Durga: The Energy of Love in Action
- Kendra Coupland
- Oct 25, 2025
- 12 min read
How Deity Practice Can Help Us Navigate Uncertain Times
It was the early spring of 2020, the world had shut down, and like many others, I was trying to stay afloat. As a wedding photographer, my entire livelihood disappeared overnight. At the same time, Black folks in my community were losing their jobs and homes, long before any government aid arrived. I began raising mutual aid funds to help, even as I emptied my own savings to get by.
Then came the murder of George Floyd. The collective grief, rage, and exhaustion that swept through the Black community was indescribable. My days blurred between homeschooling my child, organizing funds so friends wouldn’t lose their housing, holding space for others’ pain, and trying to keep my own heart from collapsing under the weight of it all. I felt torn apart — like my energy was scattered in a thousand directions, and I couldn’t gather myself back together.
In the middle of all that, I did something that made no sense on paper: I enrolled in a second 500-hour yoga teacher training with my teacher, Swami Vidyanand. Historically, I’d let my personal practice slip in times of crisis, but this commitment anchored me. My teacher emphasized the importance of bhakti — the path of devotion — and urged me to call upon the Goddess Durga (pronounced doer-gah) for protection and guidance.
Years before, he had given me the yogic name Durgaputri — Daughter of Durga. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what it meant. Durga, whose name translates to “the Unassailable One,” embodies fierce love in action; the divine mother who rises to confront the forces of ignorance and restore balance to the world. She is strength born of compassion, courage born of love.
That summer, I began to call upon her. Through daily meditation and mantra, I invoked her presence, not as a distant deity, but as a force within me that could hold it all: the grief, the exhaustion, the fight, the hope. Slowly, Durga began to move through my life.
Out of that energy, I founded the Black in BC COVID-19 Fund, which raised over $160,000 to help community members stay housed. I launched trauma-informed yoga programs for survivors of sexual violence and frontline workers. I began offering spiritual wellness for Black bodies, online mindfulness classes for parents and children, and eventually, the first Dark Before the Dawn retreat for 50 Black folks to gather, grieve, and heal together.|
Looking back, I’m still not entirely sure how I did it all — but I know I didn’t do it alone. Durga moved through me.
Durga’s Symbolism
In every era of human history, there arises a moment when the forces of chaos, greed, domination, and ignorance seem overwhelming. In Tantric cosmology, when such imbalances threaten the harmony of existence, the Divine responds not with retreat but with embodied power. This is exactly how it is with the Goddess Durga: the radiant force of consciousness that steps into the world to restore balance through fierce compassion.
Durga’s image is striking: her skin is a radiant golden brown, her hair is long and black, her eyes are large and dark. She is full-breasted, and her belly is slightly rounded, like many of those who have given birth. She is often seen riding a lion or tiger of courage, while her face is calm and serene, even as she battles the most monstrous of demons. She is usually depicted overcoming the buffalo demon Mahishasura, or the asuric demon brothers Shumbha and Nishumbha - symbols of egoic ignorance and arrogance. In her 7 hands, she wields weapons gifted by the gods — a conch, a trident, a discus, a bow, a sword, a lotus, and more. Her eight hand is often depicted with an open palm in abhaya mudra - the gesture to fear not. Each of her weapons represents an aspect of the inner power (śakti) available within all beings when we act in the service of truth.
Durga’s multiple arms are not simply a display of divine might; they represent the multidimensionality of an awakened consciousness. In Tantra, śakti is the dynamic energy of awareness; it expresses itself through many channels simultaneously. The arms remind us that divine power does not belong to one realm alone; it extends into every domain of life: action, speech, thought, relationship, and care.
Where humans are often limited by duality, love or anger, peace or action, Durga integrates opposites. She holds both the lotus, symbol of purity and wisdom, and the sword, which cuts through illusion (māyā). Her still face amidst movement reminds us that true power arises from inner stillness, not aggression. Each arm gestures toward a form of spiritual or ethical action, reminding practitioners that balance comes from wholeness, not suppression. Each weapon in Durga’s hands is symbolic of a yogic virtue or capacity that supports liberation:
Trident (Triśūla) – Represents the destruction of the three anchor points of the ego: ignorance (avidyā), attachment (rāga), and aversion (dveṣa).
Sword (Khadga) – Cuts through illusion and false identification. It symbolizes viveka, the ability to discern truth from distortion (such as social constructs).
Discus (Chakra) – The wheel of time and dharma. Symbolizing that time always reveals truth.
Bow and Arrow – Represent focus and intention; when held in harmony, they mirror the balance between effort and surrender.
Conch (Śaṅkha) – The primordial sound of creation, Om, calling consciousness back to remembrance.
Lotus (Padma) – Symbolizes the blossoming of wisdom through purification of the heart (lotuses bloom in the mud of a pond, which becomes clear, when the waters are still).
Club or Mace (Gadā) – Represents strength and grounding — the steadiness required to meet challenge without losing one’s center.
