By: Wahkeena Sitka Huva
In February,
Lady Gaga appeared on
Good Morning America just two days after her legendary entrance at the Grammy's in a space-age egg vessel, where she won three
Grammy awards and performed 'Born This Way' live. In her interview with
Robin Roberts, she talked about
AIDS and 'safe sex' wearing an outfit inspired by condoms. When Roberts asked her about her egg entrance at the Grammy's, Gaga told her she had been in the egg vessel for three days. Roberts asked her, "What did you do in there for three days?" Gaga responded: "I wanted to have a rebirth, and I think the universe needs to have a rebirth. I think we all need to be inside a vessel for three whole days, thinking about how we can love ourselves more, protect ourselves more, live life with more passion, and look not outwards for validation but inwards--look inside of yourself to your spirit and your inner light." Gaga's comments about bringing the gaze inwards, to our spirit and inner light is central to spiritual and yogic philosophy, and in that, I witness Gaga as a spiritual pop star that is expanding her heart and unconditional love to the world. The first time I watched Gaga's interview on Good Morning America, tears spontaneously erupted out of my eyes as I felt the authenticity of her sharing on such an enormous global platform.
Lady Gaga is a visionary pop star icon for the 21st century and the emerging new paradigm. She communes with her fans intimately through Facebook, Twitter and videos with an incredibly open heart, and seems to be saying over and over again that the core of her message is about how to love oneself. Her message to her fans is to inspire them to love themselves more and more fearlessly despite external conditionings that project a message of lack of self worth. Indeed, the chorus of her latest single croons, "I'm beautiful in my way, because God makes no mistakes--I'm on the right track baby,
I was born this way. Don't hide yourself in regret, just love yourself and you're set--I'm on the right track baby, I was born this way." When singing the song to oneself, as a catchy
pop-song is meant to do, the message is a mantra for opening to
self-love. By using the mind-embedding hook of a pop song, she is impregnating every fan with the message that "I am beautiful, God makes no mistakes--I am perfect exactly as I am, I am divinely created, I love myself." What message could be more important in this world where so many struggle with self-acceptance, depression, hopelessness, loss of soul-purpose--triggered by the messages that we receive from the external that limit and subjugate our self-worth? I believe that learning how to totally and fearlessly love oneself is one of the most essential and crucial spiritual lessons each of us comes into this life to learn. So as a pop star sharing this message with literally 30+ million people, I feel that her heart is extending to the mainstream much the way Ammachi extends her heart to her followers. While Ammachi and Lady Gaga wear different robes and sing different songs, their essential message is much the same--extending love, compassion, hugs and inspiring empowerment in others.
One of the main things I get out of Lady Gaga is about how the most crucial step for self-actualization and self-empowerment is about destroying self-imposed blocks to liberation, and one of the things I resonate most with her is that she is fearlessly obliterating her own internal blocks to self-liberation. She has talked candidly and openly about her insecurities growing up in her teens. As a fellow fire-sign sister who never fit in while growing up and always felt exluded and outside the bubble of acceptance in high school, I resonate with her, knowing that full self-knowledge and understanding of one's true self-worth is a hard-won prize that requires patience and maturity into adulthood. I see in Gaga a brilliant woman that has always carried the flame of her power and destiny, and it is only now as an adult and pop-star that she is allowed to come full circle and witness in herself her full creativity unleashed. This creativity which promotes "no prejudice and boundless freedom" is the epitome of mystical liberation; the moksha of divine awakening. It is this awakening and liberation that I witness most profoundly in her newest video, "Born This Way"--and in it I see many mystical metaphors and visionary symbols. I can only imagine that a profound rebirth is occurring within her heart and spirit on a deeply internal and personal level, bringing a new expression and message in the form of her songs.
"Born This Way" marks a radical departure and profound shift from her previous videos. Her first two albums,
The Fame and The Fame Monster, are both filled with songs that really don't speak deeply of Gaga's internal, emotional self. Instead, we see songs that are invoking more superficial subjects: partying, getting trashed, money, being followed by paparazzi, and putting up a "poker face" mask so that people couldn't really read the cards she holds. From Gaga's earlier albums to her latest work, we witness a great shift in her creative content--I feel a transformative rebirth has occurred. What I feel from Gaga is that as she matures, she is becoming more and more fearlessly herself, and in doing so--she is becoming more emotionally and creatively authentic. The lyrics of 'Born This Way' scream an ecstatic liberation into claiming her power. In her recent interview with Google, she states: "'Born This Way' is about saying--This is Who I am--this is who the fuck I am. Trying to say in the most literal and honest way that I can, that when I go to the Monster Ball, I see something so fearless and so special in my fans. But I also see something afraid, something that I was, something that was unsure. And I really encourage people to look into the darkness and look into places that you would not normally look, to find uniqueness and specialness, because that's where the diamonds are hiding."
