The Current Does Not Obey Our Wounds

Bhairavi does not console the wound or obey its rage; She sits as the current itself — silent, terrible, and exact.

The Small Post That Opened a Larger Wound

For a long time I lived mostly outside the modern online Tantric field.

My path was shaped more by practice, śāstra, saints, and long private digestion than by contemporary communities, podcasts, online debates, or spiritual subcultures. For years, I was not especially interested in what people were saying in these spaces. The real work, for me, was elsewhere: in reading, in practice, in the slow burning of life itself.

But recently a certain curiosity appeared. I wanted to understand what some of these modern spaces actually breathe. What do people who associate themselves with Tantra think? What do they carry? What kind of language do they use? What kind of wounds, insights, fantasies, and distortions move through these conversations?

So I watched a little, read a little, listened to the tone. I saw some sincerity, some hunger, some confusion, some theatre. Eventually I felt a natural impulse to add one small contribution of my own — not as a grand intervention, but as a way of touching one particular corner of the field and seeing how it would respond.

The note I posted was a condensed public version of a larger reflection I had already written elsewhere. It centered on a well-known Tantric statement: striyo devyaḥ — women are goddesses.
[https://www.vira-chandra.com/2025/10/she-is-devi-but-which-mask-is-she.html]

For me, this line belongs to the basic grammar of Tantra. It appears again and again across Śākta and Tantric sources in different forms: woman as Śakti, woman as life-force, woman as a sacred presence to be approached with reverence. At the same time, this recognition was never meant to become sentimental blindness. The śāstric context itself gives a more precise discipline: remain inwardly collected, establish reverence internally, and when the form before you is crooked or destructive, bow and withdraw.

This was the nerve of the note.

The point was simple: reverence without self-loss, discernment without hatred.

I expected, perhaps, a few likes, a few quiet disagreements, maybe a small debate about interpretation. That would have been ordinary. A śāstric point can be challenged. A tone can be questioned. A conclusion can be refined.

But what happened was not really debate.

The reaction exposed something larger than the post itself. A phrase that, for me, is part of the living backbone of Tantra was heard by some as propaganda, humiliation, or an attack. The argument itself — that the vision of woman as Śakti must be held together with composure and discernment — was largely bypassed. In its place appeared a caricature, as if the post had said that every woman’s behavior must be worshipped without judgment.

But that was exactly the distortion I was trying to correct.

That was the first shock.

The small post did not merely receive disagreement. It touched a buried electric wire in that space. What came back was not only opinion, but pain, resentment, projection, and, in some cases, something much darker.

So this became more than a discussion about one Sanskrit phrase.

It became a revelation of a certain corner of the field.

The post was small.

The wound it touched was not.

The Two Distortions of Modern Tantra

When I wrote the note, I was mostly responding to a distortion I had seen many times, especially in modern Westernized Tantric circles.

There, the phrase “women are goddesses” is often turned into a soft spiritual entitlement. Reverence becomes confused with agreement. Sacredness becomes confused with the removal of boundaries. The recognition of woman as Śakti is flattened into a social demand: affirm me, worship me, do not judge me, do not question me, do not withdraw from me.

That was the smaller distortion I had in mind.

It is real. It exists. It deserves correction. A Tantric vision of woman as Śakti does not mean psychological surrender to every woman, every mood, every wound, every manipulation, every emotional storm. It does not cancel discernment. It does not demand self-loss. It does not turn the practitioner into a passive object before feminine intensity.

The śāstric tradition is more sober than that. It teaches reverence, but it also teaches composure. It teaches recognition, but it does not abolish discrimination. It asks the practitioner to see Śakti without becoming enslaved by form.

So I wrote from that angle.

I expected resistance, if it came, to come from that side — from people who wanted the sentence “women are goddesses” to remain soft, flattering, and unqualified. I expected perhaps some discomfort around the words “bow and depart,” because those words restore boundaries to a phrase often used without them.

But the strongest reaction came from a completely different direction.

It came from the wounded masculine distortion.

This second distortion does not sentimentalize the feminine. It recoils from it. It hears “woman as goddess” and immediately translates it into humiliation, submission, feminist propaganda, denial of male suffering, or an insult to men who have been wounded by women. It cannot hold the difference between reverence for Śakti and approval of every woman’s behavior. It sees only two possibilities: either women are worshipped blindly, or the whole statement must be rejected with disgust.

That was the reaction I was not prepared for.

