#171 The Courage to Walk Away: Lessons from the Bhavagad Gita on Following Your Path
How authenticity, meditation, and surrender can lead us out of resentment and into freedom.
I’m very fortunate to be studying the Bhagavad Gita with two teachers right now. I’m in a group book study with Rolf, and I’m also exploring the text line-by-line with Anvita. These regular calls are helping me prepare for the online Bhagavad Gita course I’ll be teaching in January, and I feel more ready than ever! (Join me for the Gita Studies starting January 5/6 Tuesdays from 7am-9am Bali Time (Mondays from 8pm-10pm EST!)
Two years ago, I started studying this sacred text but only got halfway through. I think it was a bit beyond what I was ready for. Having not developed a daily meditation practice yet, I wasn’t having any direct experience of what the text was intellectually teaching. Last year, I almost launched a course on it but stopped myself - something said, not yet. This year, everything feels different. With a year of daily meditation under my belt, I can sense the teachings moving from an intellectual concept to a felt experience. I can feel the readiness within me.
A few teachings from my Gita classes stuck with me this week that I wanted to share.
1. The Dharma of Being Yourself
Krishna tells Arjuna:
“It is better to do your own duty badly than to perfectly do another’s. You are safe from harm when you do what you should be doing.”
The Gita’s battlefield represents the inner conflict of the mind - the struggle between our higher and lower selves. Krishna reminds Arjuna that everyone has a unique svabhāva, an inner nature that determines their dharma, or sacred duty. Trying to live someone else’s truth - no matter how noble - leads to fear and disconnection. Living your own truth, even imperfectly, is the path to liberation.
So many people come to the sober path through this same lesson. We fall to our knees, realizing we’ve been living out someone else’s version of life. Stopping drinking is rarely the end - it’s the beginning. Sobriety peels away the layers of false duty: the job that drains you, the marriage that no longer fits, the identity that feels borrowed.
For me, I’ve learned that when addiction isn’t healed at the root, it transfers - to Instagram, to food, to coffee, to anything that numbs the truth. The deeper I go in meditation, the clearer my dharma becomes.
This week, I realized something I’d committed to isn’t right for me. It’s not about anything other than it’s simply not my path. I could still do it well, maybe even perfectly. But it would be someone else’s dharma. And the most loving and kind thing for everyone involved would be for me to let it go.
I’ve been here before: clinging to something that served my ego more than my soul. When it finally fell apart, looking back I saw clearly that I had held on too long.
Now, my meditation practice is helping me hear my intuition with startling clarity. I don’t overthink anymore - the answers rise up from stillness, and then I act quickly when I know.
Last night, before sleep, I knew exactly what to do. In stillness, it came to me who’s dharma this role was that I have been meant to pass on to them. I feel like I am almost the connector who possibly came at this moment in time for this reason! I communicated to everyone and involved, and today, everything aligned. There is a peace that sits so deeply when I am aligning with my dharma.
I came across a quote this week by Scott D. Clary that captured this perfectly:
“Stop asking people what they think you should do. They don’t know. They’re guessing based on their fears, failures, and limited experience. You already know what to do. You’re just hoping someone will give you an easier answer.”
This is the truth.
Because isn’t that what Arjuna was doing? Standing on the battlefield, paralyzed, asking Krishna what he should do - when deep down, he already knew.
We all do this. We seek easier answers instead of trusting the quiet voice within. But the more I meditate, the more that voice becomes unmistakable.
My dharma right now feels more and more clear: to just be S L O W. Slow flow. meditations. kirtans. community. my peaceful home. sitting with my kitten Zero.
I’m not the power yoga teacher I used to be.
I’m not the jetsetter I once was.
I read something this week that I feel like encapsulates this shift for me:
“No one talks about the late 30s and 40s personality shift - when you no longer want to be impressive. You want to be rested, regulated, and completely unavailable to anything that drains you.”
yes.
2. Letting Go of Resentment as a Spiritual Practice
The second insight came from one of my teachers, who said something that wasn’t directly in the text but deeply connected to it:
“I’m not a fan of demonizing or attacking something as part of your spiritual practice. That doesn’t serve you. My teachers say: the visitors who come to your forest pool are wondrous creatures - don’t find them evil and attack them.”
This struck a chord in me. For much of my life, I’ve lived with resentment (that I wasn’t even aware of) - seeing others as the cause of my suffering. I used to hold so much resentment towards one of my YTT teachers, on one of the courses I took, for example. (I wrote about this resentment in Sober Yoga Girl!) I thought he was too strict, too harsh. For seven years, I carried that resentment until I finally realized a few things:
1. He was just a human being, doing his best (just like all human being are.) It wasn’t that he was trying to hurt anyone by his choices, we just happened to be on his path.
2. It was my job to properly research my YTT beforehand and choose the one that was right for me. This program obviously wasn’t the right one for me, but I was the one who had chosen it.
3. When I found the program was misaligning, I could have just decided to leave. Me staying was how I contributed to my own suffering, and the later resentment I had towards my teacher for a long time.
Almost ten years later, I now am so grateful that I did do that course - because I learned so much from it. However, I see from the example how much power I assigned to him - when I really actually had a lot of power to control the situation. I also see how at times in my life I wasn’t following my own dharma - I was following the dharma of others - leading to my suffering.
When I look back on my life now, I see now that I often stayed in situations for far too long that that caused me far too much pain - not realizing I was the creator of my own suffering. I was the creator of my reality. I was choosing environments, jobs, and relationships that were chaotic and not the right fit. I held on, and resentments deepened. That was no one’s fault but me.
This year, I’ve become the master of walking away.
It’s not from fear or anger - but from compassionate self awareness. And from humility.
If letting go alleviates the suffering of myself and others, then why hold on?
That, too, is part of dharma.
Integration: The Freedom of Alignment
The deeper I go into the Gita, the more I see that living dharma and releasing resentment are the same journey. Both require faith. Both demand surrender. Both ask us to trust that what falls away was never truly ours.
Insight comes when it comes.
We can’t force it - only make space for it through our meditation practice.
When we stop fighting life and start aligning with it, the path unfolds - one step, one breath, one moment at a time.
The next two online courses I have starting are:
Bhavagad Gita Studies January 5/6 start date (sign up here)
How to Meditate January 2, 3 and 4th start date (sign up here)
My upcoming offerings at Mindful Bali:
200 Hour YTTS
Spring 2026: March 15-April 5, 2026
ONE SPOT LEFT IN SPRING 2026
Summer 2026: June 14-July 5, 2026
Fall 2026: September 20 - October 11, 2026
Ask us to break it up into one and two week chunks if you can’t come to Bali for the whole three weeks at once!*
300 Hour YTTS
July 5 - 25, 2026
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August 18 - 23, 2026