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.

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