I'm having a hard time understanding how the same Shakti that brings prosperity is also the one that brings poverty, sorrow and quarrels. Is Dhumavati really inauspicious? Why is her chariot horseless and going nowhere, if she is Shakti? Has understanding her form helped any of you to understand the other mahavidyas better?
Lots of reflections in a short post! But I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts.
I'm final year undergrad, I think I've failed one of my core modules, so I will have to complete the required resits in August and can't graduate this summer as expected. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement, particularly as I failed due to ill health. Has anyone else been in this situation before? How did you handle it? All my friends are texting me saying you must be so glad to be graduating this summer and I feel so sad every time I have to tell them that I don't think I will be. I know everyone's path is unique and it's not a problem in itself unless I make it one, but I can't help feeling sad about not being able to celebrate with the rest of my cohort.
For a long time now, I've had sexual fantasies about situations and behaviours that would be immoral and illegal to act out on. I don't want the fantasies to become reality, but I'm scared. I need help. I fear I'm a lost cause, but I don't want to be. I've seen countless therapists, things have never got better. I need hope, I need answers. I've thought about killing myself several times, but I just want to live responsibly and humbly like everyone else. I'm scared of mental breakdown. I never used to be like this. I need hope.
When I was in college, I had severe OCD. It ruined my relationship with all my friends and acquaintances. That was years ago. I left that environment years ago. But it still causes me so much pain, I panic every day, I feel anxious, I have chronically broken sleep. I've not been looking after myself at all. I'm finally seeing a hypnotherapist who specialises in trauma resolution. I'm scared it won't be enough to help me, because of how bad I've let things get. I often feel suicidal and want to die, but I'm equally scared of dying and what it might feel like. I guess my question is: does it get better? Can things really get better? Nobody in my life seems to understand how bad I feel.
I've (M23) noticed that I've started overeating to cope with chronic anxiety, plus OCD. When I'm eating I don't worry about anything, but I don't even enjoy or want what I'm eating. It feels like I'm just doing it because I know when I'm eating I don't feel so bad.
I was coping better before and would get myself an occasional sweet treat to boost my mood, but then it became one a day, then two or three a day, and now I feel like I can't stop with my overeating because I need it to distract myself from my poor mood.
People around me are telling me to just not have sweet foods in the house, as a sort of deterrent, but when I'm stressed and struggling mentally the urge to go and buy more is too strong to resist.
I feel scared and uncertain and I don't know whether I need to seek support specifically for this eating/to know whether it technically meets the diagnostic criteria for BED, or whether it's enough to focus on getting better from the OCD and other issues which seem to be driving it.
I just want to know how you as shaktas keep faith in difficult (and good) times. I keep on having the thought that there's so many thousands of forms of the Goddess with their own iconographies and details, is it just too good to be true? Didn't the Romans and Greeks also have many Goddesses? If we say they don't exist why would Adi Shakti? Are all these forms projections of human uncertainty, a deification of human experiences of life, however up and down they may be? Is the question of existence vs non-existence a futile one?
Please be compassionate in your replies, I'm writing this from a place of spiritual uncertainty and curiosity and not to be critical for the sake of it.
I know its usage is optional and only following a few specific verbs and constructions (like éviter, craindre, empêcher, avant que, à moins que and so on), but I'm wondering if native speakers would be surprised by its usage in an everyday spoken register, versus written French or like a formal speech where it undoubtedly makes the sentence sound more elegant.
This bhajan from the vaishno Devi Bhawan is just so beautiful, I felt a longing to share it with you all
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=CXOg6l7Qy\_g&si=AvQO-E0Sa\_jAy1JB
Indeed, is it not by her Shakti that I write this very post?
I recently learnt some idiomatic expressions to use in my French oral exam but I was talking with a native speaker who told me they sound really outdated. I think I knew they were old expressions but thought it'd still be okay to use them in a registre soutenu without sounding pretentious. But I'm having second thoughts now, as some of them are indicated as 'littéraire' when I look them up.
Sans bourse délier pour dire gratuitement
Sans coup férir pour dire sans lutte
Fourbir ses armes pour dire préparer à une guerre ou au sens figuré un combat politique ou autre.
Trancher le nœud gordien (and similar idioms drawing on Greek mythology - like de Charybde en Scylla, un rocher de Sisyphe)
Is it okay to chant the 'om jayanti mangala Kali bhadrakali kapalini' in a spirit of bhakti?
Je me demande si l'on doit écrire XXe ou XXè ou même XXème siècle. J'ai l'impression d'avoir vu toutes ces variations mais je ne sais pas laquelle est la plus correcte !
Peut-on aussi écrire les siècles en chiffres ex. 20e au lieu d'utiliser les chiffres romains ?