“Shiva is the great ecstatic deity of Yoga Har Har Mahadev!

Har Har Mahadev!

“Shiva is the great ecstatic deity of Yoga, the supreme Lord of the highest inner energy and transformation. He has the deepest experience of bliss (ananda) as his constant state of being. He is the foremost drinker of the Soma, the amrita or mystic nectar which is the delight inherent in all existence. For him everything is bliss or grants bliss. He knows how to extract the Soma everywhere.

Yet Shiva is also Nilakantha, the Deva whose throat is blue from being able to drink poison and not be harmed by it. He is not only the foremost drinker of the Soma but also the best drinker of poison. He can drink any poison and survive, in fact flourish.

There is an important connection between these two aspects of Shiva and several lessons to be drawn from them in our own experience.

Actually everything in life is or can be poison. Even our most blissful and happy experiences of love, prosperity or vitality as limited by time and death can become poison. Brooding over the joys of the past can be as painful as going over the sorrows. The end of our success or fulfillment itself can cause a greater pain than failure and loss in the first place.

At the same time everything in life is nectar or Soma. Even our most painful experiences of death, sorrow, parting, iniquity, brutality and tragedy contain an immortal nectar that we can draw from them. There is in these painful events also the rasa of being able to connect to what transcends this mortal vale of tears. There is the ecstasy of the witness and of knowing a Divine grace is always with us to save us and take us beyond.

Shiva is also the great lord of time. He is eternity and he is the present moment. As the eternal, he extracts the essence from the fleeting dance of time. He holds eternity as he dances through every moment, never losing his equipoise or missing a step. In dynamic stillness he olds both being and becoming. He is the nectar of eternity and the poison of time. Time turns eternity into poison. Eternity turns time into nectar.

It is only after one has gone through the trial and tribulation that one can find real peace. It is only after one has taken in the poison and transformed it that one can find the inner nectar. Yet this is not a matter of stoically enduring sorrow, having a stiff upper lip or being thick skinned so as not to be hurt by anything. It is a matter of positive joy in which one rests in the poignancy of all experience, in the delight of being, and the beautiful light of consciousness that pervades everything. Doing this in the happy side of life is one thing. Finding it even in the unhappy side is another. One must be able to feel the pain without becoming pained by it. One must touch happiness in sorrow, delight in pain and love even in rejection.”