Stop Chasing Outcomes. Start Living. | Bhagavad Gita Wisdom for Peace, Purpose & Freedom

In this episode, Christopher Shaw and Aeon Archer explore one of the most transformative teachings from the Bhagavad Gita: "You have a right to action, but not to the fruits of action." Through the lenses of Karma Yoga, meditation, mindfulness, recovery, spiritual awakening, conscious living, anxiety, stress, surrender, and personal transformation, they reveal how lasting peace is found not by controlling outcomes, but by offering ourselves wholeheartedly to the present moment. This episode includes a guided meditation designed to help you embody this timeless wisdom in your everyday life.

✨ Reflection Questions

• Where am I making my peace dependent upon a future outcome?
• What am I trying to control that doesn't truly belong to me?
• What is the next right action life is asking of me?
• If the outcome were removed, would this still be worth doing?
• How would my life change if I trusted the process more deeply?

🔥 Practice of the Week

The Next Right Action Practice

1️⃣ Arrive

Take three slow, conscious breaths.

Allow your body to soften.

Feel yourself fully present.

2️⃣ Notice

Bring to mind an area of your life that feels important right now.

Observe the outcome you've been hoping for.

Simply notice it with curiosity.

3️⃣ Ask

Instead of asking,

"What do I want to happen?"

Ask:

"What is mine to do?"

Sit quietly and listen.

4️⃣ Offer

Imagine placing the outcome into the hands of the Divine.

Keep your commitment.

Release your attachment.

Allow your heart to become spacious and free.

5️⃣ Live

Throughout the week, whenever you notice yourself reaching into the future, gently return to this question:

"What is mine to do in this moment?"

Then take that one faithful step.

And remember:

The fruit belongs to life.

The action belongs to you.

🔗 Links & Resources

Apply for Private Mentorship:
https://www.archershaw.guru

Upcoming Events & Webinars:
https://www.archershaw.guru/events

Immersions & Retreats:
https://www.merkabaretreats.com

Merkaba Temple Services:
https://www.merkabatemple.com/sundayservice

🎙 Podcast:
https://www.archershaw.guru/listen

📖 Teachings & Reflections:
https://www.merkabatemple.com/read

❤️‍🔥 Support Merkaba Temple

Venmo: @MerkabaTemple

https://www.merkabatemple.com/donate

🔱 ArcherShaw Temple — Teachings for Sovereign Awakening

If this episode served you, share it with someone standing at a threshold of becoming.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Archer Shaw Temple Podcast, teachings for sovereign awakening, sacred union, and embodied devotion. I'm Christopher Shaw here with Aeon Archer. May this transmission meet you exactly where you are and open the next doorway on your path. Let us begin.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

