#190 How to Find Hope in These Times

(Or...a bunch of Ramblings on God)

After writing this Substack today, I read it again. What it seems like, after writing, is a whole bunch of ramblings on God. So that is what I offer you today.

Ramblings on God.

Maybe they are all the thoughts from the last 24 Hours that I personally need to hear, organized, too. I hope they are of benefit to you.

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I recently moved my 5:30am morning meditations back up to the yoga shala, instead of sitting in the comfy chair in my bedroom.

In April, I built a yoga shala on the roof of my villa, and it was meant to be the place where I personally meditated and practiced yoga. In June, I stopped meditating in the shala when my partner moved in. He preferred meditating indoors, with air conditioning and a comfortable bed to sit on. We meditated together, never apart. Slowly, indoors just became my spot, even after he left. The shala turned into a space for hosting guests, not for my own practice.

Often your meditation seat becomes like a Pavlov bell. It conditions you to settle into stillness, to settle into silence. And so after he left, I never really moved back upstairs to the shala. I bought a chair which wasn’t really originally meant to be a meditation chair, it was meant to be a reading chair. But then, a meditation chair is what it became. Slowly, there was an energy around the comfy chair.

The comfy chair was the easy option. It was also the distracted option.

When I wasn’t moving to a dedicated space, I was half-assing my meditation. I was easier to distract. Easier to shorten the practice. Moving back to the shala made a huge difference. I’m now back at an hour meditation each day (as I was at the start of December).

When I land in meditation up there, there are moments of deep stillness where I hear birds in the distance. Those are the moments where I find myself connecting to God.

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This morning in my Zoom Bhagavad Gita studies class, we arrived at one of the best sections: Chapter 9 and Chapter 10, which are all about finding God and seeing God in everything.

Krishna says (This is the Stephen Mitchell Translation):

“All right Arjuna, I will tell you a few of my manifestations, the most glorious ones; of infinite are the forms in which I appear.

I am the Self, Arjuna,
seated next to the heart of all beings;
I am the beginning and the life span of beings,
and their end as well.

Of the sky gods, I am Vishnu,
of the heavenly lights, the sun,
Marichi, the chief of the wind gods,
among stars, I am the moon…”

It goes on like this for pages. (You will have to buy the book to read the rest of it in all it’s beauty!) The point of the poetic language is to show that God is everywhere and in all things.

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I am mostly off social media right now. My biggest trigger for using it is posting. When I post, I find myself logging back on to check likes, engagement, and responses. Right now, I send everything I create to Indah, my social media manager, to post. I’ve been on a few times in the last day to check messages, and each time I find myself scroll for a moment, see a post, feel how it makes me feel, and remember that I don’t want to be on social media at all.

The first thing I saw today was an article about some horrific things done by someone in the files. I don’t even need to elaborate. I know it’s being seen. The next thing I saw was videos of women on nights out in Manchester being filmed without their consent.

When you see things like this, it is so easy to get sucked into phases of darkness, depression, and sadness about the state of the world.

There isn’t really a neat conclusion to the way I move between deep faith in God and deep despair. I’m aware of how dystopian it can feel to be praying, and teaching devotion, while witnessing the reality of the world right now, so I guess this little paragraph is just acknowledging it, not bypassing.

This is what it means to forget and remember.

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This morning in my Zoom Bhagavad Gita class, the idea of God as a judging father came up - the idea that God rewards good people and punishes bad people. Many people couldn’t connect to that image.

I shared that even though I didn’t go to church as a child, I somehow still absorbed that idea.

The first time I remember being in a church was when I was about ten or eleven. A leader from my daycare passed away, and my mom brought me to the funeral. I remember lining up and eating a cracker. Someone asked me if I was Catholic. I shrugged my shoulders.

“I dunno,” I said. “They just told the kids to stand up and line up, so I did.”

That’s how little religious education I had, so the fact that even then, I still had this idea of God as a father judging us is so interesting.

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The next memory I have related to God is when I played Anne of Green Gables in a summer camp musical. There was a scene where I had to pray to “God.” One piece of feedback I got from my acting coach was that I said the word “God” with a sound of disgust. She told me to try it again, but to use a more loving tone. That was the first time I was aware of the attitude I connected to the idea of God.

It’s strange now, because I say the word God with such enthusiasm, and I spend time every day trying to develop a relationship with the divine.