The video for 'Born This Way' is ripe with visionary symbols; with a celestial uterus, and fallopian tubes in space giving birth to a race of humanity with boundless freedom and no prejudice, as opposed to giving birth to machine guns and evil. In her dance between death and skeletons, as opposed to her dance with beauty and ecstasy, we see a unification emerging between her dark, subconscious self and her awakened ecstatic spirit. We see her completely surrendering to her self-knowledge, her joy in her realization that she was "born this way"--a creative artist, a musician, a freak, a free spirit; culminating with pink triangles, a rainbow, riding a unicorn--all symbols of childlike innocence and magic. 'Born This Way' is a compelling video that completely captures the attention of the viewer, never relinquishing attention until the last moment--the viewer is completely lured by her magical dream world. In 'Born This Way', we see Gaga dancing ecstatically for the first time beyond the bound of totally rehearsed choreography, letting the transcendant ecstasy of her liberated anthem pour through every ecstatic cell of her body. It is this ecstatic liberation with her outstretched arms that screams of her joyful rebirth as she embodies more of her authenticity. Many people are repelled by what seems to be dark, demonic or death themes in her videos, and I see her pushing the envelope of the edge of life by brushing up close with the edge of death. It is only through dismembering our ego--getting into the muck of death and disease--that we can have a rebirth of our soul, requiring a fearless glance deep into the gaze of our own death and destruction.
In this way, I see Gaga candidly sharing her deep soul-searching to wade through her dark shadows, and pulling the pearls of her exquisite beauty up through the muck of her past. In my eyes, this is why Gaga is a profound pop star for the emerging paradigm; Gaga is using the pop-star pedestal to do shamanic soul-retrieval work to reclaim her authentic self, the version of her that was born a creative powerhouse, the version of her that is untainted by insecurity and lack of self-worth. It is significant that we see in Gaga an internationally recognized pop star with over 30 million fans on Facebook, being so vulnerable and authentic about the process of her creativity and empowerment. Upon entering her career, Stefani Germanotta changed her name to Lady Gaga. In her Google interview, she explains that changing her name to Gaga "was a way for [her] to release so many years of being told 'no' by this business." She continues to explain that redefining herself via her new name was a powerful gift she gave herself in an effort to liberate herself from her history of negativity, leaving it behind: "If you went through hard times when you were a kid, or in college, or if you had a job and maybe they fired you and you were poor for two years . . . I wish I could give that gift to anyone--of being able to say, 'I rebuke all that negativity and I am now a new person. And I am now going to be the queen I know that I can be.'" As a fire-sign sister who also changed her name in her early twenties in order to leave behind all the negative associations with the old identity and move forward in life with creative self-ownership, I totally resonate. She has explained that "Fame" is something you feel and own within yourself, that it is not something that society bestows upon you unless you own that power from within--and it is this reclaiming and owning of that power from within your core that defines empowerment and self-ownership. And only by claiming and owning that power within, will external others recognize and validate for you what you know to be true inside.
One of the things I am most impressed by with Gaga is that she knew exactly what she wanted to achieve, and within only several years time of total dedication to her goal, she achieved the success and actualization of her dreams. She is a testament to that clear focus and drive that comes when we totally know what we want; we can achieve anything. She let nothing stand in her way. I find this ineffably inspiring, as I have struggled for years with knowing what I want, wavering between so many dreams and desires; just trying to get clear enough to actualize each goal with success. To me this is the absolute crux of the teachings of 'The Secret' and 'manifestation techniques'--the magic of manifestation works only when we have total clarity about our desires, then the universe comes in to completely support and uplift our desires, through the amplification of our thoughts, dreams, and visions towards embodiment. It is through this that we witness the correlation between consciousness, our thoughts and beliefs, and our reality as it is manifested.
