I have always been drawn to Devi. Not as an idea, but as a pull in my blood.
I didn’t choose this path. She chose me. In my sadhana I have felt Her as Bhairavi’s fire, as Lakshmi’s grace, as Tara holding my mind steady when all else falters.
And yet, the deeper I go, the more one question burns: Why must a woman wait so much longer than a man to be called realized?
We chant Ya Devi Sarva Bhuteshu and I feel Her in every breath. We say without Shakti, Shiva is Shava. I know in my own practice — without Her, I am a corpse.
But when Shakti is born as a woman and says “I know,” the world demands proof again and again.
I Live the Split
The Shastra I read is feminine. In the Devi Suktam, it is She who first says Aham Brahmasmi. In Tantra, which has always pulled me, a yogini can be Guru. A kumari can be worshipped as Divine.
But the institution I see is not. It still decides who sits on the vyasa-peetha, who is called Acharya, whose tapasya is believed.
I feel this split in my body. My inner life is that of a sadhak — detachment and longing for moksha deep inside. But if I renounced tomorrow, it would be read as rebellion or trauma. A man’s would be read as vairagya.
Akka Mahadevi had to walk naked to be heard. Lal Ded was called mad before saint. Anandamayi Ma was tested for hysteria. How many of us are still tested while our brothers are believed?
**Lineage Has No Seat For Me**
My wisdom came not through a comfortable parampara, but through crisis and direct experience, through Her coming in strange forms.
That is most women’s fate in spirituality. A young man is adopted and introduced: “He is our next Acharya.” A woman must build legitimacy alone, often against the lineage she loves. That costs years — not in sadhana, but in being allowed to be seen.
No wonder Tantra whispers to me. It kept its truest teachings in the shmashana, where a Devi-upasika could be Guru without permission.
What My Devi Teaches Me
And then She corrects me.
Dhumavati, Bhairavi, Tara — who live in my heart — don’t wait for applause. They work in silence, in invisibility. They are powerful whether or not they are recognized.
Perhaps my question is Her question through me: Why seek recognition for the feminine, when I am recognition itself?
My sadhana is not to beg to be called Guru faster. It is to become the pramana — living proof — so the next woman pulled by Devi won’t wait years longer for being born in a female body.
I worship Her in stone daily. I refuse to overlook Her in flesh — in myself, and in every woman who knows.