Maha Navaratri: The Inner Battle and the Grace of the Divine Mother

Understanding the Battle Within

We're trying to surrender ourselves to the all-accomplishing power, force, Consciousness, Grace, and Divinity that is the Divine Mother, that is Durga Ma. We're asking for that to overcome us.

I've seen it a lot during these festivals, especially on the tenth day when Ravana is burned. There's sometimes this attitude of, "Yeah, kill the evildoer! Eliminate the bad person! Get the toxic person out of your life forever!"

We're not trying to kill anyone. We're trying to understand our own power corruption system that's within us so we can set it right and get it aligned with higher Divine principles.

It's going to the depths of this dualistic fight that is Mahishasura.

We have these parts within us that usually never show up in such a horrible way. But even if you have a spark of that, a speck of it, or a little spot of darkness, it still connects to the great Mahishasura, the great ego, the aspect that is covering the way things really are, the Supreme Truth.

It's a really beautiful way of looking at your process.

These stories, if they don't relate to you, are just imagination gone wild, right? Even if you want to talk about the real principles out there, if you don't apply them, then what's the point of principles? If you don't know how they fit with you and how you can make some serious change, then what's the point of the story? What's the point of the holiday, the holy day?

A spiritual aspirant is asking the deep questions because we have a yearning, an interest to find out how we're wired and to fix the malformed wiring. We have a deep interest in overcoming our darkness, in turning it to light.

Who Is Fighting Your Battle?

When you're celebrating Navaratri, the nights of this fight, think about when you're in your deepest, most painful part. You feel like you're in the dark, you're in the shadows, you lack light, you lack awareness. You can't see things straight. It's all foggy and fuzzy and unclear, and you don't know what to do.

And this is you. This is your fight.

The question now is, who have you let fight your Mahishasura? Has it been the Divine, or has it just been another part of your ego that's trying to fight?

In this ever-present tumultuous time, you as a separate ego, having goals of your own, are fighting this other part that has goals of its own.

It's good that you're applying some positive power, but why not summon the Divine? Why not summon Durga Ma? Why don't we naturally extend to that power, Grace, and presence and say, "Durga Ma, only You can help me. Please help me with this. I don't even know how deep the power struggle runs."

Because you don't know, usually, until you get something taken away from you or you're forced into a corner. It could be a financial corner, an emotional corner, a mental corner, a life corner, a relational corner. There are so many corners in our life.

You're put in an uncomfortable situation where you feel unsafe and uncomfortable, and you flip out. You start to scheme and design how you can get it to go the way that you think is right, or how you want it to be.

And that's what all of our egos do. They're built that way.

Some are more subdued, more relaxed, and healed, and they don't fight as much because they're kind of like, "It's all Durga Ma. What's the point of fighting?"

When you're presented with someone who's talking about Unity, the dualistic part might battle and fight. Or you might think it's great, but if you don't ask the question, Mahishasura is not threatened.

When you ask your own questions, "Why don't I really want to see all this as One and experience myself as all of this?" then you're asking those questions that hit Mahishasura.

That's where you start realizing, "Oh wow, there's a lot of pain, fear, struggle, and discomfort that's stuck in there, and I have to overcome this stuff."

And that's your fight. That's your battle.

Every Day of Your Path Is Navaratri

Even though we look at Navaratri as a nine-night celebration, and then the tenth day as the celebration of overcoming the darkness, technically every day of your path is Navaratri.

You are in it forever until you're not in it.

So you have to make sure that who's fighting the fight for you is the right position and power, so to speak.

You need to analyze what your relationship is with the Divine and ask yourself, "How often do you call to the Divine? Do you even feel like you're worthy enough to contact the Divine?"

You're worthy enough. As soon as you decide in that moment that you want it to be for the good, it doesn't matter what your past is. It doesn't matter what you've ever done. It can be overcome in the moment. The nine nights of struggle can symbolize countless lifetimes. Let's just pretend it's 900 trillion lifetimes. There's no number to your lifetimes, but just imagine. At the end of the day, you're in the night. You're in the delusion, the fog, the darkness, and you're trying to overcome your own delusion that you're a separate character, separate from the rest of the stuff.

You think you've got to fight and struggle and get all the things to go your way—jobs, careers, hobbies, relationships, finances, comfort, houses, vacations—all the things that you think you've got to plan to make it your way in order to find that happiness.

But you never transcend those sensations. You become tied to them, attached. You're not just the enjoyer of the positive, but also the person who's afflicted when they're taken away.

So even when you're happy, you're tormented underneath. It's not a true happiness.

As Svamiji says, your happiness is the spark of the Divine. But why not go for the whole thing that made the spark?

So this way of looking at our many, many lifetimes brings us to the question:

Who will you let win? Will it be Durga Ma within you, or is Mahishasura going to go for another round?

Are you going to have a successful tenth day, where light and goodness and Divinity overcome the darkness? Or is the darkness going to keep going?