And yet it revealed something important: in some spaces, among some men drawn to Tantra, the dominant wound is not naïve worship of the feminine, but rage against it. They may use Tantric names, invoke goddesses, speak of fierce practice, and claim connection to Śakti, but the psychic current underneath is grievance, suspicion, contempt, and unresolved humiliation.

This is a darker distortion.

The first distortion turns Tantra into softness without discernment.
The second turns Tantra into hardness without reverence.

Both are false.

The first says: “woman is goddess, therefore surrender.”
The second says: “some women wounded me, therefore this teaching is propaganda.”

Neither can hold the real middle.

The actual Tantric nerve is more difficult: woman as Śakti is real, and discernment is still necessary. A woman may be revered in essence and still not be trusted in manifestation. A practitioner may bow inwardly and still leave outwardly. One can refuse manipulation without hatred, and one can honor the feminine without becoming naïve.

This was the point of the original note.

But the reaction showed that, in some spaces, this middle is almost impossible to hear. The sentimental side hears it as coldness. The wounded masculine side hears it as surrender. Each pole attacks the part of the teaching it cannot bear.

That was the second lesson.

Modern Tantra is not only weakened by softness.

In certain corners, it is also being invaded by wounded hardness.

When Sacred Language Meets Unprocessed Pain

What became clear afterward is that many people were not reacting to the post itself.

They were reacting to what the words awakened in them.

A phrase like “women are goddesses” does not enter every mind in the same way. In a contemplative mind, it may be heard as a Tantric statement about Śakti. In a sentimental mind, it may become an excuse for fantasy. In a wounded mind, especially one carrying humiliation, betrayal, rejection, or resentment toward women, the same phrase may be heard almost as an attack.

It no longer means: recognize the sacred essence while keeping discernment.

It becomes: submit to women, deny male pain, worship manipulation, repeat propaganda.

Once that substitution happens, the actual text is no longer being read. The person is no longer responding to the argument. He is responding to a wound.

This is why the reaction felt so disproportionate. The post was concise. The point was not especially obscure. It was not asking anyone to approve cruelty, surrender judgment, or pretend that every woman behaves nobly. It was saying almost the opposite: reverence does not cancel discrimination. Yet for some readers, the very language of reverence was already intolerable.

Then the reaction moved beyond disagreement.

There were comments that called the post propaganda. There were comments that treated the idea itself as disgusting. And then there was something darker: direct violent rhetoric, including language about people not deserving to live and about being sacrificed in the name of the Goddess.

That was the moment when the situation stopped being merely unpleasant and became revealing.

Because the deepest shock was not that someone insulted me. I was not personally wounded by the insults. The shock was the energy behind them — the open violence, the shamelessness, the way sacred language was used to cover hatred. I had seen sectarian aggression before. I had seen abusive spiritual behavior before. But this kind of direct public threat, joined with religious self-authorization, carried a darker current.

And the paradox was almost unbearable.

People who claimed connection with Śakti, who spoke of Goddess worship, who used the language of Tantra and devotion, were reacting with contempt toward one of the most basic Śākta-Tantric intuitions: that woman is to be seen as a manifestation of Śakti. They were invoking the Goddess while refusing one of the corrections She brings.

This is not a small contradiction.

One may be wounded by women and still worship Devi. One may withdraw from harmful women and still worship Devi. One may be cautious, discerning, and sober about human behavior and still worship Devi. But when hatred of women becomes a worldview, and when that hatred is defended as truth, something central in Śākta vision is already obstructed.

The other shock was scriptural.

I had assumed that even in modern online Tantric spaces there would still be some basic textual backbone. Perhaps people would disagree with interpretation. Perhaps they would argue about context. But I assumed that if one brought verses from the Tantric tradition itself, there would be at least some willingness to pause before them.

That assumption was naïve.

For some people, no quotation was enough. No context was enough. No distinction between reverence and blind surrender was enough. Their wound had already decided what the text must mean. The śāstra was no longer allowed to correct the wound. It was judged by whether it served the wound.

That is a frightening thing to see.

A person may say that he belongs to a tradition, but if the tradition can no longer correct him, then he does not belong to it as a disciple. He belongs to it as a consumer, a militant, or a collector of symbols. He uses its names, its deities, its force, its vocabulary — but the center remains elsewhere.

This is where suffering becomes especially dangerous.

Pain itself is not the problem. Everyone who lives long enough is wounded by someone. Men are wounded by women, women are wounded by men, children are wounded by parents, disciples are wounded by teachers, nations are wounded by history. Pain belongs to human life.

