It’s funny what you remember, when art reflects reality.

After watching Elizabeth Gilbert so beautifully about transformation, creativity and change I found myself watching Eat, Pray, Love.  Then I found myself pondering on the scene in which the characters were wandering through the Augusteum, in Rome.   The character played by Julia Roberts, reflects on the ruin around her and the resilience that the Augusteum has shown, to be still standing tall despite many centuries of change.  It had taken on many roles; each time it was reinvented, ensured its survival just a little longer and suggests that perhaps “ruin is a gift” and a “gift to be cherished”.

When All Seems Lost

Many times in our lives, when things just seem to get the best of us, we can sometimes feel like Augusteum and find it hard to believe that the sun will ever shine again and yet it does.  We survive many things in our lives whether it’s illness, relationship disappointment, marriage or business breakdown, redundancy, being passed over for that job, our families or maybe even corporate life.

Sometimes these experiences leave you shattered.  You find yourself lying on the floor, curled up in bed not wanting to move or maybe even putting on a brave face for those around you, all the while wondering, like the Augusteum, what change do you need to make so that you can breathe again then thrive again.  What is it that will get you up and moving again?

 It’s at times like this that I look to the Goddesses of ancient mythology and I came across one that I wanted to share with you.  I found her at a time of profound change in my own life;  a time when I was looking for inspiration to help me make the changes I needed to so that I could live again rather than just survive.

Akhilandeshvari The “Never Not Broken” Goddess Shows You The Way

I love the Goddesses because they are soft, but yet stand in their own power.  They achieve great things by being exactly who they are and standing in their own truth – in essence by being authentic.  They use their own unique power, never force, to thrive.

The goddess I came across when I needed her was Akhilandeshvari.  I love her because her name literally means never not broken or the always broken goddess.   What she teaches is that when you are feeling at your most helpless or most broken  is when you have your most powerful opportunity for change.  In essence, she sees “ruin as a gift and a gift to be cherished”.

 

How To Turn Challenges To Advantages

She teaches that ruin is not about weakness, but it’s about power, opportunity and change.  In that moment when you seem at your most helpless, is when you have your greatest opportunity to cast aside those patterns, behaviours and challenges that no longer serve you and this enables you to create something new.

Her caution to you is that her power comes from never being limited by being whole but rather from always being slightly broken and vulnerable.  Being broken gives her the power of creation over and over again rather than being limited by wholeness.

When you understand that creation comes from vulnerability, you start to see the opportunity of ruin rather than the weakness of it.  You have the opportunity to create a new future that is free of the things that defined you in the past.

So how does she do it?.  How does she harness her power in her most vulnerable moment?

Akhilandeshvari shows her power by calling on her ride – the crocodile.  What a choice for her!

Firstly, the crocodile symbolizes fear, strength, bravery, resilience and creation.   In her case, she chooses not to reject or be controlled by her fear, but rather stands on it and bravely rides its strength and hers towards creating something new.

Secondly, the crocodile also goes deep and then resurfaces.  The crocodile could easily use force to crush its prey but rather it uses its power to hunt by the river bank, drag its prey into the water, spins it wildly to disorientate it, then buries it deep in the riverbed and resurfaces.

Seeing Vulnerability in the Birthplace of Creation

Akhilandeshvari teaches that your disorientation, your confusion and your vulnerability is the birthplace of creation.  Your vulnerability is a positive force that you too can ride.  It is there so that you can harness your strength, bravery and resilience and use it to ride toward creating the future you desire.  A future that is free of the pain, sadness and confusion of the past.  This is true beauty and true authenticity.

She teaches you to always be a little bit broken so that creation is possible.  This will help you avoid falling back into the patterns and behaviours of the past that caused you to shatter in the first place.

Just like an Augusteum, each time it was resurrected it took on a new life of its own.  But its beauty was not in being taped back together or mended.  Its beauty now comes from being broken so that something new and unique was possible – renewal.  Each time it was something beautiful in its own right, that wouldn’t have been possible unless it was broken to begin with.

The Path To Authenticity And Your True Self

Remember the lessons Akhilandeshvari teaches you.  Strive to be always breaking apart and breaking yourself free of old patterns and behaviours.  Your true beauty, uniqueness and authenticity comes from always being a little bit broken and seeing the possibility of creation.  Your vulnerability and authenticity is the source of your true power.  Harness it and move towards the creation of sometimes new, unique, but ready to be broken apart again.  This is truly an amazing power and one to always remember you have available to you.

Like this? Please share it and help a few more people learn a little more about how to reclaim their life and power.

Love Gai