Social Workout

Finding Beauty

The Fierce Goddess

She is burningly fierce and infinitely gentle. Her beauty is unparalleled, even as her face is reddened from the heat of her own passion and rage. She has a closet full of outfits but favors dressing in vivid red from head to toe. She is so powerful that there are twelve forms of her, each form displaying a specific aspect of her personality and power. In her four hands she holds prayer beads, a book, and she makes the gestures of fearlessness and of graceful offering. You're either with her or against her. Draped around her neck and shoulders is a garland of severed heads, and her chest and face are smeared with their blood. From the midst of the gore, her three luminous eyes shaped like lotus blossoms shine like the rising sun….

Meet the goddess Bhairavi, who represents the intelligent ferocity that resides within us. When we stand up for something we care about, when we leap to defend someone we love, when we plunge wholeheartedly into our own passions and beliefs, or eliminate something detrimental to our lives, we are Bhairavi. Undeterred. Without doubt. Taking no prisoners. Fiery. Infinite. Bhairavi is always within us – she is a part of who we are. What is interesting is when she appears – what it is inside and outside of us that calls her to the surface.

To receive beauty and grace in your life, you sometimes need to be ferocious. First you need to cultivate an analytical intelligence that enables you to discern what benefits you and what is self-destructive. Once you have determined this, unleash Bhairavi. Sever what isn’t serving you. Do so with precision, clarity and deep self-awareness. Own your choices. Don’t be subject to her. Be her. Be terrible in your raging beauty, standing up for what you believe in, whom you love, and who you are in the world. Be passionately ferocious and fiercely graceful. Like Bhairavi, you become as luminous as 1000 suns.