I am no stranger to the emotion of fear. Sometimes life events would rise to unearth energetic residues within me, and then sometimes I resist what life is presenting and suffer even more. Sometimes, all that is there to do is see what’s going on under the hood. In observing today about what was showing up for me, I thought to share a reflection from the Skanda Purana, one of the Mahāpurāṇas. If you’re like me a couple of years ago, your question would have been ‘what the heck is that?’

You see, Hindu imagery used to lowkey terrify me. I mean, a blue woman with a necklace of skulls? Or a creature with a man’s body, an elephant’s head, and way too many hands? Don’t even get me started on the monkey-faced warriors or the pale figures draped in heavy flower garlands. It wasn’t just Hindu iconography. Believe it or not, even the illustrations in the Jehovah’s Witness My Book of Bible Stories— as polished and colorful as they were, also made me uneasy. Now that I think about it, Greek mythic images didn’t seem to faze me as much. Who knows why? I suspet it’s because we tend to carry those greek stories with a secular lens; making them feel safer with the triumphant character and strength and vigor of figures like Zeus. Or let’s be honest, maybe I was more comfortable because these were just Western mythic stories.

The last three years or so have allowed me to revel in the wisdom of these traditions as opposed to putting them far at arms length. As my practice has deepened, I’ve realized that objects, concepts, and ideas aren’t as solid, objective and true as I once thought. The rigid form that I used to hold of them no longer holds like before. Instead, everything seen and perceived is obvious to me to be bendable. Like Play-Doh, things have become something to be held, molded, sculpted, and put down just for the fun of it.Hindu tradition, like any tradition of old, is obviously baked in myth. It turns out the gods and symbols aren’t necessarily meant to be concrete, objective, literal figures, but representations of our earthly energetic experiences. When we look at mythology this way, the stories give the mind something to suck on like a lollipop…keeping the inner child happy and occupied. And for the practitioner, the seeker, they provide a way to make sense of experiences that simply aren’t grounded in matter. No experience, it turns out is what it looks like. Now, if you were to see your experience from the lens of archetypes and stories, they will definitely take shape.

And so today, for this post, I would love to introduce a story from the Mahāpurāṇas. The story of Skanda Purana. If you don’t already know, the Mahāpurāṇas are a massive ‘spiritual-biographical’ collection of ancient Hindu texts that mix mythology, theology, geography, moral teachings and devotional stories. The story of Skanda(or also called Kartikeya) is one of the 18 major puranas in this Mahāpurāṇas which exploits the teachings of Shiva(who for anyone coming from the Christian thought carries the attributes and conception of the Abrahamic God).

Okay, so stay with me here for a second and then we will go into the contemplative reflections of this story in relation with fear as I am turning this into. So, in the text, the demon Tarakasura had become so unstoppable. Part of the reasons was he was allowed to cause havoc and perform severe austerities using the advantage he had from a ‘loop hole’ in his right to existence. Now, if you are coming from the Christian or Western school of thought, see this figure the way you’d see the mythical Satan figure. The unfortunate loophole in getting rid of him was that he could only be killed by the son of Shiva. Tarakasura, was the perfect trouble maker. This was like a Loki(if you turn to Greek mythology) Why was he the perfect trouble maker? Did you ask why? Well, it was because Shiva was so deep in meditation. He was gone into meditative absorption for years, centuries, etc. Shiva was not interested in marriage, sex and children. In this ascetic withdrawal, he seemed to be outside the world and all its affairs. So this was perfect for Taraka! It meant for him, ‘No son of Shiva, no death for me’. So he terrorized the worlds and none of the gods could stop him. Until they also realized the loophole. The only way they were going to restore balance was to actually find a way for Shiva to have this son.

They had to awaken Shiva from austerity and unite him with Parvati, Shiva’s consort. Well, Parvati is not a ‘wife’ in the traditional sense. Converting our mythic image to what she represents energetically, she’s the other side of divine polarity. She represents energy, manifestation, vitality, the movement of life, the impulse toward connection, the play of form and all the things you could associate with the Holy Spirit(if you’re coming from the Christain faith tradition). In the sense of oneness, you could see Shiva as stillness and Parvati as the creative power that moves from that stillness. Or if you see Shiva as the sky, Parvati is the weather. If Shiva is the silent witness, Parvati si the dance of experience. Get the point?

