If you've been on a non-dual path for a while, you can probably say with conviction that everything is the Goddess. You've read the texts and studied with teachers, and on a good day, you've had glimpses of this understanding in meditation.

It gets a lot harder to hold onto that conviction when you read about another war killing thousands of people for reasons no one can explain, or when someone close to you keeps causing harm and can't seem to see it. That's usually when the age-old question returns: if everything is divine, then why does evil exist? And right behind that question is usually a second one that feels even more urgent: What can I do about it?

A lot of non-dual teachings handle this by telling you “It's all consciousness,” and there's nothing to fix, so the practice is to rest as awareness and let go of attachment to things being anything other than what they are. While that can bring temporary relief, it doesn't give you much to work with when harm is staring you straight in the face. The options seem to become limited to “acceptance” or feeling an inner tension or dissonance and wondering whether your practice is actually working.

Tantra sees it differently.

It takes evil seriously… as something real… and it explains where evil comes from without ever placing it outside the Goddess. It also answers that second question clearly, something most non-dual teachings never get to.

The tradition gives one of its most powerful answers in an epic story. Practitioners have turned to the Devī Māhātmya for well over a thousand years. The story opens with a king and a merchant who've both been betrayed by the people closest to them. They find their way to a sage and ask him why they can't stop thinking about the people who wronged them, and he answers by telling them the story of the Goddess and her battles with the demons. You don't need to know the story beforehand to follow along.

On the surface, it's a war story full of shape-shifting demons and a fierce Goddess who takes form to meet them. For centuries, practitioners have also read it on a second level-- underneath the battles is a precise teaching on how evil arises, why it's so hard to overcome, and how to respond to it without perpetuating it.

In this workshop, we'll draw on key moments from the Devī Māhātmya to see what they reveal about evil within and around us. You'll meet Mahiṣāsura, the demon who changes form every time the Goddess tries to kill him, and see why the ego does the same thing when you try to pin it down. You'll see how Raktabīja, whose every drop of spilled blood becomes another demon, shows up in the way outrage and division multiply across a whole society. And you'll discover the weapons the Goddess carries into battle, which turn out to be spiritual capacities you can bring into your own life and into a world that badly needs them.