I don’t know if it’s the recent eclipse or just midlife but I have been doing a lot of digging into the past-my personal past. And I’ve been reeling with regret for things I never fully took responsibility for and asking if I will ever let them go. One decision was to move away from the only place I ever called home. It was five years ago, and not a day goes by that I don’t regret it and wish I didn’t. That’s pretty extreme. To be stuck in a hopeless emotion like regret.
These past few weeks have been exceptionally low and my only lifeline has been the Divine Mother. Divine Tara actually. I have written about Tara many times. I am not sure why I have loved her for twenty years and not Mother Mary-the Mother of the Catholic religion, as I was raised. Tara is the enlightened female Buddha, the Goddess of active compassion and wisdom in Tibetan Buddhism.
When my mother died in 2004, I needed mothering. I remember finding more support and connection in my writers workshop than I did in bereavement counseling.
Talking wasn’t going to do it for me, writing was.
I was researching ancient cultures for my fantasy trilogy and found the life altering material about the Divine Mother in all her forms. Tara especially carried me and has carried me every day since. So many people can not related to God, depicted as judgmental and patriarchal. But the Divine Mother in all her forms is COMFORT. And how many of us need comfort?
I don’t practice formal meditation. I have in the past and probably should, knowing its benefits. I have been doing something else, I didn’t know was an actual practice called Deity Yoga.
One “becomes the Observer” in meditation. Tara introduces relationship. She says “we are sitting in this pain together.” Meditation often involves detached awareness. With Tara, one has awareness held within compassion.
One simple sentence: “I take refuge in the Divine Mother,” works wonders. Sit quietly with your eyes closed and say that aloud or silently and see what happens. You don’t even have to picture any form. I don’t usually.
The Divine Mother as a Mode of Consciousness
The Divine Mother is the consciousness that refuses to abandon any part of you. And that is the key. Taking refuge with the Divine Mother who knows all you have done and still loves you unconditionally.
She is the compassionate form that consciousness takes while it remembers itself. She says I see what happened, I see the conditioning, I see the causes, I see the fear. And I refuse to hate the one that was trapped inside it. ~ChatGPT
Compassion doesn’t erase responsibility. It removes hatred. She refuses to exile the younger self that didn’t have the eyes to see what you see now.
She has transformed in my life as a living symbol and teacher. It is less like devotion to an external being and more like a relationship that has gradually rebuilt something inside me. Over years of practice, I have developed an inner presence that says “you are strong enough to handle this, and you are supported.”
And if I think about it, that is what the Divine (in any form) was always supposed to be, internal support.
