The Path

bertarajayogini
May 16
3 min read

There is an idea—gently whispered in yoga circles and echoed in the pages of books with lotus flowers on the cover—that at some point in life, you must “get on your spiritual path.” As if it were a road that forks off somewhere near midlife, maybe after the kids grow up or the diagnosis comes in. As if the path is hidden until a teacher reveals it to you, or a book changes your life, or a tragedy forces you to look up at the stars and ask why.

But here’s the truth: you never left the path.

You have always been on it.

From your first breath—when the world caught you crying and didn’t let go—to this very moment, you have been walking the road carved just for you. It is not paved in gold or lined with incense and chants. Most often, it is cluttered with bills and disappointments, grief and hope, the dirty dishes in the sink, the prayers you didn’t know were prayers.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, “Better to do one’s own dharma imperfectly than another’s perfectly.” It’s a staggering statement when you think about it. We live in a culture that celebrates comparison—be this, look like that, achieve more, be less of a mess. But Hindu philosophy teaches the opposite: that your unique life, your joys and your sorrows, your particular suffering, is the spiritual path.

You do not choose the first day you enter this world, nor the last. God holds the bookends. But everything between? That’s yours. That’s the dance you came to do. The love you give, the wrongs you try to make right, the dreams you feed, and the fears you starve. That’s where karma burns, where the soul grows tender from its friction with the world.

So many of us think we’ve made a wrong turn. We beat ourselves up for not meditating enough, not eating right, and not being kind when we should have been. But let me tell you something tender and true: it’s impossible to miss your spiritual path. It is not outside you. It is not somewhere else. It is you. You’re carving it every day with your longings and worries, your anger and your grace, your tired feet and your resilient heart.

In the field of Hindu thought, we understand that life is not just a series of random events—it’s a tapestry of karmic threads. Every emotion has weight. Every decision has direction. Your pain is not a punishment. Your confusion is not a detour. It is all movement. All purification. You are not broken. You are becoming.

When we suffer, our instinct is to escape. We look for ways out, for spiritual shortcuts. But the Gita teaches that you must not flee from the battlefield of your own becoming. You must stay. You must face the fear. And yes, that might mean sitting with grief as it breaks open your chest like a storm. Or learning to breathe through illness, not to fight it, but to listen to it. It might mean surrendering to pain—not because you enjoy it, but because it is part of the river that will carry you closer to truth.

Pain isn’t the opposite of spiritual progress. It is spiritual progress, when held with awareness. The fire is not meant to destroy you—it is meant to refine you.

We create the life we live not just through our hopes and prayers, but also through our worries and resistance. Every time we imagine the worst, we lend it energy. Every time we expect beauty, we give it permission to appear. Your reality blooms from your inner weather. There is no neutral thought. This is the sacred responsibility of being alive: you are always participating in creation. Whether by joy or despair, you are always weaving.

So if you’re suffering, don’t rush to fix it. Don’t try to leapfrog to peace. Stay where you are. Let the moment burn. Let it teach. Even illness is not off the path. Even death, when it comes, is not off the path. All of it is part of your dharma, your sacred duty to live this one precious life with your eyes wide open and your heart unarmored.