I did not expect to be touched by a random online discussion, but I was.
I was reading casually, almost absent-mindedly, and then I saw the name Dhumāvatī spoken in a tone that felt light, experimental, almost adventurous — “I will try her for forty days,” “I will report back,” “let’s see what happens.” And something in me tightened.
It was not anger. It was not outrage. It was not even disagreement.
It was more like when you hear someone speak about a place that, for you, is not a concept but a landscape you have actually walked through — and they speak of it as a theme, a challenge, an interesting terrain to explore. You recognize the words, but the temperature feels different.
I had to pause and ask myself why it unsettled me. Why should it matter to me how someone else approaches a name? Why should I feel anything at all?
Part of it was simple: there are some symbols that, in my own life, became connected not with curiosity but with gravity. Not with experimentation but with reduction. When a name becomes associated with moments where the ground beneath you is not theoretical but real, it acquires a certain weight. You do not “try” it. You endure what unfolds.
And yet, even as I felt this, I also noticed another layer — a subtle, almost embarrassing sense that something intimate was being handled casually. As if a private chamber had suddenly become a public room. That reaction, too, needed to be examined. Was I protecting something sacred, or was I protecting an image of myself in relation to it?
I do not want to pretend the answer was pure. It wasn’t. There was sincerity in the discomfort, but there was also attachment. And rather than dismiss either, I felt it was more honest to sit with the mixture.
This post begins from that mixture — not to warn, not to correct, but to understand why a difficult name stirs different temperatures in different people, and why sometimes the friction reveals more about ourselves than about those we are tempted to judge.
The Strange Appeal of What Is Not Sweet
After sitting with my own reaction, I began to wonder about something else — not why I felt unsettled, but why someone very young would feel drawn to this name in the first place, and even more so when warned away from it.
Because the warnings were not mild. They spoke of loss, of collapse, of severity. And yet the person did not retreat. If anything, the caution seemed to strengthen the resolve. That intrigued me.
There is something in youth — and perhaps not only in youth — that does not respond well to fear. When told “this is not for you,” something instinctively rises and says, “I will see for myself.” Part of that is pride, yes. But part of it is also dignity. No one wants to inherit fear secondhand.
And then there is the deeper layer. We live in a time that constantly sells sweetness — healing, empowerment, radiance, abundance. Everything is framed as growth, expansion, becoming more. Beneath that surface, however, many young people carry anxiety, instability, and a quiet sense that the world is not as solid as it pretends to be. In that atmosphere, a form that does not promise comfort can feel strangely honest.
A widow is not glamorous. Emptiness is not marketable. A name that stands for dryness, for reduction, for the stripping away of illusions — that can feel more real than a promise of blessings. Not because one truly understands what reduction means, but because one senses that life is not only sweetness, and one does not want to be naïve.
There is also something else, more subtle. To approach what is described as intense or dangerous can create a feeling of inner strength. It can feel like standing at the edge voluntarily. “I am not afraid.” Even if, in truth, one does not yet know what one is standing in front of.
When I look at it this way, I cannot reduce the attraction to arrogance. There is curiosity there, yes. There is bravado. But there is also longing — longing for something that feels ultimate, something that cuts through surface spirituality and goes straight to the bone.
Whether that longing is ready for what it invokes is another matter. But longing itself should not be mocked. It belongs to the human heart.
And perhaps that is where the tension lies — between longing and ripeness, between the desire to touch depth and the season in which depth truly arrives.
When Curiosity Meets What Is Not Voluntary
What slowly became clear to me is that the real difference is not between tradition and modernity, nor between caution and boldness. It is the difference between approaching something by choice and meeting it when it is no longer optional.
In the beginning, most spiritual movements are voluntary. We choose a mantra. We choose a form. We decide to sit, to chant, to experiment. If the practice becomes uncomfortable, we can stop. If nothing happens, we move on. Even intensity remains within the boundaries of choice.
But there are moments in life that are not chosen. They do not feel like practice. They do not feel like exploration. They arrive without asking whether we are ready, and they rearrange us from the inside. In those moments, symbols stop being ideas. They become descriptions.
I think part of what unsettled me was seeing something that, in my own understanding, belongs to that second category — the non-voluntary — being approached entirely within the first. Not wrongly. Not foolishly. Just differently.