When viewed through a tantric lens, these are not weapons of war, but tools of awakening. Each destroys ignorance, not enemies; each reclaims balance, not dominance.
Meeting the Goddess Durga: Power in Stillness, Strength in Love
There comes a time in every life — and in every age — when we are called to remember a deeper kind of strength. Not the strength that dominates or conquers, but the kind that protects, restores, and holds steady in the midst of chaos. This is the essence of the Goddess Durga. In the ancient stories, Durga arises when all other powers, even the gods themselves, have reached their limits. Out of the collective prayers of the gods, she is born radiant and fierce, riding a lion, her many arms carrying the gifts of every deity. She is not one god’s creation, but the unified energy of all of them; the embodiment of divine collaboration.
So what does it mean to invoke a deity? When we invoke a deity such as Durga, we are quite literally calling aspects of what she represents into our own consciousness to draw those qualities out of ourselves (since she is, through the tantric lens, the great adiśakti - or primal power, within all beings).
When we meet Durga, we are not meeting a distant, mythic warrior goddess. We are encountering the force of consciousness that lives within each of us — the part of ourselves that knows how to act with courage without losing compassion, how to stand firm in love even as we face what feels unbearable.
I personally see Durga out in the world all of the time. She is in the truth spoken by every Indigenous water protector, She is in every political revolutionary that leads towards the overturning of a corrupt government, She is the impulse every mother regardless of species feels to protect her child, She is in every powerful, calm, and discerning leader that leads people through a natural disaster, war, or crisis, She is the human rights lawyer working to shape laws related to dignity, equality, and civil rights. She is the burning desire every activist and advocate feels while striving towards justice, She is the rage-filled cry of a protestor, She is all forms of courage and bravery and risk taking in the service of collective liberation.
Her many arms symbolize this truth: that power can take many forms. One hand carries a lotus, another a sword; one blesses, another protects. She holds what she needs for each moment, sometimes softness, sometimes sharp precision, sometimes the courage to say no. Her serenity amid motion teaches that peace and power are not opposites, but expressions of the same divine awareness.
In a world that often mistakes numbness for calm and domination for strength, Durga invites us to awaken a different kind of power; one that arises from the stillness at the heart of passion, discernment, and our deep connections.
You might see her as a myth, a metaphor, or a mirror. However you approach her, Durga reminds us of our capacity to protect what is sacred without becoming hardened by the fight. She reminds us that love, when embodied, can be the fiercest force of all.
Binary Aspects and Non-Partisan Power
It’s also essential to understand that Durga’s śakti, her divine power, is not partisan or bound to ideology. Her energy can move through anyone, regardless of political affiliation, when there is conviction, courage, and a will to act in service of transformation.
Now, every divine force has its shadow, and Durga, fierce embodiment of protection, discernment, and righteous action, is no exception. This is what makes Durga’s energy so powerful and so dangerous. Her force is raw; it does not discriminate between egoic passion and selfless service. The difference lies in the consciousness of the vessel through which she moves. Without self-awareness, Durga’s fire consumes. With awareness, it transforms.
The same Durga energy that fuels Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fiery denunciations of government corruption also animates Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s passionate advocacy for justice and equity. One may wield that fire through fear and polarization, while the other channels it toward collective liberation yet the current of Durga śakti runs through both. When invoked through the lens of ego or self-interest, her qualities can distort into something far from the liberated power she represents. What is meant to protect truth can begin to defend illusion; what is meant to liberate can start to manipulate to control.
Durga’s protective instincts, when unbalanced by the ego, can become hypervigilance; the kind that builds walls and prisons instead of healthy boundaries and the same sword that cuts through ignorance can start to cut through connection, isolating us from others under the guise of self-preservation. Her strength, when untethered from compassion, can harden into rigidity or self-righteousness. The clarity that once pierced illusion can become a need to be right; the leadership that once inspired others can become manipulation masked as conviction.
Shadow Durga is the armchair activist fierce in critique, but unwilling to engage in the messy, imperfect work of building something new. She demands perfection in liberation movements, cutting down anyone who fails to live up to her impossible standards. Her sword, once meant to destroy ignorance, now slices through the community, labelling others as “demons” and trapping them there in permanent opposition. In this way, the movement toward freedom can collapse under the weight of its own purity tests.
Just as light casts a shadow, power without humility can destroy what it intends to protect. Durga teaches us that clarity without compassion is violence in disguise. The work, then, is not to reject her fierceness but to temper it — to ensure that our righteous anger remains guided by love, and that our discernment still leaves room for grace.
When Durgaśakti moves through the larger society, it stirs conviction, mobilizes people, and births movements. It raises up leaders, topples false idols, and challenges stagnation. But without humility, that same energy can fragment movements, inflame division, and burn out the very people meant to carry it forward. If there is one thing I know for certain - it is that the Durgaśakti has awakened in the world. If you are attuned you most certainly feel it already - everyone teetering at the edge, ready for combat, yet most of us still not totally sure of what we are fighting or where we should direct our energy.