All right. Okay, so there is a verse from the Bhagavad Gita that has become one of the most transformative teachings in my life. The verse is you have the right to action, but not to the fruits of action. And at first, it can sound a little confusing. I know it certainly was for me, because it almost sounds as if the Bhagavad Gita is telling us not to care about the results, not to have goals or to dream or to strive toward anything meaningful. And for years, that was my misunderstanding of this verse. I felt like it was telling me to do nothing, but it's not quite what it was saying. I thought it was teaching me about detachment from life. But what I eventually discovered was that it is actually a teaching about freedom within life. The Bhagavad Gita is not suggesting that outcomes don't matter, because outcomes do matter, because outcomes shape our lives, our relationships, our work, and what opportunities appear in our lives. But what the chat what the teaching challenges is something much deeper than that. The belief that our peace, our sense of worth, our happiness should depend upon those outcomes. And that distinction changed everything. Because although this teaching comes from the Bhagavad Gita, its wisdom is universal. Whether you're building a business, raising a family, navigating recovery, pursuing your dreams, healing from loss, or simply trying to make sense of life's uncertainty, the question remains the same. Can you give yourself fully to what is yours to do without making your peace dependent upon the result of those actions? Most of us spend our lives believing that peace lives somewhere in the future. I'll be happy when, I'll relax after, I'll feel more secure when I make this much money, I'll finally be okay when. The mind is constantly negotiating with life, and the future becomes a condition for peace. But the Bhagavad Gita offers another possibility. What if peace doesn't arrive after the outcome? What if peace becomes available when we stop demanding that life unfold according to our preferences? Recovery talks a lot about this, releasing control. One of the deepest sources of human suffering is this illusion that we have more control than we actually do. We can control our effort, we can control how well we prepare, we can control our attitudes towards what's happening around us, and we can control our choices. What we cannot control is timing. We cannot control other people's decisions. We cannot control market conditions, circumstances, or how life unfolds. A good example of this is imagine you're applying for a job. You can write the best resume possible, and you can prepare thoroughly. You can show up confident and present, but you cannot control who else applies for that job. You cannot control the hiring manager's preferences. You cannot control the final decision. Yet, where does most of the anxiety come from? Not from writing the resume, not from preparing, not from showing up. The anxiety comes from trying to control what was never ours to control. And this pattern shows up absolutely everywhere in our lives. It shows up in our relationships, in how we parent, in our businesses, in our health, in our finances. And it can even show up in how we approach our spirituality. We suffer when we confuse responsibility with control. And the Bhagavad Gita reminds us that responsibility is ours, control is not. So over time, I began to notice something. Most people are not actually attached to outcomes. They're attached to what they believe those outcomes will give them. We say we want money, but often what we want is a sense of security. We say we want success, but often what we really want is to be validated. We say we want recognition, but what we really want is to feel worthy. We want a relationship, but what we really are craving is connection. The outcome itself is rarely the thing. The outcome is a symbol, a promise, a story we tell ourselves, a belief that says when this happens, then I can finally relax. And so we continue to negotiate with life. If I get this promotion, I'll be okay. If the business succeeds, I'll be okay. If they love me back, I'll be okay. If I become financially secure, I'll be okay. If my circumstances change, I'll be okay. But every time we reach a fruit, guess what? Another fruit appears. Another condition, another future. The grass is always greener on the other side. Another reason why peace remains just out of our reach. And the mind keeps moving the finish line. Because the problem was never the absence of the fruit. The problem has become believing peace existed somewhere else outside of this moment. So the radical insight of the Bhagavad Gita is that peace is available before the outcome arrives. This is something that recovery has taught me. Recovery made this teaching very, very real for me. When I first got sober, there was a part of me that wanted guarantees. I wanted a certainty. I wanted to be certain my life was going to get better like the next day. Like, get sober, next day, life's incredible. I wanted proof that everything would work out. I wanted reassurance that all the effort of getting sober was going to be worth it. I wanted to know exactly what my future would look like, but recovery does not work that way. You don't stay sober for a year, you stay sober today. You don't stay sober for 10 years, you stay sober today. The action belongs to today. Prayer today, honesty today, service today, connection today. The fruit may eventually become one year of sobriety. Luckily it did. The fruit may become 10 years of sobriety, and if I do it every day, it will. But those fruits are built through thousands of actions taken in the present moment, one moment at a time. Recovery taught me that life is lived through action, not outcomes. And if I become obsessed with tomorrow's fruit, I lose connection with today's action, therefore, actually delaying the fruit. The very thing that produces the fruit is today's action. So recently, as many of you know, Christopher and I moved into a home beside a river surrounded by jungle-covered mountains. Absolutely incredible. The stillness there is extraordinary. That's the kind of stillness that reminds you what silence actually feels like. And if you ask Christopher, I like silence a lot. But before we moved, there were weeks of uncertainty. Lease negotiations, paperwork, deposits, questions, concerns about how things would unfold. I spent countless hours thinking about all of the possibilities and all of the ways it could go wrong, and all of the ways that it may not work out, all of the ways that it might work out, trying to predict the outcomes, trying to prepare myself for every possible scenario. And eventually I realized something. Very little of that mental activity, of that energy changed anything. The worrying wasn't solving any problems. It was an attempt to control the future. I was trying to possess something that did not belong to me. The future. The only thing that belonged to me was the next action, the next conversation, the next document, the next decision. Everything else was imagination. And imagination is beautiful, but it can be a double-edged sword because the imagination often disguises itself as responsibility. But they are not the same thing because responsibility acts. Anxiety rehearses. And as I said before, spirituality can even become fruit seeking. Because one of the most subtle traps is that we get the is that we turn spirituality into another form of fruit seeking. We meditate to become enlightened. We chant to have a mystical experience. And we heal so we never suffer again. And we practice so we can arrive somewhere. But if we're trying to arrive somewhere, we're not arriving here. And suddenly spirituality becomes another achievement project, another future, another bargain. I'll be free when I awaken. I will feel whole when I heal. I'll be at peace when I reach some higher state. But the moment practice becomes a transaction, presence disappears. The mind leaves the practice and runs towards a perceived future, a reward. Meditation becomes about tomorrow. Prayer becomes about tomorrow. Spirituality becomes about tomorrow. Yet every authentic spiritual tradition points us back to the same realization. The sacred is here, now, in this moment, not later, right here. And the purpose of practice is not to acquire a future state, the purpose of practice is to become available to what already exists right now in this moment. And in that clarity, we're able to see what actions are our responsibility and what we need to release. So, what freedom actually looks like, because freedom is often misunderstood, freedom is not getting everything you want. Freedom is not controlling circumstances. Freedom is not certainty, it's not absence of challenge. Freedom is the ability to remain rooted regardless of the outcomes, to give yourself completely to what is yours to do, not your neighbors, to act wholeheartedly without demanding guarantees, to love wholeheartedly without demanding permanence, to serve wholeheartedly without demanding recognition, and to create wholeheartedly without demanding success. This is not passivity, like I thought. This is not resignation. This is not giving up. In fact, it is the opposite. Because when attachment falls away, action becomes cleaner. Fear no longer contaminates it. Neediness no longer contaminates it. Desperation no longer contaminates it. And the action becomes pure. Not because it is disconnected from outcomes, but because it is no longer enslaved by them. So eventually I realized that the verse is not really about action and outcomes, it is about identity. The ego identifies with the fruits. And the soul identifies with the action. The ego asks, What am I getting out of this? And the soul asks, what is mine to give? The ego asks, when will I arrive? