Shiva Lingham

I am in love with India, She arouses within me deep Union and this is symbolised in the Shiva Lingham.
I’m here in India travelling with my husband for our honeymoon, so you see Union is a theme for me. the last two cities have been very much about Shiva, and the Shiva Lingham ; Varanasi and Khajuraho. Both have gotten me contemplating sacred sexuality, worship and Shiva and Shakti.
When I came to yoga and Tantra it was my worship of Shiva that gave me a strong practice of ritual and was my birth of sadhana, my spiritual journey. Shiva is the godhead of destruction or transformation and for some this brings fear, because of cycles of change yet life is utterly cyclic, look at the sun rise and sets, the seasons, the full moon, all for ever changing and invites you into the flow, you choose to go with the flow, resist the currents, or sink or drown with the tides. These are the lessons of life.

Shiva Shakti

So my honeymoon, my journey in India, Shiva Lingham… For the last 4 days I’ve been in Varanasi the city of Shiva, then Khajuraho where the magic of Vijnana Bhairava Tantra (VBT) came alive within me.
Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is a conversation between the Goddess who is the Creative Power of the Universe called Shakti and the God who is the Consciousness that permeates everywhere called Shiva. Shiva as Bhairava describes 112 techniques for embodying yoga and Tantra through everyday life experience, which intimately and provocatively open the portals for enlightenment.

Again and again the VBT encourages you to dive into your life experience with captivating awareness, using your senses and to be present in it, not observing it. This to me is Union of Shiva and Shakti. This is the Shiva Lingham. Traditional yoga demands you renounce life and sexuality, Tantra invites you into the portal of life, into the feeling of your holy body and there you meet the divine.. For me the Shiva Lingham is within the body, for the woman her yoni is the creative portal and her spine the Shiva Lingham, erect and strong and giver of life through the nervous system.

The Shiva Lingham is born of the yoni, the feminine aspect of Shakti. If you think of it everything is born of the yoni and that is why Shakti is the creative power of the universe. Shiva the masculine energy of the universe is inert without Shakti, He is the giver of life through His seed, yet she creates.

My story With Shiva Lingham

So in the last few days the hectiness of Varanasi pulled me about from my centre. I was challenged with the constant noise, the hustle the bustle, yet in the midst of all of this there’s immense ritual, honour and worship which I love. Then coming to Khajuraho everything changed, much like it did for me 3 years prior. My yoga is not the asana, I’m not the most flexible, my asana opens my body to become a gateway for the Divine and I dive deep into mantra, Mudra, meditation, pranayama and puja. So here in Mother India with all the travelling my yoga is powerful nurtured.
Boom this time I saw Shiva everywhere. This surprise me at first as I am a Shakti worshipper, I honour Tantra feminine practices because they bring me to life. My love for Durga and Kali is immense, their myths, their essence has given me the courage to cut through the bullshit, the drama, the ego to merge and marrying with the divine. My kundalini awakening was with Kali.

Tantra Yogini Temple

So Khajuraho, my day began in the Chasauth Yogini – the 64 Tantra Yogini Temple which is dedicated to the wrathful, bloodthirsty (apparently)attendents of Kali… Mmm am I bloodthirsty? – I am thirsty for life and blood is the essence of life and red, for the red Tantra I practice.and yes I can be wrathful! I sat here meditating taking in the immense energy and as I sat in circle I had a feeling I was sat where Tara would be… My husband took pictures of me whilst I was there. As I left after meditation, mantra and prayer I stood up and cried, the potency filled me with love. This is what Kali invokes within me. The thirst for love, that when I am wrathful it is because my ego, my fear rises to pull me away from love.

