Twinn Swan

If anava is the root of separation — the ego’s illusion of “I” and “mine” — then its shadow stretches far beyond the overt acts of domination that men may wield over women. It seeps into the inner lives of women, shaping thought, emotion, and identity in ways so subtle they are often mistaken for truth. The suppression of women by men is the outer symptom; the self‑suppression born of anava is the inward echo.

The Subtle Ego at Work

In the Shaiva vision, anava is not arrogance alone — it is the density of individuality that obscures one’s innate divinity. When experienced inwardly, anava can disguise itself as a fragile sense of self‑worth, a conviction that one must shrink or conform to be accepted. For many women, centuries of social conditioning have intertwined with this inner obscuration, giving rise to patterns of self‑censorship, hesitation, and fear of visibility.

The ego here does not scream “I am supreme” — it whispers “I am not enough.”

This whisper is no less an operation of anava than the loud assertion of control by men. Both are born of the same forgetfulness of the True Self. The man’s ego claims dominance; the woman’s ego assumes deficiency. Each lives under illusion, bound differently by the same knot.

The Inward Economy of Suppression

A woman who internalises suppression begins to police herself. She may diminish her voice, doubt her intuition, or measure her worth through the gaze of others. The social narrative teaches her submission; the ego converts it into self‑maintenance. In this way, anava perpetuates itself from within — subtle, invisible, yet profoundly effective.

True spiritual inquiry, however, exposes this inversion. When awareness turns inward, it becomes evident that inferiority is still a form of ego, because it frames the “I” as separate and limited. To think “I am weak” carries the same delusion as “I am strong.” Both statements orbit around an imagined centre that is not the Self.

Beyond the Mirror of Identity

Liberation from anava does not lie in replacing weakness with strength or submission with assertion. It lies in seeing through the entire construct — realising that both the superior and inferior stand outside the infinite expanse of consciousness. In that seeing, the false divisions fabricated by conditioning dissolve. The woman ceases to struggle against the image of suppression because she recognises her identity as Śakti itself — the living power of Being, not its reflection.

When she awakens to this awareness, external suppression loses its foothold. Her freedom is no longer contingent on social permission but rooted in the inner realisation that there was never a lesser self to begin with.

Toward a Shared Redemption

The unmasking of anava within women reveals that emancipation cannot be achieved merely by confronting outer forces — the inner architecture of ego must also be dismantled. As women dissolve their own anava, the field of collective consciousness begins to clear, allowing men too to glimpse their reflection in this shared bondage.

Only when both inner and outer forms of anava are transmuted by awareness does real equality emerge as the recognition that both Shiva and Shakti are one undivided light, mirrored through different vessels of the same divine play.