Maha Shivarathri. is on 20 Feb 2012.................An auspicious occasion......................................& here goes the message.
Shivaratri is one of the holiest nights of the year. It is the night dedicated to the worship of Lord Shiva.
Lord Shiva is the one who destroys that which is old and impure, in order to make room for a new creation of that which is pure and divine. Lord Shiva annihilates our egos, our attachments and our ignorance.
Many fear Lord Shiva’s destructive capacity, and yet it is destruction for the purpose of regeneration. Without death, life cannot begin anew. Without the annihilation of old habits, attachments and ego, we cannot progress toward the goal of God realization.
The night of Shivratri is especially auspicious for winning the battle within ourselves – the battle between the Gods and the Demons, between right and wrong, between poison and nectar, between death and immortality. Let us use our puja, our prayers, our meditations on this night to pray for the divine intervention that within ourselves the good might vanquish the evil, that the nectar within us might emerge, rather than poison, that we too may be carried from death to immortality.
If we go to any important Shiva temple we will find a niche on the outer wall of the sanctum sanctorum, exactly behind the spot where the deity is installed. In that niche we can find a representation of the Lingodbhavamoorthi, a form emerging out of a Linga.
We can see neither the top half of the head nor the bottom half of the legs of that form. All the other attributes of Shiva will be found sculptured. We will also find depicted a swan in flight at the top of the Linga and a boar burrowing the earth at the bottom.
According to tradition, Brahma took the form of a swan to find out the crown of Shiva’s head and failed. Similarly, Vishnu took the form of a boar and burrowed deep into the bowels of earth to locate the feet of Shiva and failed.
Thus in Lingodbhavamoorthi we have a unique combination of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, impressing in our minds the Advaitic Tatva that God is One, Full and All Pervasive. Both the aspects of Ishavara with form and without form are thus depicted.
The glorious form of the Lingodbhavamoorthi stands out in all majesty to tell us that out of His formlessness Ishvara emerged in a form to guide the functioning of the Universe. When the static Ishvara decides to assume form, he becomes dynamic and manifests Himself in innumerable forms to fulfill His innumerable functions.
The Lord appears in the form of Lingodbhavamoorthi on Shivaratri to shower his grace on us. It is our duty on that day to fast(subject to one's health conditions,) keep vigil and worship him at midnight at least with one leaf of the Bilva tree.
........................................AND PLEASE LIKE TO KNOW.......................................
Shiva means your very self, the purest Self, your innermost core. Shiva means good or benevolent. The word ratri in Sanskrit means that which relieves you from three types of agony – ethereal, mental and material. At night everything becomes quiet and peaceful. The body gets tired and goes to sleep. ‘Shivaratri’ literally means that night which infuses the Shiva tatva or the transcendental principle to the three instruments: the body, mind and speech.
Shivarathri is a celebration to not only awaken your inner space, but to radiate and express that tremendous potential energy which is inside all of us. To awaken that higher consciousness and live like Shiva! Shiva is that causeless auspicious form, whose inner space is completely awake and is living in Light and radiating this energy.
"AUM NAMASHIVAYA"
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