The danger begins when pain stops being digested and becomes identity.

Then the person no longer says, “I was harmed.”
He says, “My wound is the truth.”

He no longer says, “I am bitter.”
He says, “I am realistic.”

He no longer says, “I cannot bear this teaching.”
He says, “This teaching is propaganda.”

This is where suffering becomes ideology.

And once suffering becomes ideology, every sacred statement is judged by whether it flatters the wound. If it does, it is accepted. If it does not, it is hated. The tradition itself is no longer a teacher. It becomes raw material for self-confirmation.

This is one of the most dangerous things in spiritual life.

A person may worship a goddess outwardly while inwardly refusing the very purification She demands. He may invoke Śakti as power, protection, tribe, fierceness, and identity, yet reject Śakti when She appears as reverence, humility, discipline, or the burning away of hatred. At that point, worship becomes fragmented. The name remains, but the current is resisted.

This is why the reaction was so revealing. It showed that for some people the word “Devi” had not softened hatred, clarified perception, or deepened responsibility. It had become one more banner under which old wounds could march.

That is not Tantra.

That is pain using Tantra as a costume.

And this is also why compassion alone is not enough. One can see that such people are wounded. One can even feel sorrow for them. But the wound does not give them moral authority. Trauma may explain the formation of hatred; it does not justify hatred. Betrayal may explain bitterness; it does not sanctify bitterness.

Explanation is not exoneration.

If this is forgotten, every wound becomes a throne, and every wounded person becomes a potential tyrant in the name of his pain.

The real spiritual test is not whether one has been wounded. Everyone has. The test is what the wound becomes. Does it become humility, discrimination, and a deeper refusal to harm? Or does it become a weapon, an identity, and a private hell that demands public sacrifice?

In that thread, I saw too clearly how the second path looks.

It was not pleasant to see.

But it was useful.

Why I Withdrew

The final lesson did not come only from the comments.

It came from the destiny of the post itself.

At first, I thought the reaction would be mixed in an ordinary way. Some people might agree. Some might ignore it. Some might debate the interpretation. Perhaps a few would dislike the tone. That would have been natural enough.

But the movement of the thread revealed something different.

The post was downvoted. The more aggressive reactions gained force. Some of the comments defending the basic point were pushed down or attacked. The language around the post became increasingly distorted, and at a certain point it was no longer a discussion around Tantra, śāstra, reverence, or discernment. It became a display of that particular container.

Then the post was deleted by the moderators.

That fact mattered.

The post, which tried to restore a śāstric statement to its context, was removed. But the atmosphere that had gathered around it — the hostility, the vulgarity, the violent rhetoric — was not cleansed in the same way. That was perhaps the most revealing part of the whole event.

A serious spiritual field should have a certain instinct. It may allow disagreement. It may tolerate sharp debate. It may even dislike a particular post. But when the discussion moves into dehumanization and violent language, the container should know what must be removed.

In this case, the mirror was removed more cleanly than the smoke.

That showed me something I could not unsee.

One unstable person is one thing. Every community has unstable people. Every public space attracts projection, anger, and strange reactions. But when a container begins to reward that energy, when the post itself becomes the problem while the poison around it is treated as ordinary noise, then the issue is no longer one person. The issue is the container.

And this is why I withdrew — because that particular space had answered.

It showed what it could hold, what it could not hold, what it rewarded, and what it removed. I do not claim that this one incident reveals the whole modern Tantric world. That would be too broad. But it did reveal enough about this corner of it. And once that became clear, further engagement felt unnecessary.

For some time before this, I still had a certain curiosity about modern online Tantric spaces. I had lived mostly outside them for years, and a part of me wanted to understand their current shape, their language, their hunger, their distortions, their possibilities. That curiosity was not false. It needed some contact with reality.

Now it has had that contact.

The result is simple: my desire to participate in spaces of that kind is almost completely exhausted. Perhaps one should never say “never,” because life has its own irony. But inwardly, the movement is finished. I do not feel called to debate there, explain there, correct there, or pour more attention into that kind of atmosphere.

The cleaner path is elsewhere.

To write.
To study.
To practice.
To let the work stand on its own ground.

If someone finds it by their own karma, through a blog, a search, an accidental link, or the quiet movement of the Goddess, that is enough. There is no need to carry the fire into smoky rooms and ask the smoke to become clear.

This was the practical conclusion of the whole event.

The post was deleted.

But the deletion itself became part of the teaching.

