DHARMA

Devotion to dharma, to life.

The Slow and Steady Revelation of Dharma

“When everything you do becomes a devotional act, work isn’t work anymore. It’s Dharma. And that is a doorway to your belonging.”

Dharma is one of those big, shimmering words. It gets translated as purpose, or truth, or the thing you are here to do. But it's not as simple as picking a job description or deciding to teach yoga. Everyone can put on the leggings, learn the sequences, guide a class. That’s not Dharma.

Dharma lives deeper. It’s not about having matching outfits (however nice that might feel) or helping people get bendy and “mindful”. It’s about the fire that draws you closer to life itself, the thread that runs through devotion, practice, confusion, stillness and hope.

When Dharma begins to reveal itself, it doesn’t arrive neatly wrapped up in a bow and ready to be revealed. It shows up slowly, over months and years, like a pulse becoming clearer. 

Dharma is not just a pursuit, a goal, a dream. It’s not a way of life, or the culmination of all your studies, training and experience. Dharma is a sensation. Dharma is an emotion. Dharma is a movement; it’s dynamic, multifaceted and rich. It can be tasted, felt and heard.

And Dharma speaks the loudest in moments of attuned aliveness. It’s there in the times when love, connection, pain and possibility constellate into embodied awareness. Dharma is less about what can be offered to others through your work. It’s recognising the gifts that light up your heart, gifts that insist on being shared. Gifts that bring you closer to truth, to life. 

Dharma speaks loudest in the moments of attuned aliveness.

When Dharma Gets Buried

And yet, Dharma is not immune to the grind of the everyday. It can become buried under layers of practicality such as your mortgage, ever increasing rent, mundane but necessary jobs, responsibilities. How do you live your Dharma AND pay the bills? 

We live in a (western) world that does not want us to uncover Dharma. Capitalism distracts us, makes us play the rat trace, where worth is judged by promotion and a new bathroom. Under those tiles, the heartbeat of devotion becomes harder to hear. 

And so, we can confuse money and Dharma. Often, Dharma becomes antithetical to wealth. It becomes the thing you do on the sidelines that doesn’t generate money. The noble pursuit of your heart where the reward is in your service, not your bank balance. 

Dharma Wants You Free

But Dharma doesn’t want you to struggle. It wants you to live. It wants you free. So whether it’s buried beneath the bathroom walls or diminished, hobbling along, tired and worn out—Dharma waits. It reshapes. It finds new forms.

Sometimes it’s rediscovered in the quiet space between two people. Sometimes, when you’re infinitely alone. Sometimes, it re-emerges in the inner knowing of your bones, your cells; these are the places where it always throbs. Sometimes, it floods you as you chant the mantra you've been singing for years. Dharma reveals itself in experiences that aren’t afraid to touch the raw and the real.

Sometimes Dharma floods when you are all alone, sometimes it is when you are surrounded by your most beloved community.

The Sacred Responsibility of Living Dharma

But how do you trust, when Dharma is concealed? When you have strayed so far from the path that you’ve forgotten that you were even walking one? There’s a Sanskrit word which can always point you back: Sraddha. This means infinite trust. Infinite trust not only in the clarity but also trust when you can’t see. As Tara Judelle says, it means unequivocal trust that “everything is conspiring for your awakening.” 

From this lens, there is no straying from the path. Everything is path and everything is leading you to your Dharma. Your Dharma is in the lost as much as in the found. The lostness is an essential part of the finding. 

So, if you want to live in and through and with your Dharma then you accept a sacred responsibility. That when the control, the loud voice of logic and even your shy voice of doubt is trying to keep you small, you remain in trust. 

This is the responsibility of Dharma. To be in full trust, even when the path is concealed. Especially when. This means acting out of Shudda Vidya, pure knowledge. The inner knowing that is beyond reason, action and belief. To trust that inner knowing even when your own ‘knowledge’ is limited or conditioned.

And this is why we practice. To fortify your capacity to know even when the world around you is shrouded in concealment. To listen for the light, the hand, the soft caress in body that reaches for you and says, ‘it’s this way, my love’.

“It’s this way, my love”

Listening to the Place That is Ready to Offer

Living Dharma is not about striving to get somewhere holy. It’s about standing at the centre of your own life, as it is, and allowing that aliveness to ripple out. It’s to live so fully in the truth of your own being that others feel invited to do the same.

That is Dharma: to take a place in the heart of life, with all its mess and all its blessings. And to know that this too is the path.

In some ways, Samāveśa School of Tantra, Somatics and Embodied Yoga is devoted to Dharma. Dharma is the thread which runs through all our trainings and immersions, from the 300 Hour Embodied Yoga Training to How Not To Be A Humble Healer. 

Here, we bring people into their Dharma. We honour the ways that the teachings call to each of you, every being who passes through our temple doors. Every being who is willing to taste more of life, the agony as much as the ecstasy. Every being who is ready and able to fully inhabit their body, to fully inhabit their life. The teachings call to everyone in their own way and when you listen to the parts of you that can receive the most, this is where you meet your Dharma. The place that is able to receive is the place that is ready to offer.

To bring people into their Dharma is to bring them into community. To bring them into devotional practice. To bring them into their bodies, to bring them into soul. To bring them into relationship with Goddess, with self. And this is what we do, here at Samāveśa.

If you are ready to step into your Dharma, into your life, then join us.

At Samāveśa, we honour the ways that the teachings call to each of you, every being who passes through our temple doors.