So the gods and the universe conspired to bring Shiva and Parvati together. Their union, the union of both poles(in Taoism, see it as the yin and yang coming together) beocmes the joining of pure consciousness with creative energy. This becomes clarity that moves. This becomes an explosive spark. Shiva’s seed became six sparks. The sparks landed on a lake and six celestial mothers nurtured each spark into children. Parvati arrived, saw the six children and then embraced them. In her embrace, they merged into one being with six heads.

Now, in several classical interpretations across Tamil, Sanskrit and tantric traditions there is one consistent thread to what the six heads represent. Each head sees a different angle of reality. You see, our human vision in one-directional while divine clarity is multi-directional. The one head sees outward. It is the awareness of the world, appearances, the concrete facts of experience. The second sees inward. It is awareness of what I would describe as the interior world: the omvements of mind, emotion and identity. The third head sees the back/the past. It is the awareness of the patterns that have shaped us, the causal threads that produced this moment. The fourth head sees the future. It is aware of consequences, trajectories and the possible directions of life. The fifth head sees above, it is the awareness of the larger whole, the transpersonal, the absolute vantage. Lastly, the sixth head is the awareness of the roots, the foundations, the hidden forces under the surface.

When they all come together as Skanda, they become one integrated vision, not fragmented selfhood or splintered attention. They become just one clear seeing, as I often express here. In other words, six heads become one awarness.

So why is this story meaningful?

Remember there was Tarakasura who was this demon that was creating chaos and unrest. The solution to the problem was his annihilation by the son of Shiva, who was now Kartikeya/Skanda, the 6 headed man.

So Kartikeya goes to battle. He’s young, fiery, overflowing with focus. But at one point, in battle together with the devas(or the other gods), they all panic. The battle looks hopeless and they start to flee. Kartikeya does something important! He stops running. He turns towared the fight, picks up the spear and pierces through. In many traditons this piercing through is the integration of all six heads.

Now what’s the meaningfulness and relevance of this to our situations? It seems when we stop running from discomfort, picking up the spear of clarity and face what stands before us, then we are transformed. Oh, remember the mythic story of Moses? When he stood in front of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army racing behind, almost catching up. He prayed to God! God please save us? What was God’s response? Why are you praying to me? Yes, that’s what Exodus literally says happened. God then says “What do you have in your hands???”

The spear of clarity is what we often need. We only have to pick it up and face that which stands before us. In the story each head represents a part of the mind that usually gets scared and overwhelmed. When they merge, it becomes like the fire of Shiva and Pravati.

* One part no longer hides from the world

* One part no longer hides from the self

* One part no longer clings to the past

* One part no longer imagines the future in fear

* One part no longer forgets the divine vantage.

* One part no longer forgets the ground.

When these six stop being fragmented, the battle is no longer a threat but what is simple here. It becomes total integral seeing. The Desert Fathers, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, they all talked about the single eye. That’s the inner clarity here. Even Meister Eckhart says ‘what you turn away from stays with you’. Kartikeya shows the same logic. When the mind stops scattering, courage rises.

In this mythical story, we can equate Shiva as the ground of being and Parvati the movement of grace in life. The devas are the swirl of fears, confusion, and the sense of losing control that rise up in us when life feels overwhelming. Their plea for help mirrors what happens inside when our own inner world cries out for steadiness. And what is born from that plea? What emerges is Kartikeya, the one who looks in all six directions without flinching. The one who stops running. The one who picks up the spear of clarity. The story says describes this so simply and so fiercely all at the same time. Fear does not dissolve because we pray harder.Fear dissolves when the scattered parts of seeing stop pulling away from each other.

The moment Kartikeya turns back toward the battle and lifts the spear is the exact moment Moses hears, “What do you have in your hand?” Both stories point to the same insight. The answer is not elsewhere. The answer is the clarity you already hold but have not picked up. The answer is within. It seems obvious that with the the six directions of seeing folding into one, courage stops being something one has to manufacture with the sign of the cross and pleading the blood of jesus all over the place. It becomes what remains when nothing in us runs.

Edit: I didn’t mention that Kartikeya rode a peacock. I wish I could talk more about that!

Integration prompts

I created these 6 prompts from this reflection to ask when the six ways of seeing feel scattered, perhaps these could bring them back together through clear seeing!

• What part of me is running, and what happens if I stop with it for one breath?• What is the spear of clarity in my hand right now?• What becomes simple when I stop arguing with the moment?• What is fear protecting, and can I thank it before I move forward?• What action arises when I look in all directions at once?• What becomes obvious when I stop hiding from the world and stop hiding from myself?

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