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And the soul asks, what is the next right step? The ego is always seeking certainty. Yet the soul practices trust. And perhaps that is why this teaching has survived for thousands of years. It's nothing new. Because it points toward a timeless truth. Life is not asking us to control the future. Life is asking us to participate in the present fully, courageously, wholeheartedly. So I'm going to leave you with two questions. What action are you avoiding because you are afraid of not receiving the fruit that you want? And what would change if you knew the outcome was not yours to control anyway? Would you stop trying? Or would you finally become free to give yourself completely to this moment? And perhaps the deepest question of all, if the outcome were removed entirely, would this still be worth doing? I want you to sit with that. Because whatever remains after the fruit is removed is often very close to your dharma, to your soul's calling, to the right action for you. It's very close to your truth, very close to the work that life is actually asking of you. The fruit belongs to life. The action belongs to you. And perhaps the greatest fruit is not what you receive at all. Perhaps the greatest fruit is who you become while doing the work. That is the freedom this ancient teaching points toward. Not freedom from action, freedom within action, not freedom from life, freedom within life. And when that freedom is discovered, peace is no longer waiting for you in the future. It is available right here in this breath, in this moment. In the simple willingness to take the next right action and let life take care of the rest. So much simpler than trying to manage it all. Trust me. Christopher will now lead us in a guided meditation to embody this teaching. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Thank you. That was so beautiful. So much to think about, so much to ponder. Um, so all of our teachings are available on our YouTube channel. The YouTube handle is at Archer Shaw Temple, and you can find everything there. We also offer these teachings every week on our podcasts. We are on Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon Music. And because I know a lot of them can be deep, and there's a lot to think about and a lot to ponder, and sometimes it can be really helpful to listen to them again. So feel free to join us on one of those other platforms in order to listen to either this teaching or one of the other teachings that we've done over the last year. So if it feels comfortable for you, I'd like to ask you to gently close your eyes and take a slow deep breath. In and an even slower exhale. Again, breathing in. Allowing yourself to settle into this moment. Feeling the support beneath your body, feeling the gentle rhythm of your breath. There is nowhere else you need to be. This moment is enough. Now bring to mind an area of your life that feels especially important right now. Perhaps it's a relationship, your work, your recovery, your retirement, your family, your health, or a decision waiting to be made. Simply allow it to come into your awareness. Now notice what you've been hoping for. What outcome have you been longing to see? Without judgment. Simply notice. Now gently shift your attention. Instead of asking yourself, what do I hope will happen? Ask a different question. What is mine to do? And sit quietly with that question. What is mine to do? Perhaps a conversation comes to mind. A phone call, a prayer, an act of forgiveness, a moment of courage, a step you've been postponing. Or perhaps the answer is simply wait. Whatever arises, receive it with an open heart. Now imagine placing the outcome into the hands of the divine. You are not letting go of your commitment, you are offering your trust. Feel the freedom of open hands, feeling the peace of an open heart. And silently repeat these words. May I act with love. May I walk with courage. May I trust the unfolding of life. May I offer my actions and rest in the presence that is always within me. Take one more slow deep breath. Feeling the gratitude for this breath. For this moment, and for this opportunity to participate fully in life. Slowly bringing your awareness back into your body. Back into this community. Back into this sacred gathering. And when you're ready, gently open your eyes and come back to this place. Alright, everyone. We will move back into breakout rooms starting next week when I'm back in Puerto Vallarta, and hopefully when Aon has a new computer and we have satellite, internet, state of the art, jungle internet, and we get all of our technical ducks in a row, and then we'll be able to do that nice and smoothly. So please join us again next week. Bring your friends and we'll open the floor up to some breakout rooms so we can get back to talking about the teaching together. At this time, Aeon is going to lead us in today's offering.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Oh, one moment. Technical difficulties on my end, too. Here we go.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Oh, we got a we got a scene change.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Yeah. Scene change. Well, yeah, because uh the sun was starting to beat down on me pretty pretty hard. So I needed uh to move locations. If any this scene is a lot prettier, anyways. It is pretty, yes. Would you like me to do it or are you okay? Yeah, uh go ahead because I I've wait, wait, wait, I think I found it.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Uh yep. Okay, here we go. All right. Before we move into today's announcements, uh, you go ahead and do it. I messed it up again. You're doing great. You're doing great. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, go ahead, because I messed it. I lost it on the screen.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Oh, you lost it. He lost his telephone. Okay. So let's take a moment for sacred exchange, everyone. Today's teaching reminds us that we have a responsibility to our actions. Not because they're they guarantee a particular outcome, right? But because they are an expression of who we are becoming. So giving is one of those sacred actions. It is a practice of generosity, a practice of trust, a practice of participating in something larger than ourselves. Every week, this temple is made possible by all of you because you choose to support this community with your prayers, your presence, your service, and your financial gifts. If Merkaba Temple has become a place of encouragement, a place of healing, a place of spiritual growth, we invite you to participate in today's offering. And it doesn't matter whether it's $1 or $5,000. You can give at MerkabaTemple.com forward slash donate at the website. You can also choose to select a daily, weekly, or monthly offering that just does it automatically with your credit card. That can be really helpful. Or you can also open your phone to Venmo and then you just type in Merkaba Temple, all one word, and you can Venmo something over. And all of our offerings go to support the Temple to pay for this Zoom room and for our uh events in our community and to support all of us. So to all of you who give, we thank you. Your generosity helps us continue to share these teachings with people around the world. And we are so, so, so grateful.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Before we close today, we do have three exciting announcements to make. First, if you live in Proto-Vayarta or the surrounding area, we'd love to invite you to join us this Wednesday as we begin our new weekly Satsang gathering at the beautiful Archer Shaw River Temple. So each week we will gather for meditation, mantra, spiritual teaching, authentic community, and meaningful conversation in a peaceful setting surrounded by the river and the mountains. So if you've been looking for a local spiritual community, this is a beautiful place to begin. You can learn more and register at archershaw.guru forward slash events.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

