A Creation Story

The Bhagavad Gita

Salutations, bibliophiles.

Today, I’m excited to bring you Camilla Sanderson.

Camilla writes The Rising of the Divine Feminine, where she explores spirituality and living the good life.

Here, she shares with us the book that first put her on the path — The Bhagavad Gita. Enjoy!

— M. E. Rothwell

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For twenty years I worked in the publishing industry in New York City — my last position was as a V.P. of Subsidiary Rights for Penguin Young Readers Books. But was I truly “living my dharma?”

I had never even heard of the Hindu word ‘dharma’ until I was 45. While studying world religions at the Tree of Life interfaith seminary program in Amherst, New Hampshire, we spent time with the ancient, Hindu sacred text, The Bhagavad Gita. There is not one exact, equivalent English word for dharma. But its meaning centers around the idea of our “sacred duty,” or “the great work of our lives,” or our “original medicine” that if we do not express in the world will be lost and gone forever. Or our “personal legend” as Paulo Coelho puts it in The Alchemist. Or as the poet Mary Oliver writes, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” It can also be thought of as one’s purpose, or ‘what lights you up?’  

It takes tremendous courage to live one’s dharma as it requires the vulnerability inherent in being creative, and according to The Bhagavad Gita, in order to lessen our suffering we must also remain detached from outcomes — this is where the sacrifice lies, but also the freedom.

Before I ever heard of the idea of dharma, in 2011, my husband of 20-years-at-the-time, and I had been living for 11 years in a one bedroom apartment with 14’ high ceilings and a fireplace, on the parlor level of an 1846 brownstone on “the gold coast of Greenwich Village” on 10th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues in New York City. It was at this time, after Jamie recovered from 3 months of chemotherapy to treat a malignant tumor wrapped around a valve just above his heart, that we both decided to quit our jobs and move to TreeTops, a decades-old log cabin in the woods of Southern New Hampshire.

After moving here, I was serendipitously led to study with Rev. Dr. Stephanie Rutt at the Tree of Life Interfaith Temple, where I learned how to cultivate the courage to live my dharma; to strengthen the connection with my own soul; and to connect with my inner-divinity and inner-authority.

And through doing this, I heard the call to write.

When we left the city in 2011, we thought we would take just a one-year sabbatical at TreeTops, but we read the book Your Money or Your Life, and discovered we could live very frugal lives in the country. One year turned into two, then three. But we missed having a local group of friends and community so we talked about moving back to the city. At that exact point in time, a Thai Forest Buddhist monastery happened to take root on two hundred acres across the road and we delighted in getting to know the monks.

Also around that time, I set an intention to live a creative life — to live the writer’s life — to offer my “original medicine” in the world through writing. I earned an MFA and completed a draft of The Rising of the Divine Feminine and the Buddhist Monks Across the Road: A Memoir. I had the manuscript reviewed twice and re-wrote and re-structured the book based on feedback I received. I even completed an additional course: a year at the Gateless Writing Academy, where it was a joy to find a group of writers who recognize that writers need craft not opinion. (You may read more about my fantastic experience in Gateless in this article at Brevity.)

Through living the writer’s life I feel connected with my soul — like this is my soul’s calling; my dharma. By not living the writer’s life, I’d be missing my life purpose, and how tragic would that be?— I write that while smiling, as I don’t ever want to be too precious about it all. We all do what we need to do.

I will also say though, that walking the writer’s path has been the most challenging work I have ever done in my life, not to mention that you don’t often get paid as a writer. But now, having walked the writer’s path for the past 10 years, I feel that it is something that I cannot NOT do. I’m living my dharma. And if I don’t live my dharma, I lose connection with my soul, and life may become meaningless and depressing.

Still, the challenges are real. It’s not that I have to deal with an external boss, but my own Inner Critic is a harsher task master than any boss I ever had in corporate life. The financial rewards compared to the salary I made in NYC are laughable. Sometimes I miss working in a space with colleagues. And it’s harder to meet local people when you live out in the woods.

But at least I now have the tools to deal with these challenges. Meditation/a spiritual practice helps me to not identify with my Inner Critic, and to not be the effect of it. We live a very frugal life so I don’t need the amount of money that I needed when we lived in NYC. Instead of colleagues in a physical office space, I’ve been fortunate enough to have made great online connections with other writers, both through writing classes and to my delight, also through Substack. And the fact that a Buddhist monastery took root across the road in 2014, has helped us to make local friends and cultivate a local community.

And now that I’m living my dharma, I feel more authentic. Like I don’t have to wear a mask or pretend to be someone other than who I am. I don’t feel stress. I’m at peace with what is, in this moment, right now. I feel an ecstatic joy and a state of flow, especially when I write. It’s as though I drop into the creative flow of Life and simply allow whatever needs to be expressed through me. Writing down words from the expression of how this unique human form shows up in the world. Plus I love the flexibility of a writer’s life. How I can both simply BE, in addition to DO, as each moment may require.

When reflecting on the WHY that drives my work, my ‘original medicine’ is expressed through creative writing that often subversively stimulates an evolution of human consciousness. The Central Question infusing my work involves investigating how a woman, living in a patriarchal culture, may cultivate the courage to claim her spirituality in the world.

“Living my dharma” includes me shining the light on the alchemical transformation of a journey — and by offering the specifics of how I transformed my own journey, the personal is taken to the universal. This kind of alchemical transformation can also be seen when the lotus flower blossoms from the muck in which it grows. Stories of these alchemically transformed journeys are now needed, as we transition out of the era of patriarchal hierarchies and into an era of Conscious Balance. A balance of both divine feminine in addition to sacred masculine energies, both of which exist within us all. And through bringing back this balance, we address the spiritual aspect of the ecological crisis as we come back into harmony with Mother Earth.

Perhaps “living your dharma” will be essential as we move into this new era, and move away from endless consumerism that often involves selling your soul, which leads to sickness in body, mind, emotions and spirit.

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