September 29, 2020

The activity of Consciousness is spanda, defined as pulsation or more specifically as vibration of Consciousness. This is the inherent rhythm in the world; the movement shifting from one state to another and back again. The pulsation is described most often as being between states that we describe as expansive, blossoming, favourable or arising and ones we say are contractive, withering, unfavourable or dissolving. This is the constantly shifting vibration that moves the dance in the Shiva Nataraja teaching.

The Sanskrit word, spanda, derives from the root, spadi, which means to “move a little.” This movement is one of outward, radiating expansion and of inward withdrawing absorption / contraction. This dynamism is at the expression of the potency of the Divine. Abinavagupta, a central Tantrik master, called this pulsation the “ecstasy of the Divine.”

In the English language, pulsation derives from pulse, the number of heartbeats in a given minute. This is the enlivening vibration that creates life in the way of form (wave). Poetically, we can describe this as the sacred tremor of the heart. This tremor, when attuned to, is the thrill of joy, of fear, of aliveness that we invite to pervade all moments. It becomes concretized in the feeling of the heartbeat in the chest, the underlying beat of aliveness to which we are asked to return to time and again. This is the beat that anchors us in our embodiment.

As vibration, this activity creates sound and silence. Internally, sounds are the thoughts and feelings that arise and naturally subside. All of these are states of being to be experienced without judgements and labels. Our mental storylines (recognized and unconscious), our cultural - social conditioning and our familial patterns potentially interfere with the spontaneous arising and subsiding. Freeing ourselves from these restrictions allow the pulsation of Consciousness to move at Her pace. To do this, we practice being with the sensations and vibrations without naming and identifying ourselves with the sensations.

Expansion and contraction are relative depending on our orientation. For example, sleeping can be seen as an act of contraction as we move inward. Waking, then, is the freely arising opposite, expansion. However, if the dream state is rich and vibrant, sleeping might be experienced as expansive and waking as the inevitable contraction into the less alive world. This is an example of how it is unnecessary to identify aspects of the pulsation but rather to move with them, riding the inward current when present and the outward current with equal ease. We return then to the remembering that all changes. That with each moment of expansion or creation, there is a required moment of contraction / dissolution and vice versa.

In the cycle of life and death, our birth is considered a contraction into form by the Tantric sages. We constrict into form and then the desire to know again our expansive state moves us toward spiritual practice. Perhaps we come to this understanding while in our embodied state or perhaps we find the expansion only at that final pulse that is

the exhale at death. Either way, this inherent reverberation draws us both inward to the formless space within and outward to the landscape of sensual textures, colours and forms.