Discernment and the Yogic Path of Liberation
Metaphors often live most vividly when they unfold in real life, and Durga, in her wisdom, has a way of teaching through lived experience rather than abstraction, so let me share with you how Durga has shown up in my own life and teaching.
During the planning of the first Dark Before the Dawn retreat, I received a series of messages from a person who was upset about one of our community agreements: the no-smoking policy. By late August, the land where we were gathering was dry and at risk of wildfire. We were being hosted by an Indigenous leader who had spoken clearly about the misuse of tobacco by settlers, the way it has been stripped from its ceremonial roots, and the pain caused by substances used to numb rather than tend to trauma. We also had two attendees with breathing conditions, COPD and asthma, who needed protection.
The rule was not arbitrary; it was a reflection of care. Smokers were invited to use the designated area near the driveway, a few minutes’ walk away.
Still, this person felt excluded. Over several days, they sent long messages explaining that, as someone of Dalit heritage from Trinidad and Tobago, they saw my policy as a denial of their ancestral right to tobacco, even invoking social justice and human rights language, weaponizing their identities to manipulate the rules, and eventually threatening to contact the host Nation in protest and file a human rights tribunal against me.
I was furious. The entitlement, the disregard for others’ well-being, the audacity to involve Indigenous hosts, all while I was doing so much to care for my community while barely keeping myself afloat financially, sent fire through my veins. I could feel Durga’s energy rise within me, hot and sharp. My body reacted to the anger; my stomach tightened, and my breath grew shallow. I wanted nothing more but to lash out and cut deep. From a purely egoic perspective I wanted to cancel the entire retreat — all I could think was “Screw this! Why am I emptying myself for such thankless people?!” For those few days of exchanged messages, I could barely stand to eat.
But in that heat, (with the support of both my therapist and Swami Vidyanand) I meditated. I contemplated Durga’s bow and arrow. I remembered that She does not lash out wildly; She waits, She observes, and when the moment calls for it, She releases her arrow with precision. Her power is not reaction, it is discernment. To engage in battle with this person would have been to squander the energy that was needed elsewhere; to nourish, protect, and sustain the community preparing to gather in healing. So, I drew back my arrow by withdrawing from the exchange entirely with a clear and final “no.”
That was Durga’s teaching in action — not the fire of destruction, but the fire of clarity. Anyone who knows me before delving into yoga, and after knows just how petty and sharp my lil ego can me. Had I let my ego take the wheel I might have burnt the whole thing down, or said something that cause much more divisiveness in the community. Durga’s transformative power burned away my own self seeking desire to prove I was right and to demand this person’s respect. Instead I set a clear boundary, and redirected my focus to what mattered most: ensuring food, safety, and care for those attending.
Durga’s weapons are our spiritual tools: the bow of patience, the sword of discernment, the lotus of compassion. When we feel pulled in every direction by conflict, grief, or exhaustion, these are the resources that help us remember what we are fighting for. Durga does not destroy for the sake of destruction; she restores balance.
Sometimes, the most radical act of protection is to conserve our energy to aim carefully, act deliberately, and let the rest fall away. To invoke Durga, is to hold immense responsibility and to cultivate the maturity and discernment needed to wield power in service of love, not domination. Her gift is not simply the courage to fight, but the wisdom to know what is truly worth fighting for.
Meditating on Durga as Our Work towards Collective Liberation
In contemporary contexts, Durga’s symbolism extends beyond the personal. Her many arms remind us that the struggle for liberation — spiritual or social — requires collective effort. Just as her power is distributed across many hands, collective healing requires many forms of labor: activists, healers, teachers, caregivers, organizers.
Her lion represents the courage required to speak truth to power, while her serenity reminds us that liberation is not vengeance, but restoration of balance. Durga teaches us that fierce love is not the opposite of peace, it is what peace looks like in motion.
To call upon Durga is to remember the power that emerges when love refuses to give up, the power that protects, restores, and creates anew. She is the fire in the heart that keeps us going when we think we can’t. The stillness behind the storm. The fierce, unshakable compassion that rises when we choose to act from love, even when the world is burning. That is what it means to walk with Durga, not to escape the struggle, but to become the calm within the storm. When we act from the clarity of heart, our actions — no matter how fierce — are rooted in love, not domination. This is the true teaching of Durga: that spiritual power is not control over others, but mastery of the self in service of the collective whole.
I’d like to invite you to explore in your own life, where is your sword of discernment needed?
Join me for this contemplative practice on the Goddess Durga:
Final Notes
Durga reminds us that awakening is not passive; it is an act of devotion that engages the whole of our being. To be like Durga is to meet the world’s suffering without turning away, to ride into the heart of conflict with compassion as your armour, and wisdom as your weapon.
In this way, every breath, every act of care, every truth spoken in love becomes an offering to the great Mother, consciousness itself, who remains forever dancing in her many-armed grace.
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