And yet, when I look more honestly, I see that there is no way to force the second category. No amount of daring, and no amount of caution, can manufacture it. It happens when life converges in a certain way. Until then, everything remains within the field of curiosity.
Perhaps what I was witnessing was simply curiosity. And curiosity has its dignity. It may not carry weight yet, but it carries movement. And movement is not an enemy of depth; sometimes it is its beginning.
The rest — the shift from voluntary to irreversible — does not belong to discussion. It belongs to time.
Where Something Feels Slightly Untrue
Even after softening my reaction, I could not ignore that something in the modern approach still feels slightly untrue to me. Not sinful. Not forbidden. Just subtly misaligned.
When a deity becomes an “experience module” — something one subscribes to, tracks, completes, and evaluates — a quiet shift happens. The relationship turns transactional without anyone explicitly intending it to. “I will do this for forty days.” “I will observe the effects.” “I will report the outcome.” The structure resembles a self-improvement experiment more than a surrender.
There is sincerity in it, yes. I do not doubt that. Many who approach in this way are earnest. They are reading, learning, trying not to be naïve. But the posture remains controlled. The practitioner stands outside the process, holding the frame.
And perhaps that is where the subtle distortion lies.
Some movements in life cannot be framed from the outside. They are not entered as challenges. They are not evaluated for results. They are not concluded with summaries. When reduction truly unfolds, there is no position from which to observe it safely. One is inside it.
The app-based structure, the checklist, the measurable cycle — these belong to a world where everything is optimized, improved, tracked. That world has its value. But when it is applied to something that symbolically represents the collapse of control, the tone becomes slightly paradoxical. It says, “I will consciously enter what dissolves control, and I will remain in control while doing so.”
From a human perspective, this is understandable. We do not easily relinquish agency. Even our surrender is often structured. But that is precisely why the approach feels constructed. It imitates severity while remaining protected from it.
This does not make it evil. It makes it premature.
And premature does not mean condemned. It simply means that imagination is still leading the movement. There is still a sense of “I am doing this.” When that sense dissolves — if it dissolves — it will not look like an experiment.
Perhaps this is the only honest distinction to make. Not between correct and incorrect worship, but between controlled invocation and uncontrollable unfolding.
The first is human. The second is life.
Reduction is not a terrain.
Reduction is when relationships collapse without announcement, and there is no villain to blame and no lesson to extract — only a thinning of what once felt stable.
It is when identity does not explode dramatically but quietly loosens, and the version of yourself you relied on no longer reassembles in the same shape. You try to rebuild it, and it does not hold.
It is when social validation dries up, not as punishment but as simple indifference, and you discover how much of your structure depended on being seen.
It is when sweetness no longer responds — when practices that once felt luminous become dry, and there is no consolation available on demand.
And most of all, it is when there is no coherent narrator left to “report back.” No one stands outside the experience summarizing it. There is no conclusion, no dramatic arc. There is only endurance, and a strange clarity that does not need to be announced.
This is the difference.
Invoking austerity is an act.
Living in a season where nothing answers is not.
Allowing Each Path to Unfold
After seeing the paradox more clearly, I felt something in me relax.
I do not need to correct the experimenter. I do not need to argue with the traditionalist. I do not need to defend a name. What unsettled me was not that others were approaching something differently, but that I momentarily forgot that life moves each person in its own rhythm.
Some will approach difficult names while still standing firmly in control of their lives, curious and brave in their own way. Some will meet those same names later, when control thins without invitation. Some will pass through the fascination and never return. Some will circle back years later with entirely different eyes.
None of this requires policing.
If someone approaches through structure and 'tantra-apps' and timed cycles, that is where they are. If that structure remains intact, then nothing deeper is being asked of them yet. And if one day life asks more, it will not need an app to announce it.
I also see that my discomfort was, in its own way, a form of care. Not superiority, not ownership — just care for something that feels weighty to me. And care can be gentle without becoming possessive.
So perhaps the most honest place to stand is simple: to let people seek as they seek, to let curiosity mature or fade, and to trust that what is truly structural in life does not depend on our approval or our warnings.
There is room for rehearsal. There is room for arrival. There is room for youth. There is room for gravity.
And there is room, finally, to let it all move without tightening around it.
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