The leap from Austerity

This is a guest post from Clare Dakin, UK coordinator for Project GreenHands. It's her sharing about the Linga Bhairavi consecration. This was shared in Facebook by Clare.

I am writing from the Ashram in India, in an attempt to describe what I have just lived through…which is the birth of a Fire Goddess; a miracle of such significance, that part of me is still unable to comprehend or get my head around it.
The incarnation of the Divine Feminine into her own temple, here next to Shiva in the form of the Dhyanalinga in his own temple, gives us a place of embodied union between masculine and feminine that is sacred in a way that I know I simply will not be able to find words for.
There really is no way for those of us who do not have access to other dimensions as the norm, to understand what is possible at the fundamental level of creation, by a Yogi who experiences everything as a part of himself, who solidifies mercury with his bare hands and sits there moulding it as if it was clay before locking energies into it at a level of power that will throw you on the ground or blast you heart open into utter spiritual devotion for the mystery of life. This man literally crafted a feminine force out of creation itself, "a woman with the man taken out", a being who would balance the silence and awareness stimulating power of the masculine Dhyanalinga with all the fire, chaos, beauty, compassion and wild raving ecstasy of the unbridled feminine. 'His' is the awareness, 'Hers' is the humanity. I don't think I would ever have believed such a thing was even possible had I not participated and literally felt her birthed into creation.
Sadhguru said that we would all be playing the role of midwife if we sat with enough intensity and devotion. 5000 of us (350 Europeans the rest Indian) chanting and meditating, calling her, accessing wild energies to add our combined force to the matter in Sadhguru's hands, all relayed to us from inside the Temple by multiple big screens. Hours of hard graft…just like being a midwife, over 3 days, late into every night with maximum 3 hours sleep and then back into the devotional process. I wish I could take what I have seen and what is in my heart and somehow place it in yours so that you could feel what I am feeling.
She, like Shiva in Dhyanalinga has her energies held in a mercury core that is behind her statue, although Sadhguru has energized the rock in such a way that its energy will never dissipate, unless, amazingly, she is not treated properly, or if a man tries to take over the temple, and then she will leave in a rage that he says you do not want to be anywhere close to! This is a women's temple, to be tended only by women, but open to everyone. The only one of its kind, ever.
You have never seen a female deity so worshiped, so bowed down to, so blessed…Sadhguru wept as he brought her into reality and then sang chants to her in a voice so filled with love and devotion it was like hearing an archetypal love song from behind the veil of time, the same song that lives hidden in the very core of our own hearts…and then it was as if the night sky just fell into our laps and became profoundly alive. Immensity just landed, throbbing, and there she was. I am in tears again just writing this. How privileged am I, are we for being part of something of this nature, to have moved it through our bodies, lived through that intensity. There she is, in her own temple, tended by beautiful women, her priestesses, who have rituals for every stage of life; colourful, vivid and very real and beautiful rituals full of dance and fire and song, so so different from the austerity of Dhyanalinga.
For myself, as someone who has done a fairly convincing job of embodying the archetype of the wounded feminine, it was a new world to be faced with levels of devotion towards the feminine that placed her back into her rightful position, especially here where women are so subjugated…but for the whole world to have such a mighty charged feminine energy being worshiped and honoured with levels of reverence, carved out the grief in so many of us all and replaced it with permission to value within ourselves, what has felt so battered and unsafe for so long; the Goddess within…true feminine power, unashamed, uncensored. My body didn't know what to do other than sob for hours, as if emptying out the old story and pain to make way for a new infusion of beautiful feminine energy.
I woke yesterday with a heart so carved out and expanded, it felt as if it filled my entire upper body. Everything I looked at broke me open. I have learnt to bow down to the mystery of life through my time with Sadhguru, but now that mystery just got filled with glorious music, flowers, fire and dance, wrapped herself around my being and called herself Mother.