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Durga |
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Lakshmi |
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Saraswati |
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Parvati |
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All of these four goddesses are love goddesses, yet each one brings a unique quality, attitude, and approach into their ways and experiences of love.
Parvati expresses mothering qualities, which are brought into the love ritual as caring and unconditional giving. She generously gives love and sexual enjoyment to her partner.
Durga expresses assertive and achieving qualities, which are brought into the love ritual as a willful pursuit of love and enjoyment. She is assertive in what she wants and how she wants it. As a love goddess, she uses her powers of will and assertiveness to achieve what she desires.
Lakshmi is the goddess of beauty and enchantment, who radiates beauty, sexiness and attraction. Her goddess power of attraction enchants a man and draws him to her. She brings goddess sexual attraction into the love ritual.
Saraswati is the goddess of creativity and imagination, bringing an imaginative, playful, creative quality into the love ritual. She also brings in an attitude of learning and exploring new realms. Also, with her quality of insight she sees what is most deeply important and also what is possible.
The goddesses reflect the cosmic principle of polarity. Each goddess attitude and approach has its polar-opposite, which is expressed through another goddess. Polar opposite qualities complement and balance one another; neither is better than the other. One kind of polarity in the goddesses, and in love, is the active and receptive polarity.
Goddesses will have either an active or receptive attitude in the love ritual. An active attitude, or approach, is when the woman (or man) initiates love activity or takes the lead in the love, rather than being receptively passive or waiting for the other. A receptive approach is when the lover allows the other to actively initiate or lead, while also being receptive to their love energy. In every moment, each lover is expressing one of these approaches more than its opposite.
Sometimes, a receptive attitude can become mere passivity but, ideally, a receptive lover will be consciously engaged and responsive, rather than simply being passive. Sometimes, an active attitude can become overly assertive, manipulative, or even dominating; but ideally, an active approach will include a real caring about the other's love experience and enjoyment.
It's possible to come closer to a balance in the active and receptive approaches; but usually, in any moment, each lover will be in either an active or receptive approach (or attitude). During the whole course of loving, though, each partner might sometimes be active and sometimes be receptive. And these polarities can be balanced and harmonised, which is a way to evolve the love experience. A balance of active and receptive, which is possible with some conscious intention, would be an attitude of receptive-active response.
This polarity, of active and receptive, means there are four possibilities in a love relation. One lover might be active while the other is receptive, or vice versa. Or, both could be active at the same time, or both could be receptive at the same time.
Also, this polarity is in both the physical approach and also in one's subjective experience. In other words, each lover can be physically either active or receptive, but also either active or receptive in one's subjective experience – in one's attitude or in how one feels to be in the love experience. So, the active and receptive polarity has these two dimensions, physical and subjective.
One's polarity might be the same in both dimensions, but maybe not. For example, one could be quite active in physical movement, yet simultaneously feel receptive in relation to the other. Reversely, one could be in a physical receptive position, while simultaneously experience being active in the loving or having an active attitude in the love experience. Thus, in any love ritual, each partner has both a physical way of loving, as well as their subjective experience of the loving which could be either an active or receptive feeling, or sometimes a blend.
Thus, one's subjective experience is of a different kind from one's physical experience, though these are interactive. Each person has their own subjective experience in the love ritual, which includes their emotional experience and attitude, not merely their physical experience. One's subjective experience is 'how one feels to be' in the love ritual, including one's love attitude, perspective, or approach. It's an experience of feeling either active or receptive in one's attitude or approach to love; like for example, if one is feeling as either actively giving or receptively receiving in the love experience.
Self wholeness in the love ritual can be understood as the Mandala of Love; the mandala of all our self-potential, all we can be. The Mandala of Love contains four aspects, four great qualities, four great powers, which are the four goddesses.
Each goddess is a different attitude and approach to love, or figuratively known as the four positions of love. Each approaches and experiences the lover and the love ritual in a particular way, and from particular perspective, which is different from the others. Each goddess has a different unique perspective, which depends on the direction from which she is coming from and the related element of that direction.
Durga in the north is related to the element of fire, with her strong will and self-determination. Parvati in the south is related to the element of earth, with her earthy caring about the well-being of everyone. Saraswati in the east is related to the element of air, because of her imaginative, visionary, and creative mind. Lakshmi in the west is related to the element of water, with her watery delicious sexual beauty.
The Great Mandala includes the fullness of all our spiritual potentials. It includes all the spiritual qualities of the Divine, Who's essence is Love. All potential self-qualities are aspects of the Divine, which is all-comprehensive and includes all polarities, all gods and goddesses. All goddesses come from the One. Yet the Divine One is beyond any gender distinction of being goddess or god. We are all in and from the One Self, the Divine, the Source of everything. There is always more of the Self, than we can know. Neither do we know all of our own potential qualities. And neither do we know all the potential divine qualities of our lover. Each of us is a mystery unfolding, all within the unfolding Great Mystery, the Mandala of Being.
Part 1 - Four Love Goddesses
Introduction
Many goddesses within One Goddess
Major Goddesses
Qualities relevant to love
Four Love Goddesses
Active and receptive approaches
Subjective experience
Parvati
Durga
Lakshmi
Different kinds of beauty
Saraswati
Playfulness and exploration
Love-flow
Four kinds of love experience
Love and sex
Goddess qualities in men
Synthesis and balance
The Great Mandala
Unity in polarity
Polarity in oneself
Our conscious and unconscious