When Shiva Spoke in a Woman’s Voice

 

When Shiva Spoke in a Woman’s Voice

A spiritual contemplation on Lalleshwari

There are moments in spiritual history when truth does not arrive as thunder, but as a whisper so clear that it rearranges the soul. Lalleshwari, lovingly revered as Lal Ded and Lal Arifa, was one such moment. Through her, Shiva did not roar from mountaintops or echo through scriptures. Shiva spoke softly—through a woman’s lived awakening.

This was not symbolism. It was embodiment.

For centuries, Shiva had been imagined as silence incarnate—still, vast, beyond form. Yet in Lalleshwari, that silence learned to speak, not in commandments, but in recognition. Her Vakhs were not teachings delivered from above; they were revelations rising from within. She did not claim authority. She claimed truthfulness. And that made all authority unnecessary.

When Shiva speaks through a woman’s voice, the message changes texture. It becomes intimate. It enters kitchens, courtyards, grief, breath, and daily struggle. Lalleshwari’s spirituality did not float above life; it walked barefoot through it. She spoke of liberation while standing in the dust of ordinary existence. That is why her words survived—not as doctrine, but as memory carried in the body of Kashmir itself.

She revealed something radical for her time—and ours: divinity is not masculine or feminine; it is complete only when both dissolve. In her presence, Shiva was not the distant ascetic, and Shakti was not confined to power or fertility. They met as awareness and movement, stillness and speech, silence and song. Lalleshwari did not argue this philosophy; she lived it.

Her womanhood was not a limitation she overcame. It was the instrument through which truth found new resonance. She showed that awakening does not require erasing identity, but seeing through it. When she spoke, it was not a woman demanding to be heard; it was consciousness recognizing itself—using the voice available to it.

This is why her verses confuse the rigid and comfort the sincere. They refuse ornamentation. They do not seduce with metaphor. They strike with clarity. Lalleshwari had no interest in being admired. She wanted to be understood, and even that only insofar as it liberated the listener.

In a world that still debates who is allowed to speak for God, Lalleshwari quietly answers: God speaks through whoever is empty enough to listen first. Her emptiness was not absence; it was vastness without obstruction. Ego did not sit between experience and expression. What arose within her flowed out untouched.

She also shattered another illusion—that mysticism requires withdrawal. Her life was not an escape from society but a refusal to be imprisoned by its expectations. Marriage, gender roles, reputation—none of these defined her, yet none were violently rejected either. She simply stepped aside from false ownership. What remained was voice without fear.

Today, when spiritual spaces still echo disproportionately with male authority, Lalleshwari feels startlingly contemporary. Not because she argued for equality, but because she demonstrated completion. She reminds us that wisdom does not belong to a gender, and truth does not ask permission from power structures.

When Shiva spoke through her, the message was not “follow me.”
It was: “Recognise yourself.”

And perhaps that is her greatest gift. She did not ask us to become like her. She asked us to stop becoming anything else.

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Practical Daily Toolkit: Hearing the Inner Voice

1. The Voice Check (Morning – 2 minutes)
Before speaking your first words of the day, ask silently:
“Is this coming from habit—or awareness?”

2. Speak One Truth Gently
Each day, express one honest thought without force or defence. Let clarity replace performance.

3. Body-as-Oracle Practice
Pause once daily and notice where tension lives. Listen. The body speaks before the mind explains.

4. Silence Before Response
When triggered, wait three breaths before replying. Let the inner Shiva speak, not reflex.

5. Weekly Reflection (10 minutes)
Ask:

• Where did I silence my inner knowing?

• Where did I allow it to guide me?
  No judgement. Only noticing.