willingly compromised my own ethics on many levels. The trip to the emergency room reminded me of the first area I had compromised—my independence. I often chose not to do one activity or another because I knew that my ex-partner would make a disparaging remark. I’d forgotten how important it was for me to hold space for that which is sacred. Perhaps an even bigger problem was that I began making all my plans around his schedule. I would even go so far as to cancel something I planned if he suddenly wanted to do something. I had developed a sort of desperation to be with him. The biggest reality check was when I realized he had never asked this of me. I chose to do this on my own.
Journal Entry: 2008
Baggage and the Stages of Healing
There comes a point when I feel like I have to make a decision to change the course of direction when it comes to baggage. Obviously this is not to say that I can simply choose not to be triggered or have baggage related responses simply because I will it so. If only that were possible! What I am saying is that I am beginning to understand that I have a choice over how I respond to such triggers and I have the power to redirect it.
Recently baggage from my past has brought up some learned responses. One major response is that my issue with trust has been very triggering within my newer family circle. This is one of the major reasons I do not like it to get too quiet in my home. Because, you see, in the quiet is when past fears start to creep into my present reality and quite frankly, it makes me fucking angry that the pain created by past relationships has the ability to (attempt) to tarnish current relationships. That past learned distrust taints my ability to believe in the trust that others have wholly earned now.
I have these amazing new people in my life that have quickly become family to me. In my heart I know that we love each other quite genuinely and that we all care for each other in a very magical and beautiful way. Painfully, I find my learned distrust haunting me. It has created moments where I feel that I am being tolerated, rather than enjoyed. At times I worry that when I’m not around that I am the one that is the butt of the joke. My baggage has taught me to look for inconsistencies that could point to deceptions being done behind my back. What the fuck! These friends have done nothing but show me the opposite. I am angry that my ex has engrained these responses into me. They do not deserve this. I don’t deserve this turmoil. I’m tired of being reduced to tears as I am right now.
This is where I am learning that even though I cannot magically make the triggers go away, I have full control over what I do with them. One step I have taken is to immediately remind myself that these people are not the same people who have hurt me in the past. Relatively speaking, this is the easy part. The not so easy part, but vitally important to this change is that I not keep it locked in my head, rather I come to my friends and tell them when I’m being triggered and talk it through. I am so blessed that I can be wholly honest with these people. I can’t tell you have amazing it is to feel loved, supported, respected and genuinely cared for. They serve as a constant reminder to be patient with the process (even though I am quite impatient).
Regeneration
Some twenty-two years were spent in fear of Kali’s fierce and absolutely distorted image. In 2008 I took a class on Eastern/Western Spirituality in which we explored spirituality from an experiential perspective—rather than simply reading about various spiritual practices and traditions, we went to various services and participated in them. On one of our trips we attended a Hindu Puja. After the service we travel to a Hindu store, which carried a variety of Hindu icons. My professor, Susan Carter, was in search of a statue of Kali. I quietly went up to her and mentioned that I would be interested in chatting with her about Kali as I had an “issue” with her.
Upon returning to our classroom, checking in with me, and gaining my permission, we discussed Kali as a class. For the first time as an adult, I began sharing my story about my encounter with the Dark Mother Kali. It was the first time I began to realize that what I had gone through had been deeply, psychologically abusive. The chaperones that had been entrusted by my parents with my well being had abused that trust. Furthermore, without any context (especially coming from a sheltered, American and Christian perspective), I did not have the capacity to understand what was going on or what Kali symbolized, let alone have the ability to grasp her significance. Professor Carter explained that what Kali symbolizes is the cutting away of that which no longer has purpose in your life. Furthermore, she is the destruction of illusions. I allowed myself to sit with that for a little bit. “The cutting away of that which no longer has purpose in your life.” Tears immediately came to my eyes. “How ironic,” I told the class, “as it was only two years later that I left the church all together. Even more ironic that I learn this now as I am ending a unhealthy relationship.” Pranab Bandyopadhyay addresses these aspects of Kali in Mother Goddess Kali explaining that “In order to restore peace and equilibrium in the world, Goddess Kali manifested herself for the annihilation of asuric (demonic) wicked forces that had been dominating and oppressing even the powerful gods . . . They prayed to the Primordial Power—Shakti—who appeared as their savior in the form of Goddess Durga, and from her angry brow sprang forth Kali who joined in the fierce fighting in her multiple forms.”[1] Furthermore, Sarah Caldwell outlines in Oh Terrifying Mother: Sexuality, Violence and Worship of the Goddess Kali the significance of the goat sacrifice, “The final rite after the conclusion of mutiyettu is the offering of a blood-sacrifice, guruti . . . This blood-sacrifice is required to appease Vetalam and the other demonic spirits who have come from the forest to assist Kali in the war. By offering blood to them, peace can once again be restored.”[2]
