I’ve been gifted a couple Ganesh figurines over the years. One in particular was from a client who knew his Hindu mythology, and wished for Ganesh to bring me good luck and prosperity. For all I know this elephant god has been doing just that, though I’m not really one for worship. I’ve never lit a candle or prayed to him—nor to any religious or spiritual figure for that matter. I’ve always wanted the most direct relationship to God/Truth. So, whether it’s the old gods (Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Zeus) or the new gods (Eckhart Tolle, plant medicine, the Pleidians), I’m much more down with their practical messages—their words & symbols.
I’ve sat with Ganesh in my office for many years now. I’ve read his body language, contemplated the ‘gestalt’ of him. It seems to me Hindu & Buddhist gods & goddesses (along with all religious & spiritual symbols) hold multiple layers of meaning and, I believe, are meant to be contemplated—allowing the image to speak to us personally. These images represent energetic and informational fields we can personally interact with. For instance, one of my favorite Christian symbols is the sacred heart of Jesus (& the immaculate heart of Mary). For me, this image invokes the felt sense of heart awakening, including the real, physical pain that is often the gateway to it—the knife or crown of thorns piercing the human heart, causing it to burst into flames (and flowers!).
One day I simply ‘knew’ some messages Ganesh held—information that was quite different than what I had read about. It is a personal experience of the image, and I apologize if it reads as blasphemous—it is not meant to contradict other teachings & meanings—but rather to help you see from my point of view, as well as encourage your own relationship with and integration of perennial /religious/ spiritual/ philosophical messages.
My read on Ganesh is this: He signifies embodied awareness—our awake consciousness, fully descended into the body, and therefore BIG. He represents the possibility of being weighted & planted on earth, with senses as robust as an elephant’s ears and trunk. The crown chakra on Ganesh is open and glittering, while the elephant’s body is at rest—peaceful & content (with the fruits of abundance in one of his hands), and his many arms exhibit the capacity, when embodied, for clear ‘yes’s’ and ‘no’s,’ signified by the lotus and the scythe.
There is a little mouse at Ganesh’s feet, looking up at the massive beast; I see this mouse as our mind—tamed at the feet of the master. In this sacred image, the mouse (mind) reflects the appropriate scale of things—the relatively small intelligence of mind, compared with the immense intelligence of the Being (which we now know has multiple ‘brains,’ including the heart, the gut, the connective tissue and, really, every single cell in the body).
In the meditations I have been teaching, we come deeply into the physical body and the subtle energy body—our large, intelligent, personal energetic field (several feet beyond our physical form), which is connected with all other fields, including the field of Silence. We touch into our bigness, to our oneness, and we sense the layers of being that we ARE. To feel this bigness is to feel safe, connected, and alive. But it takes practice—’hours logged,’ as Kiran Trace says, because there have been countless generations before us logging their hours believing (and feeling) they are small, disconnected, and no more than this strange sack of organs & bones.
Ganesh reminds us of our truer nature—the bigness that is felt when we are fully embodied, and he shows us how the senses are the doors to our biggest nature—a nature so huge that an elephant with four arms, often depicted on a massive throne and sitting in a spacious castle with vast, open sky behind him, is just a hint—a symbol, a reminder, an invitation—of the Great Big You.
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