The Divine Mother awakens our love and compassion from our hearts and souls. The mother and child relationship is the ideal that the devotee aspires to achieve with the Lord. Notwithstanding almost 2000 years of patriarchy and "Heavenly father" dogma permeating the Western/Christian world, it is easy to understand how our emotions and feelings are evoked when the divine is viewed as a mother. Kali takes away our darkness – our kala. She takes away the darkness from everyone who strives for perfection by performing the spiritual disciplines of purifying austerities.
“Kala” also means time, and Kali means the One Who is Beyond Time.
In the form of Prakriti, Mother Nature, Kali dances on the field of consciousness – depicted as the broad chest of Lord Shiva. She dances with wild and unselfconscious abandon. She is Mukti, the primal energy of spiritual freedom.
When one can reside within, without identification or attachment to the ever-changing external influences, then the Supreme Truth can be realized. This is the path that Mother Kali shows us.
By spreading Her darkness over worldly desire, Kali makes seekers totally oblivious to the transient external elements. They then become totally contained the Self.
To worship Mother Kali, we perform Her puja, sing Her names, recite Her mantras, and remember Her in both times of ease and in times of difficulties
Kali Mata is the Energy of Wisdom (jnana shakti), and by Her Grace all knowledge is conceived, and all wisdom is intuited. With Her wisdom, Kali takes away the darkness of the external world. Then She bestows the True Light of the inner world. Her love and her grace are beyond what words can describe.
Kali is our Mother, and the Mother of all the universes. With Her love we become unattached, and free from action and reaction – we become a silent witness resting in universal delight.
As the Divine Mother, Durga is full of love, warmth, compassion, guidance and protection for all of us - her children! She rides a tiger or lion and carries an assortment of weapons to symbolize her power and strength, and has eight arms, symbolic of the 8 limbs (ashtanga) of Yoga: yama (restraints), niyama (observances), asana (postures), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), samadhi (transcendental state or nirvana).
