How to Be Human: Lessons I'm Learning from Sri Krishna

Last week I closed my business. 

A small yoga studio that I loved nearly as much as the community that gathered there. 

Why close it if I love it? It’s a long story, but the short version is there has been a lot of life life-ing in the background whilst I was simultaneously trying to do all the roles that being a one-person-business asks of us, and for me, it just was no longer sustainable - at least not in the current season of life.

 Now I find myself in the “messy-middle”. The studio is closed and there's just the clearing up that remains. 

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been blessed to be offered an opportunity in the Middle East for a few months, working with some fab women. But that doesn’t start for a couple of months, and so I can enjoy a little breathing space.

That space has provided the opportunity to dive back into one of my favourite scriptures, The Bhagavad Gita. 

I’ve sat with the Gita several times, and it always seems to offer the teaching I need at any given moment. Sometimes it challenges me, sometimes it brings comfort, and often a sense of relief. 

I know many yoga teachers will quote Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras as their go-to user manual on life (and it is an amazing work!) but I find the Gita more personal. It’s like Sri Krishna is speaking directly to us as he talks to Arjuna. It answers so many of my practical questions about how to show up in life, and it always seems kind. 

During this reading there were two things that really leapt out at me as relevant to challenges I’m facing in everyday life. 

The first is sama darshan. Equal vision. Seeing the same divine presence in every living being. I keep finding myself thinking about that as I go through my day. I wonder what would change if I could consistently practice that equal vision with sincerity? If in the moment of frustration with someone, I could really practice seeing the same Self in them. If I could remember that God really lives in every one of us, and treat every interaction as an opportunity to remember…

The second is one that has brought me more comfort than I can really put into words. It’s a teaching that gave me the courage to open the studio 18 months ago, but reading it in my current circumstances, it brings relief. 

Sri Krishna repeatedly tells us to do our work, offer it to him, and let go of the attachment to the results. The strange thing is, I don't experience that teaching as another responsibility. Quite the opposite. It feels like someone taking a heavy rucksack from my shoulders. I hadn't realised how much energy I spend trying to manage outcomes that were never really mine to manage. Every time I come back to those verses, it feels as though Sri Krishna quietly says, "You can put that down now."

In these in-between seasons in life my logical mind wants a plan… a road map to take me from uncertainty to a place promising to feel safe. But perhaps that sense of certainty is itself part of maya.

Having faith that by doing the work and offering it with love is enough sounds naive in modern society, but I’ve come to believe that it is actually the wisest course of action. 

When I look back at life, I could never have planned the path I have taken and I have been blessed to have had some amazing opportunities to work in weird and wonderful places. I’ve never really had a plan, I’ve always just tried to put in the work, and do the best I could for the people I was working with in any situation. 

Somehow that led to working on ships in the fjords of Norway and the Arctic Circle, flying over the deserts of West Africa, working in embassies in the Middle East, and getting to share knowledge and skills with some wonderful women in Saudi Arabia. 

None of it could have been planned, and yet I spent many months worrying and stressing about what I would do next… then out of the blue an opportunity would pop up when I least expected it. 

So why the months spent in worry? The worry never helped. The Gita reminds me that the outcome isn't mine to carry. My job is simply to do the work, offer it to the Divine, and let go.

That's perhaps what I love most about it. It doesn't ask me to become less human. It simply shows me how to be human a little more skilfully.

Hari Om Tat Sat

राम राम 🙏