In comparing Gaga to Ammachi, I must state that I honestly believe they are both embodiments of the Divine Feminine, the Divine Mother in her infinite forms. Many people believe that a spiritual being, a divinely inspired being, a holy person or "Goddess", must be "pure and angelic" in order to be respected and spiritual. But I know that there is an essential marriage of 'Yin & Yang', of 'Sacred & Profane' that must occur in order to find mystic wholeness within; it is not by repressing the shadow and embracing only our light "enlightened" selves that we become "Holy." There are those that believe that Gaga is evil, satantic, and a "Whore of Babylon." I truly believe that they are not getting it, and that they are not seeing the bigger picture. As a mystic who has studied Divine Feminine wisdom and Tantra for many years, and who prays every day to the Divine Mother with Quan Yin, Pele and Isis on my altars--I see that the face of the Divine Feminine has had many embodiments in many forms, in many cultures. The essential spirit of Divine Feminine power and wisdom is embodied in the ecstatic Shakti power of an awakened feminine's Kundalini energy. From Kali--the wrathful Divine Mother that slaughters ego, to Quan Yin--the goddess of compassion for all human kind, to Pele--the goddess of creative power, of destruction and fertile rebirth, to Magdalene--the divine marriage partner of Yeshua, believed to be a whore but really a priestess--we see that there are infinite faces of Divine Feminine power. Four years ago, while in ayahuasca ceremony in Peru, an angelic vision came to me of the Divine Feminine. I witnessed "The Goddess" hover above me as she shape shifted in many forms; first an Indian Gopi Goddess complete with sari and dancing traditional Indian Temple dance. With an electrifying shake of her hip, she instantaneously morphed into a Peruvian goddess, then a Native American goddess, then a Balinese goddess, then a tribal African goddess, then a Polynesian Hawaiian goddess, then a modern American goddess--embodying the goddess in every culture on the planet. Each time, the Goddess had the same power in her eyes, the same magnetism and beauty, and each time with a shake of her hips, she morphed--and telepathically I received the message that the Divine Feminine is the universal power of the goddess that exists in every culture and religion, and it is through the fully owned and empowered Shakti kundalini energy that a woman wields her magical wisdom.
Unfortunately, this Divine Feminine power has historically been repressed and burned at the stake in Western patriarchal civilizations, thus women have become caricatures of Feminine power and beauty--stripped to solely their looks and their sexual service to men, and thus women have literally become an objectified image of sex, rather than powerful creatures of wisdom. I see Gaga as a pop star that is exploiting all societal conventions of feminine beauty; manipulating them to expose the loophole within the pop paradigm. In our modern day celebrity culture, where that which is worshipped is celebrity, that which is deified are pop stars; celebrities have been given an incredible opportunity to intimately affect the lives, hearts and spirits of millions of people with their creative influence. Gaga desired that power of being a deified celebrity, received that power, and now her message to humanity is to cultivate self-love; what better message to share using the platform of a pop star at this transformational juncture in time.
When asked during her Google interview, how she maintains her positivity, she replied: "I do believe that God comes in many forms, and I don't believe that we know what he looks like. But I see God in my fans. So every night when I look into the audience, I see this force of beauty--I see faith in my fans. That's what keeps me strong. What you worship in your life doesn't have to be religion or an institution or a certain kind of god--you must worship your faith. I worship my fans--they are my religion." In this, what I see in Gaga, is that she worships Love, the love that is energetically being dumped on her from her fans, and in return she is giving an incredible amount of love and generosity back to her fans. I am so impressed by Gaga's inclusion of 10 year old Maria Aragorn in her recent Toronto concert, where she co-sang 'Born This Way' with 10 year old Maria. Her comments about Maria with Google exemplified her generosity, she explained how beautiful Maria is, and how if she can just inspire ten teenagers to love themselves and live their dreams, she will have made a difference in the world. We don't all need to be internationally famous celebrities to live our dreams or love ourselves, but we can all find inspiration in Gaga's dedication to the pursuit of our soul's purpose in life. She knew in her heart what she was born on the planet to do, and she took the driver's seat of her life's destiny and commanded its ship towards her dreams. If we can all align ourselves with what we were put here on the planet to do, not letting our insecurities, self-doubts, families, upbringings or finances keep us out of alignment with our soul's purpose, then we will each be activating our divine purpose in this life. Gaga's suggestion is: "Don't obsess over what you've done wrong, always look into yourself for the answer, and be the best you that you can be in the future."