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In the Gita, there is a line:

“Arjuna, all those who worship other gods, with deep faith, are really worshipping me, even if they don’t know it.”

What I take from this is the universality of prayer. There is no hierarchy. No matter who and what you’re praying to, no matter if you’re tired, if you’re messy, if you’re angry, if you’ve dropped your practice, if you’ve relapsed in your addiction…there is value in the practice. There is benefit from it. The translation can make it sound like Krishna is the peak of devotion, but what it’s really pointing to is that devotion itself is universal.

Someone brought up this Trevor Hall song line in connection to this:

“The truth is one but goes by many names.”

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One mantra that has themed my week is one I want to share. Everyone who has been in my Zoom yoga classes has heard it a lot, whether it was in my Bali Bhakti Monday morning class or in my Tuesday morning Bhagavad Gita class:

Om Asato Ma Sad Gamaya
Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Mrityor Ma Amritam Gamaya

“Lord lead me from the unreal to the real
Lead me from darkness to the light
From the earth to the open skies
Lead me from death to eternal light”

This mantra was done by Kevin James, who used to live in Bali. I loved this offering, because at a time where I’ve been feeling a lot of darkness, this has been a powerful light.

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There was a section today in the Gita that reminded me of a section from “How it Works” which is read in AA. The section says,

“Even if the most sinful person worships me with unwavering devotion,

he must be regarded as righteous,

for he has made the right resolve.”

The section it reminded me of is this section from How it Works. After listing the twelve steps, it says:

“Many of us exclaimed, “What an order! I can’t go through with it.” Do not be discouraged. No one has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcohol, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives

B) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.

C) That God could and would if he were sought.

I loved this connection, because of two things. First, it says “We are not saints, The point is, we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.” I love this because that it says God is for everyone - it does not discriminate. Even if you have caused harm in the past, you are still worthy of God.

The second is, “That God could and would if he were sought.” I love this line, because it points to the fact that if we find faith, we will be ok.

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Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras has a big section on Faith: When I am teaching the Yoga Sutra Study, I call it the Faith section (1.23 - 1.29). If you are joining me for “Resting with the Sutras” you will have to wait for a while until we get to this chunk! Because there are 196 Sutras - it will take a while!) But all the teachings say the same thing:

• 1.23: Liberation can come not only through discipline and effort, but through trust, love and surrender.

• 1.24 - 1.26: Ishvara is untouched by suffering, free from karma, the source of wisdom, and the “original teacher.” Ishvara is not a religious God, but Pure Conciousness/Divine Intelligence. (This is what keeps yoga universal.)

• 1.27 - 1.28: Ishvara is expressed through Om, and it should be repeated with feeling and awareness. This is where mantra practice enters. Faith + sound + Devotion is liberation.

• 1.29: The result of devotion. Through devotion, obstacles dissolve and awareness turns inward. Devotion becomes healing.

It all comes back to the same thing. Surrender to God.

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Today, I gave a journal prompt to my students: “Where in your life has it been difficult to find God/the divine?”

I asked another question, “What would it look like if I treated my daily life, my work, my healing, my rest, as a sacred offering?”

I answered my own question, and told my students how when I did this book study with Rolf in the fall, I didn’t really find this part of the Gita inspiring. He was saying, “Wow, that’s amazing, God is all these things, blah blah blah.” He was excited about it, inspired by it. But I wasn’t really feeling it. I was deep in my Instagram addiction at that time.

Reading this book for a second time, and this morning before teaching the lecture, I came out of a 60 minute meditation, had a short break, and then did a 20 minute meditation with my students before we re-read this chunk of the text.

“Wow….this is amazing!!”

I found myself inspired by it the same way my teacher was.

So the answer is that I must be in practice.

That is the only way I can find God.

When I logged onto Instagram today, I did see one quote of my teacher that was of use (amidst all the tragedy):

“We turn to yoga now because the world asks us to stay awake -

to meet uncertainty with grace

and keep the heart open,

even when it would be easier to close.” - Rolf Gates

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I hope you join me for my next classes (for more ramblings on God, lol).

My next Online Yoga Class -> Resting with the Sutras starts Thursday

You can join here.

My next in-person, Bali YTT is in June 2026 -> one spot left

You can join here.

And share with me in the comments…how do you find hope in these times?