Understanding devotional love not as escape from the world but as active resistance to systems that demand self-erasure and the silencing of the heart.
Bhakti is often misunderstood as escapism, a way of retreating from injustice through love. But Mirabai's bhakti was combative. She loved Krishna in direct defiance of what her family, her society, her role demanded. This love was not a flight from the world; it was a stance taken within the world. In our time, grief and rage often arise from systems—patriarchy, racism, capitalism, family trauma—that demand we betray ourselves. Bhakti as resistance teaches that love itself can be a refusal. When we commit ourselves to what we truly value—to freedom, to truth, to the sacred within us—we necessarily resist all forces that would compromise that commitment. Mirabai's devotion to Krishna was a fierce no to the life mapped out for her. This concept reframes rage not as something to transcend but as energy that can fuel deep commitment to what matters. Grief becomes a measure of what we've lost when we betray ourselves; it motivates us to stop.
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