What Is Shakti?

The first time I ever heard the word Shakti used, it was in relation to sex and sexual energy. That was almost 7 years ago, when I'd just moved to the West Coast; still a newbie and naive to West Coast understandings & lingo. I was inspired to write this essay because I was disturbed by the definition for Shakti on UrbanDictionary.com, which reads: "Sexual energy. Shakti is a word new age hippies use because they're too politically correct to just say they're horny. As in, When I look at you with your dreadlocks and smell your patchouli I feel Shakti energy." This understanding of Shakti is a common misunderstanding that seems to be pervasive in our modern American culture, and I would like to throw in my two cents on the subject, because in my personal experience; Shakti is not Sexual Energy.So, what is Shakti? First, I would like to speak from my experience and then from classical Indian definitions and descriptions. I know when I am shaktified - as the feeling of being Shaktified is a decidedly different state than that of regular, daily life - the life of the mundane; being filled with Shakti is the most prized, most special state to be in. When I am filled with Shakti - for me it is a spiritual, ecstatic energy that moves through my whole body - a spiritual, mystical power that liberates me and allows me to become an embodiment of the Divine Feminine and the frequency of the Goddess. This most often happens in relationship to music; chanting, drumming, rhythms, dancing.My first experiences of Shakti energy predated my ever hearing the word Shakti. As a mystic, I was following the initiatory path of mystical ecstasy through chanting, and was repeatedly being consumed by powerful Shakti energy as I chanted. It became a regular phenomenon of going into intense, ecstatic trance states through chanting and receiving immense waves of Shakti energy through my body as I chanted. The direct transmission of Shakti Energy itself taught me everything about spirituality, enlightenment, the Divine Feminine, Tantra, Kundalini, how to move energy through the body, psychic abilities, etc.However, most of the women that I know who I believe have experientially tapped into their Shakti energy, and are embodiments of the frequency of the Divine Feminine, are all - for the most part sex-positive and have liberated themselves through the union of their sexual energy and the spiritual shakti energy. In fact, many of these Shaktified women that I know are among the most sexually liberated women I've ever met. To my eyes, Shakti is like the deep well that feeds and sustains the life force of women who are Shaktified; it is the spiritual well of essence, vitality and inspiration from which they draw their creativity, their life path, the vision of their career and work; their soul purpose. Most of the women I know who are Shaktified are among the most cutting edge visionary women I've ever met. When a Shaktified woman loses connection with their Shakti, and they aren't able to regularly or consistently raise the energy necessary to sip upon the visionary essence energy of Shakti, then they are in drought and depleted - not in their power. Having recently gone through a severe phase of this, I can say with most certainty that having a regular spiritual practice of any kind is necessary to maintaining the devotion to the energy of Shaktified life force itself. Otherwise, a Shakti embodied woman will be alive but feeling energetically drained and dead inside; because the well of life force is not flowing. Spiritual energy needs to flow through; and if one is giving too much shakti to others and depleting ones well because many, many people want to drink from the well of Shakti energy, especially men, then one will feel disconnected from life itself.Also, in my experience - it is crucial not only for a woman to maintain consistency with a regular spiritual practice, simply to maintain devotion to the life force essence of Shakti, but it is even more so important to tap regularly into the expansive state of joyful ecstasy. Because it is in those wild, liberated states of ecstasy that we receive the biggest amounts of self-healing and clearing of stagnancy and the biggest dose of shakti energy all in one wild, liberated dose. From a traditional Indian perspective, Shakti literally means power, so the phrase "Shakti Power" is redundant, and to be Shaktified is to be empowered. It is considered the creative power of the Divine Feminine, the Great Mother. This is not an abstract, esoteric concept devoid of reality. This is an authentic power that is to be experienced and known through the energy moving through the person embodying it. And it is absolutely crucial that we devote ourselves to cultivating this power with consistency and with humble devotion; otherwise it can be ripped away from us if misused. And a Shakti woman will never know happiness if life force and Shakti power have been taken away. Thus, on the path of embodying the Mystic Shakti energy and the Divine Feminine frequency, we must be in humble obedience and service to the Life Force of the Divine Feminine Shakti itself - because it is our teacher, our healer, our mystic sage - we are simply embodiments of its power. It bestows us with beauty, abundance and power only when we are in humble devotion to being in service to Shakti.Several years ago, when I was in an Ayahuasca ceremony in Peru, I received one of my Shakti initiations. I was laying on my mat, having just received a new heart made of a diamond from an Angel, and was feeling as though I was levitating slightly above my body. The otherworldly, visionary energy of the Ayahuasca was beginning to overwhelm me, so I prayed fervently for angelic assistance. Immediately, a series of Divine Feminine beings hovered above me, each one shapeshifting form; from one woman to the next to the next. The woman that hovered above me was shaking and dancing wildly; her hips were undulating as though she were bellydancing and on fire - and she took form from every Indigenous tribal culture on the planet. First she was from India, then Siberia, then she was from Bali, then Mexico, and Guatemala, then she was from Panama, then Peru, then North American Plains, then she was from Africa, then Egypt. Her outfits, her tribal jewlery, her skin and bone structure, her makeup and hairstyles shapeshifted every time she changed to a different culture. Every time her hips shook, a wave or a pulsation of shakti energy was sent from her astral body into my physical body, sending me into extremely intense states of bliss as I watched her shake her hips and shapeshift cultural forms. It was a most exquisite initiation; to realize that the Divine Feminine power of Shakti has been present in every single global culture in different forms, and it is present even now in our Modern American culture - to bring healing, balance, and Divine Feminine Initiation to those that are ready.I had an experience a year ago, when in a shaktified state of ecstatic dancing at Jai Ganesh, a mystical New Years Eve ritual in Portland, I received a transmission that one of the projects of my life's work is to awaken Shakti in a thousand women. As I believe that it is crucial that women receive an initiation into their Shakti power in order to become an embodiment of the Divine Feminine frequency, and that I believe the Feminine must en masse begin to re-embody the Divine Feminine in order to bring energetic balance back to the world. We shaktified women have a lot of work to do to clear the way for other women, who haven't been quite so ready or enthusiastic to step into Shakti; because thousands of years of repression of the body and sexuality and women's shakti power in Western society have left women deeply energetically traumatized and suppressed. It weighs on the psyche of all women to one level or another. For a woman to come into her own Divine Power and to be moved by it, and to fearlessly follow the heart of the Divine Mother is the goal of this path. And the signs are present that this is the time for this awakening to occur, en masse; now and the times to come. I see many positive signs in our current society, but highest among them is that now there are so many fearless, independent, smart, authentic, liberated, creative, grounded women. And there are already many women who are shaktified and amplifying the levels of Divine Feminine energy in our current society, and many more that are right on the precipice of surrendering to the transformative power inherent within the awakened Feminine power.