January 25, 2021

In this attribute of the One, we are asked to contemplate trīśikā, the Goddess of the Three or the Divine Mistress of the Three Energies of Consciousness. Here we encounter the number three, a number connected to spirituality across tradition. Perhaps this tendency to group into three arises from the original experience of being born into the mother-father-child cohort. This three automatically links us to the original mystery of conception and the primary relationship we encounter at birth. As well, we find three’s in the phases of the woman’s life, maiden, mother, crone as well as in earth, sky and horizon, stillness, movement and individual vantage point and in the Christian tradition as father, son and holy ghost.

Three also represents the cycle of life we first encountered in the Shiva Nataraja image: creation (birth), maintenance or sustaining (life) and dissolution or reabsorption (death). This constantly revolving cycle represents the inherent generative aspect of the Goddess as in a tangible link to the living world. This alone makes it a significant contemplation. Recognizing the cycle of life asks us to reflect upon the certain death of the body and in doing so, we also connect more fully to the creation and maintenance of life. We are invited to live out each moment completely as we acknowledge the limitations of life in this body. As we remember this cycle more intimately in daily life, we also can attune to this cycle in ever more subtle and also expansive ways. We see these three aspects in the arising, sustaining and dissolution of each thought, breath, moment, etc. Finally, these three aspects are inherently connected. One cannot happen without the others and each phase naturally leads to the other. Together, there is a wholeness, the cycle itself, which is the Goddess. She is the One from which the three emerge and return.

Where spaciousness and energy come together, entities are formed. Everything is a particular combination of emptiness and matter or energy. The emerging object cannot be separated from the space and matter it is made of and so another threesome exists here. Perhaps the attraction that binds the atoms of energy together within a delineated space is a way of conceptualizing the Goddess —- the unifying principle holding it all together.

Central to the Tantrik paradigm is the understanding of of subject, object and the means by which the subject perceives the object. I (subject) see (means of perceiving) a teapot (object). Here, our tendency is to partition each aspect from the other. Our mind becomes enamoured with labelling everything as distinct objects, defining the mode by which the object is perceived and delineating the perceiver. As we reflect upon this attribute, we are invited to recognize that it is one Goddess who governs each aspect. As such, we are asked to dissolve the apparent separations into a whole — seeing without labelling “I” as different from “teapot,” without separating seeing from who is seeing and what is being seen. As we collapse this process into simply “seeing” or even more accurately “being,” we rest in the experience - unified, whole.

This frees up the mind’s energy we normally take up in dividing and separating each aspect. Aliveness results as this freed energy can be used to engage more completely in the world.

Melted into one unified experience, the pure “verb” experience is no longer constrained by the mind’s categorizing and wonder emerges. “Wow” moments, where we naturally pause, are moments when we sink into the experience of “seeing,” “hearing,” “loving” without categorizing the various aspects of the moment. We are captivated and brought home to ourselves.