Invoking the All-Accomplishing Grace

We want to focus on this all-accomplishing force and Grace that can lead the way. It's not about just you fighting the fight.

Your good part is like the appeal of all the people who are being run out by Mahishasura. All the demon forces are taking over, and all the good souls are like, "Please help! Please help!"

So your good part is making the appeal to Durga Ma.

But the question is, how strong is your appeal? How much are you really connecting and praying? How urgent is this matter to you?

For many spiritual seekers, what they find when they really do hard questioning is that they're not treating this like it's very urgent. They treat it like, "Oh, it'll happen whenever it happens. It's fine."

The topic of your life should be Enlightenment, so to speak. You don't have to use that term. Total surrender, Grace, recognizing your True Self, whatever your terminology is.

Priorities. That's what speeds up or slows down your path.

Priorities in the world are very nice and responsible, but if they're done without the remembrance of the Divine, without truly trying to remember how it's all of this, then you're missing something.

If you can't take the Brahman route, where all of this is the Divine, then try to find at least the substratum. Try to go deeper to understand how the Divinity is always there, even if the play of life is always strange looking and feeling.

Learning to See Unity

If a saint says, "All of this is God," you have to believe it, and then your mind is going to rebel. And the work is fighting your rebelling mind.

That's Mahishasura.

Durga Ma says, "Look, it's all Me."

And Mahishasura says, "Never! I will not surrender. I will not give up. I will not relent. I will win!"

And Durga Ma's attitude is basically, "Look, you can't. It's not going to work."

So when are you going to be done fighting against Unity? Why is it so hard for you to believe that all of this is you?

It's a very different way to engage with yourself on a day-to-day basis.

You can't just tell yourself, "All of this is One. I am One. All of this is the Divine," and expect yourself to believe it.

You actually have to engage and find those resistant parts. If all of this is the Divine, all has come from the Divine, it cannot really be a different substance from the Divine. Even if it's manifest through the principles of Maya to look like Tamas, Rajas, Sattva, to look like different formations and expressions, if it all came from the same Source, it's all still the same.

Even though it's appearing to be different, it must still be the same.

So having that constant inquiry, looking into it, trying to really feel where there's traction, where that part clicks—those are the experiential changes and shifts of your consciousness, your being.

When you're not constantly engaging in recognizing that you're more than what you feel you are, you're not allowing yourself to grow to your full potential.

What's Your Endgame?

If you look at it like, "I need to be more than what I am," and to you that equals developing more skill sets, acquiring more information, and getting smarter—to do what?

What's your endgame? What are you trying to accomplish?

Mahishasura! It's like, "Oh, okay. Whoops. Sorry." You either want to know all of this as yourself, or you've got a lot of stuff you want to do in your life and accomplish.

Fine. Why do you want to do these things?

To become happy.

Okay, why don't you think you can be happy without doing those things?

You really have to reconsider what you are.

I know a lot of times we put focus on principles, values, and virtues, and those are important. I'm not at all saying don't focus on that.

If you don't have those qualities, you're really going to have a hard time seeing the Unity of all things.

If I don't express love to a flower, but I say I'm One with the flower, and then I just trample all over it, there's zero respect there. Something's off in me.

You have to live with respect and love and care. It's a very different way of being, a different attitude.

But the question is, are we looking for the true Vedantic teaching, the true state of all of this being One, where all of this is the Divine? Or are we looking for other things?

Just to be me accomplishing more things. Just to be me, a little character, but I'm positive. Just to be me, but I'm doing good for the world.

Are you really trying to break the archetype of your own personal ego?

If you only look at ego as a separate character that does bad things, then you're missing the point of the ego.

The ego is also the separate character that does good things, but without understanding or experience of the Divinity that it is, and that all things are and have come from.

The Victory of the Divine Mother

This path can go either way. It can be very speedy, very fast for you, if you invoke the power of Durga Ma and you really apply.

You really have to want to overcome Mahishasura. But you're also Mahishasura, so you also have to stop fighting Her. The more you fight Her, the longer your path goes. Navaratri might become Ananta Ratri, infinite, endless nights.

We don't want that to happen.

These nights are your own ignorance. They're your own misunderstandings.

It's not an impossible thing to have real experiential consciousness changes, where you become more and more the fabric that you thought you lived in a realm, and you turn out to experience yourself more as that realm, and all the inhabitants and plays.

You could call it realization, and that's fine. It's reverse—instead of you being you becoming, it's more of a letting go of this and realizing you are.

All teachings just say things from different perspectives. All can work.

The point is, is all of this One substance or many?

This is your battle.

And the question is, is tonight going to be your last battle? Tomorrow, will it be your victory of light? Will this be your victory?

You can live in the bright phase of your life.

The highest part of you is Durga Ma. The most truthful part of you is Durga Ma.

And how wonderful is that to hear?