I See The Divine Light As It Shines Through You
Back in 2020, as the UK government’s pandemic response kept me locked indoors, I had to tweak my exercise habits.
Like probably hundreds of thousands of other people, one of the places I turned was Yoga With Adriene.
Adriene captures so many things I love about the internet: people who make things happen, one piece of art at a time, the access to something of such high quality and depth from my living room, the sense that you can be an entrepreneur with nothing more than a phone and still end up with an enormous following.
And like many people, her service was important in a strange and sometimes difficult time.
Adriene feels like she holds very gently the spirituality of yoga. One of the things she does is always bring in the word ‘namaste’.
Now I have heard the word namaste so many times in my life.
I remember regularly looking it up online. What does it mean?
I would read a kind of dictionary or Wikipedia definition with an answer that was, to be quite honest, too dull to remember.
And then when I read Fred Kofman’s book, The Meaning Revolution, it ends with a beautiful story from Kofman’s experience trekking in Nepal.
Instead of people who pass each other greating with ‘Hello’ or ‘How are you?’ they would say, ‘Namaste.’
And Kofman gave a definition that was the opposite of the internet one: it was too interesting to forget.
I see the divine light as it shines through you.
Wow. What a thing to say to people as you pass them.
It became a commitment for me to live into, of the kind I often create with my clients.
When I do this with someone I start with a question: what would make you sad at the end of your life?
Well, I would be sad if I hadn’t seen the divine light when it shined.
And then it can be reframed into a commitment: I am a commitment to seeing the divine light when it shines.
Sometimes we need this kind of language, even those among us without a faith, to really capture what matters.
Whether or not you believe, you’ve seen the divine light shine.
You’ve seen it in a sunbeam coming through a cloud.
You’ve seen it in the shadows of leaves, dappled on the ground.
You’ve seen it in a baby smiling at you.
You’ve seen it in your loved one’s eyes as they gaze into yours.
You’ve seen it on a sports pitch in a moment of magic that is beyond belief.
You’ve seen it in a mountain vista on a cloudy day.
You’ve seen it on reality TV in a moment courage.
And you’ve missed it, too.
And so have I.
And isn’t that sad?
We have the chance to see it, perhaps in every moment. Certainly in every day.
We have the chance to look at people as the enemy, or to look for the divine light.
We have the choice: am I content to let the divine light slide past me, or am I a commitment to seeing it when it shines?
And if we were to say - audibly or in our minds - ‘Namaste’ as we passed people on a hike, and if we were telling the truth about it, and if - therefore - we really were seeing the divine light as it shined through them..?
Well, how different might our lives be.
I would often speak my commitment - I am a commitment to seeing the divine light as it shines - before each coaching call.
I would then be tuned to seeing the divine light in the people I coached - leaders, coaches, researchers, more.
Sometimes strange things would happen: the sun would suddenly start shining through their window, making them literally shine to a point that the computer camera couldn’t really see them.
And then I would think: is this the divine light shining through them today?
One of the true privileges of the work I do is that I almost always leave a coaching session feeling more energised than I enter it.
Even if they content is heavy.
Even if I’m physically tired.
Because - as a coach I know said to me today - it’s always inspiring to speak to the people you coach.
That, I think, is because when people are held in the strange conditions of a coaching session, we see the divine light as it shines through them.
Each time you find yourself frustrated with someone, try this: see if you can say to yourself, with truth, as you look at them, I see the divine light as it shines through you.
Each time you look in the mirror, especially if you’re frustrated with yourself, try saying this to yourself: I see the divine light as it shines through you.
It will shift things.
I still occasionally return to Yoga with Adriene, and when she says, ‘Namaste,’ I say it back, feeling what it means.
I see the divine light as it shines through YouTube through her.
And it makes my day better.
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PS As well as my one-to-one coaching, I do leadership development work with organisations and teams. You can read about that and see many of the companies that have worked with me here: https://www.robbieswale.com/organisations-and-teams
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
Buy the 12-Minute Method series of books, written 12 minutes a week over three years, here.