On Parvati

We replicate Shiva and Parvati’s conversation every time we sit together as lovers, as teacher and student, or in a group and seek revelation, transformation, or the insight for change. Shiva and Parvati symbolize the moment when we get spiritually naked together, when our love and trust is great enough to let us be vulnerable and thus make space for revelation to arise. This intellectual merging involves a subtle Tantric embrace of thoughts and energies rather than a physical merging. It is no less an embrace for being subtle. 

The image of Shiva and Parvati sitting together in a grove on the crest of a mountain not only carries the archetype of divine lovers, it also stands for the mysterious creative moment when two or more people enter a “we” space together. In the “we” space, our essences connect, and we are then hooked up with superconscious source of insight. Physicist David Bohm called this process “dialogue.” Dialogue happens when, like Shiva and Parvati, we recognize our fundamental unity, our interdependence. Instead of being in a conversation between separate individuals trying to find solutions with their minds and from their egoic selves, dialogue happens in a shared space of presence. It comes from the inspired, revelatory, transformative energy that shows up when a group of people allows boundaries to come down and real mutual vulnerability
to emerge. 

Dialogue always starts with a question, an inquiry. In their coupling, Shiva and Parvati epitomize this fundamental creative conversation in which truth always comes out of the silence behind words, rising into expression through verbal exploration.
​
How can you be more present in your interactions today?

— Sally Kempton

---