Shivaratri (March 8)

 

This is the night of Shiva. At least for one night, dear one, don't sleep, stay up and sing! Tonight is the wedding night of the Lord and the Goddess, the trough and the wave, the black singularity and all the worlds swirling out of it. This is the betrothal and the annihilation. Om Namah Shivaya. At least for tonight, become unbounded space, the field where subject and object arise as one, like the flame and its aureole. There was never a candle. We dance and dissolve in a spiral of awakened eyes, all creatures appearing in the flickering periphery of the Self beholding itself. Formlessness and beauty kiss one another. At least this night, stop searching for the stars. Become the darkness, the absence through which your body spins, the quantum void where infinite zero rounds its tiny particle of flesh. You are the ocean of the vacuum whose waves are compassion. Drop your name and drown in the name of God. Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, you are! Be the tremor of silence, the gong unstruck yet ringing before the earth is made. Om Namah Shivaya. We could spend this night together, vigiling, witnessing, breathing the blackness that sheathes all light. At sunrise, we'll be two again. But from midnight until dawn, let's be no one at all!

Shivaratri, this year March 8, is the wedding night of Shiva and Shakti, silence and creation. It is the most sacred night of the year in the Vedic calendar, when devotees and meditators chant the divine Name until dawn. Spring awakens. Karmas of the past dissolve. Shiva, meaning "highest good," is none other than pure awareness. His consort, Goddess Shakti, is the vibration of awareness that manifests the material world. Om Namah Shivaya. Image: 'Shiva Dreaming' by jarmotuisk on flickr, created for the NASA Remix Challenge #12, 'Heart of Space.'