There must be a death to the ego self;
there must be a transformation in which there is a letting go of all false values, of all the things that the egotistical nature mistakenly clings to. In the burial ground of the heart, Kali's enlightened devotees see beyond literal death to the death of values rooted in fear. When they come to accept death as a necessary step in their transformation, then Kali can dance her dance of perpetual becoming. Once her cycles are accepted, those who love her are free of the fear of death, free of their own vulnerability, free to live her mystery. The mystery of Kali is that she is perpetually detroying and, at the same time creating- destroying in order to create, creating in order to destroy, death in the service of life, life in the service of death.
Kali is time, immanence, ceaseless becoming, nature as process. As ceaseless motion that has no purpose other than its own activity, Kali is as indifferent to the demands of the ego as she is to the instinct to survive. The opposites of life and death, love and hate, humility and pride, poverty and riches, mercy and revenge, justice and tyranny, mean nothing to her, because with her there is no polarity. For Kali, all experience is one- life as well as death. Those who can accept her cycle-life and death-are no longer vulnerable.
They are fearless.
Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson, Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness.