Kali cut away ten years of abusive control of the Assemblies of God church, which had been a formative community. She cut away an unhealthy relationship. Lastly, Kali destroyed the illusions I had about being out as transgender, about being able to make it on my own, and about my strength and sacred, personal power. She has brought death and rebirth into my life. In A Lotus of Another Color: An Unfolding of the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Experience, AIDS Bhedbav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) explains that “. . . destruction in Hindu belief implies reproduction; [Shiva] is the reproductive power which is perpetually restoring that which has been dissolved.”[3] The interplay between Kali and Shiva points to the important interplay of gender in my own life and how by finally embracing my gender variance wholly and openly, I unleashed dynamic living. Elizabeth U. Harding explains this from a Tantric perspective in Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar:
[Kali] lies hidden by her self-created ignorance, like a snake, coiled and fast asleep in the muladhara chakra at the bottom of the spinal cord. Through sadhana, the Tantric awakens the Mother and rouses her to go upward. Flashing like a phosphorescent flame through the Sushumna channel, she pierces the various chakras until she reaches the highest plane and unites with Shiva at the crown of the head. At this moment, the Tantric experiences such supreme bliss that his mind cannot contain the small ego-consciousness and become illumined. Yet Tantric sadhana does not end there. The perfect realization of the Mother only culminates when one experiences illumination in all planes, even the lowest.[4]
For myself, as a transgender person, Kali is a great icon for she clearly queers gender in her transgression of the dominant binary gender system. Bandyopadhyay suggests that “She is the unity in all multiplicity—she is the embodiment of all gods and of all energies (or powers) of the Gods.”[5] Further reflection on Kali from a Tantric perspective points to her role as a deity of gender transgression. Bandyopadhyay states that “The Tantrika ultimately becomes ‘one’ with the double-sexed deity (Shakti and Shiva) which is eternally engaged in blissful union with itself without any beginning or end, and he achieves the cosmic bliss with all-embracing filial love.”[6]
Kali had lain dormant in my life until I was given the opportunity to adjust my understanding of her purpose. It is then that she sprung to action. It is fitting that Kali has become such a fierce and powerful presence in my world, for all that she has and is doing in my life is reflected in Hallie Inglehart Austen’s description of her in The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World’s Sacred Feminine. Inglehart Austen describes Kali’s attributes as follows:
The Hindu Goddess Kali, whose name translates as “Dark” and “Time,” is honored in India as an aspect of the Mother from whom all are born and to whom all must return. Here blackness shows her roots in the indigenous Indian culture of the dark-skinned Dravidians and also evokes her forms both as the Earth and the Womb of cosmic birth . . . Here crowned hair is full of power and vitality; her nakedness reveals her gift of truth. She dances on the cosmic couple, whose desire brings all of creation into being. In her hands she holds the sword of wisdom which destroys illusion, the scissors which cut through attachment, a severed head representing the release of the rational mind and ego, and the lotus of fulfillment. The snakes around her symbolize the transformative power of Shakti, the female life force. The arms at her waist represent action without attachment to outcome, a state of true freedom and power. Heads representing the accumulated wisdom of human existence, strung together with the umbilical cord of the soul, garland her neck.[7]
Kali has destroyed that which is of no use to me and was essentially destroying my authentic self. In her sacred destruction, Kali has restored my ability to be fierce and true to what is purposeful and meaningful in my life. The lessons of Kali are often painful and confusing, but they always awaken my spirit. I feel truly alive after so many years of merely existing.
Regardless
by Del Mulhern
Written February 15, 2009
Wrapped in the blanket of
a culture that roars
with a myriad reasons
why you are unworthy
of loving yourself.
For to love oneself
is to harness
a power that
strikes fear
in the hearts of those
who seek to wield power
over you.
You hold the sickle
to cut through
this oppression.
Regardless.
Throw away
all the reasons
why you
should not,
can not,
have not
loved yourself.
Love yourself.
Regardless.
Exile the isms
that have cornered you
with all their
arguments of your
worthlessness.
Love yourself.
Regardless.
Revoke the expectations
designed by others
of how,
and why,
and who
you should be.
Love yourself.
Regardless.
This is revolutionary.
This is your revolution.
Love yourself.
Regardless.
Love yourself.
Regardless.
~~~
[1] Pranab Bandyopadhyay, Mother Goddess Kali (Calcutta: United Writers, 1993), 83.
[2] Sarah Caldwell, Oh Terrifying Mother: Sexuality, Violence and the Worship of the Goddess Kali (Oxford: UP, 1999), 100.
[3] AIDS Bhedbav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA), A Lotus of Another Color: An Unfolding of the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Experience (Boston: Alyson, 1993), 24.
[4] Elizabeth U. Harding, Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar (York Beach, ME: Nicolas-Hays, 1993), 70-71.
[5] Bandyopadhyay, 20.
[6] Ibid., 26.
[7] Hallie Inglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World’s Sacred Feminine (Berkeley: Wingbow Press, 1990), 78.