Goddess of Disappointment

By Sally Kempton

A couple of weeks ago, I was in London preparing to teach a workshop on Goddesses called “Dancing with the Divine Feminine.” At dinner one night, I asked a friend which goddess he most wanted to hear about. “I’d love you to talk about the goddess of disappointment,” he said.

The table went silent. “You’re kidding, right?” someone said. This guy is one of the more successful people I know, the author of more books than I hope to write in several lifetimes, married to a beautiful woman he loves. Why, we wondered, did he want to investigate disappointment?

I shouldn’t have been surprised. In the years since I started teaching the yoga of the Indian goddesses, I’ve noticed that many people with enviably successful lives feel a strange kinship with Dhumavati, the crone goddess whose name is synonymous with disappointment, despair, and difficulty. One reason, perhaps, is that even people who mostly succeed at life also know the taste of failure. Even those of us who desperately fear disappointment, know at some level that there is no real success without coming to terms with our fear of failing, and with the hidden gifts that failure offers.

Still, Dhumavati—her name means ‘the smoky one’ –is not at first glance a goddess you’d want to invoke. Skinny, poor, elderly, she is the very opposite of the auspicious goddesses like Lakshmi. One verse describes her as wearing dirty clothes, and riding in a chariot decorated with a crow banner. (In India, crows are birds of ill omen.) Another verse says, “Her complexion is like the black clouds that form at the time of cosmic dissolution… Her face is very wrinkled, she has disheveled hair, and her breasts are dry and withered.” Dhumavati, in short, is that familiar figure from both Eastern and Western mythology—the crone, the eternal bag lady, the witch. Moreover, Dhumavati personifies the feelings you might experience when your luck runs out, when your business tanks or your lover leaves you, when you get sick or injured or get rejected by your first choice college. In short, she’s everything that most people do their best to avoid.

Why then, would you want to get to know Dhumavati?

Perhaps because you intuit that there are certain gifts we can only attain if we’re willing to navigate disappointment. There are boons in difficulty, profound empowerments that come to us when we face into the inevitable disillusionment that exists in every human life. And Dhumavati, with her wizened, ugly face, is literally the guardian of those gifts. Her Shakti, her divine energy, is the primal guide along the path that can turn disappointment into enlightenment.

We need her. Without Dhumavati’s grace, we can remain trapped by our images of success and our fear of loss, especially the losses that come with age and sickness. When we have her grace, she empowers us to mine the exquisite wisdom hidden in the heart of life’s most difficult moments. On a worldly level, Dhumavati often shows up in your life to remind you of your fundamental human vulnerability. A friend of mine met Dhumavati when her back went out so badly that she couldn’t get out of bed for two months. Another discovered her when his business partner ran away with all the money in the company account. One of the most profound teachers I know has spent the last 15 years in daily, grinding pain from nerve damage brought on by an accident—and learned to walk through it with a grace that inspires everyone who meets her. Dhumavati has been her teacher.

One way Dhumavati teaches us is by asking the question, “Can you keep your equilibrium when everything collapses? Can you find your yogic groove when everything falls away?” This, of course, is one of the questions that yogic practice is meant to answer. And, in my experience, when we walk through a Dhumavati moment with full awareness of her presence, she carries with her the key to some very potent yogic secrets.

Dhumavati is one of the Ten Wisdom Goddesses, who each represent a stage of enlightened consciousness. Dhumavati represents that stage of the inner journey where the spiritual goals we started out with become empty of meaning, and we have no choice but to let go of our agendas. As such, she bestows the inner gifts of detachment and freedom, the power to soar beyond circumstances. In other words, she is not only the goddess of disappointment; she’s the goddess who shows us that within disappointment is the secret boon of true freedom. (Remember the old Kris Kristofferson line, “Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose.”)

Esoterically, Dhumavati represents the void state of meditation. This stage, which we might experience as an inner blackness, or as a pervasive feeling of dryness and disinterest in practice, is sometimes called the ‘dark night of the soul.’ However, according to the tantric teacher Ganapati Muni, this is actually the precursor to Samadhi, one of the highest forms of meditative immersion.

When you sit with the intention of going into a deep meditation, you have to let go of egoic concerns, of thoughts, of all of your various agendas. Without letting all this go, it’s very hard to experience the vastness of your unlimited awareness. Most of us, even when we want spiritual experience, deeply resist this level of letting go—in meditation and in life. That’s why we so often have to discover Dhumavati’s gifts by having something taken away from us.

And here’s the secret: when you can allow yourself, instead of resisting disappointment, to see it as a lesson in letting go, Dhumavati can help you discover the profound wisdom of non-attachment. Dhumavati doesn’t empower us in obvious ways, like Durga. She isn’t dramatic, like Kali, or beautiful, like Lakshmi or Parvati. Her gift is the strength that comes from letting ourselves empty out, and the profound freedom and peace that we achieve only when we’re willing to renounce something we wanted. Who knew–-especially in our success and beauty-worshipping culture–that not getting what we wanted could be liberating? Yet when we are willing to be fully present to our moments of disappointment and failure, Dhumavati’s Shakti can free your heart of worry, fear, and grievance—making room for possibilities far beyond anything you could imagine.