It showed that not every container deserves the current placed into it. It showed that a public spiritual label does not guarantee spiritual dignity. It showed that some spaces are not places of transmission, but places of leakage.

The Current Does Not Obey Our Wounds

The harshest lesson of the whole episode was also the cleanest one.

A sacred current is not entered by self-description. It is not entered by rage. It is not entered by theatrical identification with a deity, by slogans, by mantras, by fierce profile names, or by declaring oneself a servant of the Goddess while acting from hatred.

The current is entered by alignment.

Every action either brings a person closer to it or moves him farther away. This is very simple, and very merciless. One may scream, quote, threaten, worship, accuse, justify, or wrap one’s wound in the most sacred names. Still, the law does not bend. If the movement of the heart is hatred, dehumanization, and violence, then the person is not moving toward Devi. He is moving away from Her while using Her name.

That was perhaps the most bitter thing to see.

Because many people imagine that their pain gives them exemption. They were betrayed, humiliated, abused, falsely accused, abandoned, mocked, crushed by life — and therefore they begin to feel that their rage has special authority. They begin to think that because their wound is real, whatever grows out of it must also be true.

But this is false.

Pain explains. It does not absolve.

A person who was abused in childhood may have a real explanation for how darkness entered his mind. But if he becomes an abuser, if he commits violence, if he destroys another human being, then the world does not say, “Your trauma has made this holy.” The law still comes. The prison door still closes. The background may explain the crime, but it does not erase the crime.

The same is true inwardly.

If life wounded you and you allowed that wound to become hatred, then the wound does not become wisdom. If betrayal made you bitter and you enthroned that bitterness as truth, then the bitterness does not become discernment. If grief turned into contempt and contempt into violent fantasy, then no mantra will make that sacred.

There is no special spiritual license for the wounded ego.

This became very clear to me through that thread. I saw people trying to use suffering as a weapon. I saw pain demanding moral immunity. I saw the language of Goddess worship mixed with hostility toward the very principle that Śākta Tantra asks us to recognize. I saw people invoke Devi while speaking in a way that moved directly against the current of reverence.

And I felt, very viscerally, that this cannot work.

You cannot worship Devi while nourishing hatred toward the embodied feminine. You may be hurt by women and still worship Her. You may withdraw from harmful women and still worship Her. You may be cautious, sober, wounded, disillusioned, and still worship Her. But if hatred of women becomes your truth, if contempt becomes your posture, if violence becomes your imagined purification — then the worship has turned against its own root.

At that point, what remains may still look religious from the outside.

There may be names.
There may be deities.
There may be mantras.
There may be fierce language.
There may even be intensity.

But intensity is not realization. Rage is not tapas. Cruelty is not Bhairava. Misogyny is not Śākta discernment. A wound dressed in Sanskrit is still a wound.

This was the final lesson for me also.

Because no one is immune from bitterness. No one who has lived through enough pain can honestly pretend that the possibility is not there. Pain always tempts the heart to harden. It whispers: “Now you know the truth. Now you have the right to close. Now your contempt is justified. Now your wound sees more clearly than love ever did.”

That whisper is poison.

The thread showed me where that poison leads when it is not stopped. It leads to a mind that can no longer read. It leads to a person who no longer meets the world but only his own grievance reflected everywhere. It leads to a kind of inner hell where every sacred word becomes fuel for hatred.

And I am grateful that I saw it so nakedly.

Not because it was pleasant. It was not. It was shocking, disgusting, and at moments almost surreal. But it worked like a vaccine. It showed me, in concentrated form, what can happen when pain is allowed to become identity and then ideology. It sealed something in me.

The lesson is simple:

Do not make your pain into a weapon.

Live it.
Digest it.
Let it pass through the body like poison leaving the blood.
Shake it off like a dog after water.
Learn from it, but do not enthrone it.
Do not build a temple around the wound and call it truth.

Because the current of Devi is not sentimental, but it is also not hateful. It does not ask for stupidity, but it does not bless bitterness. It does not demand that we trust every form, but it does demand that the organ of reverence not be killed.

That organ must be protected.

Even after betrayal.
Even after humiliation.
Even after injustice.
Even after seeing the ugliness of people who use sacred names while standing far from the sacred.

This, for me, was the real fruit of the whole event.

The post was deleted. The thread disappeared from that space. The community moved on. But the lesson remained like a seal burned into the mind:

The current does not obey our wounds.

Either our actions carry us closer to it, or they carry us away.

No amount of pain changes that.