After the 64 Yogini Temple, my husband and I went to the main western temples. Boom! Shiva. Last time I was there I didn’t see, it was as if my eyes where half closed and so how is this in your life do you really see, take everything in and let it penetrate you? This again for me is the Shiva Lingham, He penetrates so deeply because He is One with Shakti. As a tantrika, Yogini, worshipper of Shakti I know there is no difference between me and Shakti. Everything is Shakti that is why I came to awakening with her in a sublime way. Bu who lead me to this place of Union ? – Shiva! He helped me to created the strong steady container through my practices to then hold space for Shakti to rise, awaken, arouse so I became more intimate with life. And in lay mans terms I became ready to meet and invite in my beautiful husband in to my life. my husband Shon is my Shiva, quite literally. He is like Shiva he has dreadlocks, great dancer, strong, powerful, the patient one and of all the countries in the universe I choose a man from Barbados who’s emblem is the Trident. And YES Shiva holds the trident.
All of this union now arouses so intimately within me, through my love affair with yoga, my marriage with my husband and my marriage to my sadhana. I love this invoked in Daniel Odier translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. Shiva says:
18-19. Since there is no difference between the Shakti and the one who embodies her, nor between substance and object, the Shakti is identical to the Self. The energy of the flames is nothing but the fire. All distinction is but a prelude to the path of true knowledge.
20-21. The one who reaches the Shakti grasps the non-distinction between Shiva and Shakti and enters the door to the divine. As space is recognized when illuminated by sun rays, so Shiva is recognized through the energy of Shakti, which is the essence of the Self.
22-23. O supreme God! You who bear a trident and a garland of skulls, how to reach the absolute plenitude of the Shakti which transcends all notions, all descriptions and abolishes time and space? How to realize this non-separation from the universe? In what sense is it said that the supreme Shakti is the secret door to the state of Bhairava?

So if you’re still with me thank you for reading.
I am sat in Khajuraho in the western temples and the Shiva temple – Kandriya MahaDeva Temple transfixed me. We sat there meditating on the Shiva Lingham, me and my husband and the immense potency of the Lingham filled me it was as if I was with Shiva and Shakti was dancing in me. I am glowing from Shiva Lingham penetration, metaphorically as their ShivaShakti lovemaking uniting within the temple of my body. Last time. I was here it was the Devi Jagadambi temple that bought me to my knees as I chanted Kali Mantras. This time Shiva Lingham and then two other temples I had not visited within the ground also had Shiva Lingham. I then went to Matangesvara temple with a 9 foot high majestic Shiva Lingham that emerges for a beautiful yoni for a Shiva Lingham puja….

My day was filled with worship of the Union of ShivaShakti through the portal of The Shiva Lingham. I am filled with immense Shakti at present hence my blog I long to share. I’ve contemplated my immense gratitude for my practices that invoke worship that some might question for a western, yet they speak to me so powerfully and I am a container to share their potency through my teachings. Shiva is the very ground of my being and He holds the space for my wild Shakti side to be intimately expressed. The Shiva Lingham arouses deep sacred sexuality, something my husband and I practice and I also teach women and couples how to practice this way. This may be what most come to Khajuraho for, to see the Kama Sutra temples… The sexual images. Again I invite you to see beyond the sex and see the erotic. There is a difference.
Why?

Sex or Erotic

Sex is purely physical act, nice one too I might add.. Eroticism invokes rituals, the whole body, mind and soul connection where the sexual Union is the portal in to the divine. Your lover become the God or Goddess and you see, feel, taste, smell and hear this within sacred sexuality. The orgasm a hint of the sate of bliss of God. And I am controversially state is God experiencing life through you so that through even sex, more so sacred sexuality, the orgasm becomes the state of Union with the same frequency of God,, indescribable, elevating and holy.
This is how it is carved in the temples dating back to 9th century. The sex is on the lower part of the temples, everything is embraced, this is Tantra meaning, and as the temple rises there are the gods, the God, everything is One. The portal or the gateway to the divine may also be through sexual Union and how delicious is this?

So to conclude my musing… The Shiva Lingham this time in India as aroused within me a deep state of Union, the co-mingling of Shiva and Shakti, never separate, always hearing for the intimacy and embrace of eachother. The seed of the Shiva Lingham is pregnant with potent possibility as I give birth to my new realms in work.

Watch this space – see more captivating pictures of my journey though India here:

 

http://www.instagram.com/michellecrossyoga

Where the next leg in southern India and that’s where my India retreat is and yes it’s all about Ignite Love and I am sure to tell stories of Shiva and Shakti and the erotic Union in life.
And if you would like to learn more about sacred sexuality and learn practices that will arouse you, email me contact@michellecross.co.uk – next year I have new programmes I am sharing

Much love from India
Jai ShivaShakti!