So, the next time things aren’t going the way you think they should, stop resisting for a moment. Embrace the feeling of disappointment. Whisper to yourself Dhumavati’s mantra, “Let go.” And notice how, if you allow her in, she will fill your heart not only with peace, not only with compassion, but also with her own flavor of intense love. The kind of love that only the Goddess can give you.

in Yoga journal 

July 19, 2013

Thoughts From Within - Woody Harrelson

"You alone are the author of your future- experience teaches you that. Your behavior is not an unchangeable law of nature. At every moment, you have the opportunity to change- to alter your thoughts, your speech, your actions. If you train yourself to be mindful of what you do, and ask yourself whether it is likely to lead to positive results or negative, you'll be guiding yourself in the right direction. Repeated good intentions can generate a powerful inner voice that will keep you on track. It will remind you- whenever you trap yourself in a cycle of unhappiness- that you can get out of that trap. Periodically you will have glimpses of what it is to like to be free. You make this vision a reality by acting in positive ways and letting go of misery."

 in Eight mindful steps to happiness: walking the buddha's path
by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

We, anonymous people of this world are never happy with what we have. specially the weather. we always have to complain: either is too cold or too hot to muggy too wet to dry too  windy too grey too white...
well, i caught myself today thinking how grateful i am for everything around and beyond me, but i am grateful  specially to Yoga. 
I am grateful that i came across Yoga already so many years ago, if i think about it it's been more than 10 years, and that i followed this path and because of this amazing journey i allow myself to appreciate things and people around me each day a little more. 
I have come across so many kind, generous inspiring people, fellow practitioners- students and teachers. 
Yoga has brought me to myself. I can say that today i am a more balanced peaceful person and more positive person as well. Point five of Sivananda school: Positive thinking and Meditation.
So I THANK Yoga for existing in this world of mine and in this world of ours. 
And I THANK all the teachers, sages, gurus, yogis, for passing and sharing this fundamental knowledge since more than five thousand years ago.

Hari  Om Tat Sat

A very well known and successful advertiser once said that there are no right or wrong decisions; the decision one makes (or is it takes?), at a determined time and place, is the wright one just by the fact that it was the one that was chosen. It makes no sense and it doesn't serve anybody any good to wonder about what if. Like they say "it's not worth to cry over spilled milk".
That can also be translated as living the here and now, in the present. Which if we really think about it doesn't even exist. Once you try to catch it it is gone. Maybe that is why it is so essential that we live it to the fullest, here an
d now. It only lasts within the time and space where/when you are fully aware of it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the best is to live/enjoy/cease/grasp fully every minute, every millisecond of your life because before you notice it the moment is gone. And this goes for good and bad ones which many times is a comfort and other times a torment. And that is what makes it worth it, how it all balances itself in the end of the day.
The reason for all my blabbing about this is because I was wondering to myself if it would make any sense for me to publish in this blog my gastronomic attempts...and I have made the decision to also talk about it here, therefore this is the right choice!
Besides if I have made up my mind to enjoy and embrace whatever life gives me and what I bring onto it why not post my gastronomic attempts?
Since I've been back I have been missing, amongst other things the food, so I have been following some Indian recipes online and I must say that the result was not bad at all.
Today I tried Coconut chutney and Paneer Parata

Soorya Namaskar or  Sun exercise

"This exercise is called soorya namaskar because it is practiced in the early morning facing the sun. The sun is considered to be the deity for health and long life. In ancient days, this exercise was a daily routine in the daily spiritual practices. One should practice this at least twelve times by repeating twelve names of the Lord Sun. This exercise is a combined process of yoga asanas and breathing. It reduces abdominal fat, brings flexibility to the spine and limbs and increases the breathing capacity; it is easier to practice asanas after doing soorya namaskar.
Before students practice the more complicated and difficult postures, the spine should acquire some flexibility. For a stiff person, the sun exercise is a boon to bring back the lost flexibility.

There are twelve spinal positions, each stretching various ligaments and giving different movements to the vertebral column. The vertebral column is bend forward and backward alternately with deep breathing. Whenever the body is bend forward, the contraction of the abdomen and diaphragm throws out the breath. When the body bends backwards, the chest expands and deep breathing occurs automatically. This way, flexibility increases and breathing is corrected; moreover it mildly exercises the legs and arms, thus increasing the circulation."

in CIBY by Swami Vishnu-devananda

Well... I'm back!

My initial plan was to post  once in a while during my stay at the Sivananda Kutir Ashram during my TTC (short for Teacher's Training Course). But, as it often happens things don't go as planned. 
There was absolute no internet connection at the ashram, there was not even a land line.
When I think about it now I have to admit that it was a good thing and that it makes all the sense. Plus I'm not really sure where I would have find time to sit down at the computer since we were busy from 5 am to 10 pm.
I will try to share my experience in the next posts. 
But bare with me sometimes it might seem very dry...the truth is - and this is what our teacher told us just before the graduation ceremony- that you will only feel the effects of what you did here during this past month later on, maybe once you go out of the ashram, maybe next week, maybe next month maybe in 10 years...which is not a bad thing at all! 

photo by Aiko Yoshikawa

Having come back to this side of the world I do feel that this experience was/is much bigger than what I was able to grasp. And it is not that I feel a major change in my life, after all I have been practicing yoga for the last 10 years, but it is in the little things. Change, real structural change, always comes in small doses, and gently settles in you, gaining space within you and when you realize it is already there to stay.