Ganesha is Shakti
Saturday, September 15th, 2007Today is Lord Ganesha’s birthday. We can celebrate and seek Ganesha’s favor in his role as the Lord of Obstacles, remembering that he is both the activity of grace in removing obstacles and equally the grace to be discovered in our encounter with obstacles.
However, taking a more comprehensive View, Ganesha exemplifies the infinity of the creation and therefore Shakti. He was born from the sweat of Parvati, the wife of Shiva, mixed with earth, and later joined to the head of an elephant. This birth story of Ganesha tells us that he embodies the three adi shaktis .
Parvati’s sweat is iccha shakti, the desire or will that is the impulse behind the creation. The earth is the realm of activity, or kriya shakti. The elephant’s head mythologically represents cosmic consciousness and its power of knowing the world, or jnana shakti.
Ganesha is often visualized with glistening beads of sweet amrita on his brow–the visible markers of the creative impulse. He infinitely manifests spontaneous capacities of embodied knowledge and infinities of spontaneous activities, not just in his roles as musician, yogi, author of the Vedas, and dancer, but all over the world, in every upsurge of life.
Ganesha spans the three realms: lower realms, human, and deva. He is yogi, master of the three worlds: waking, sleeping, and dreaming.
For these reasons, Ganesha is closely associated with Lalita Tripura Sundari, the Primordial Devi. In fact, she is sometimes called “Ganeshi.” In South India there are temples and methods of Sri Vidya practice devoted to Ganeshi, a form of Lalita Tripurasundari with the head of an elephant and the body of the Devi.
Ganesha guards the junctures between the infinite forms of life, emanating as rays from the Shri Yantra, Lalita’s esoteric manifestation. In this capacity, he is called the Lord of Thresholds. This is easy to understand on one level as he spans so many different worlds.
Ganesha was created out of the Mother to serve as the guardian of the Mother. And he is also the Child. As cosmic consciousness and consummate yogi, he is the Father, Shiva, too.
Another and another and another, and there is One.
Jai Ganesha! Jai Ma! Jai Shiva!
In Matriseva,
Shambhavi
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