And second, we are now booking private and couples murkable retreats in Puerto Vallarta. These are immersive experiences. These immersive experiences are so completely personalized and designed to help you step away from the noise of everyday life so you can reconnect with yourself, your relationship, and what matters most. I mean, imagine walking to your retreat center across a suspension bridge, and that's the only way to get there because there are no cars, there's no noise. The only thing you will hear for a week is the beautiful rushing sound of the river, the rain, the creatures. And you can finally hear you. So if you're ready for that and we are ready for you, please walk this journey with us. You can learn more at MercaboRetreats.com.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

And finally, we know that not everyone is ready or able to travel to Puerto Vallarta. That is why we also travel throughout the world, offering private sacred ceremonies for individuals, couples, families, and chosen families. We will bring the Archershaw Temple experience to you. Whether it's your home, a retreat property, or another meaningful location, we create the same intentional, safe, and deeply supportive container that we offer here at the temple. So if you'd like to explore creating a private experience in your own community, we'd love to have that conversation with you. Simply reach out through our website and let's begin exploring what's possible. So let's take a breath together, deep breath in, and release. Gently returning to stillness. We will close in prayer.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Divine light, in us, through us, and as us. With grateful hearts, we thank you for this time together, for every prayer, every breath, every song, every teaching, every moment of remembrance. As we return to our homes, our families, our work, and our communities today, may we carry this wisdom into the ordinary moments of our lives. May we recognize that every conversation, every decision, every act of kindness, every opportunity to serve is sacred. May we walk through this week with open hearts, steady hands, clear minds, and an unwavering trust in the quiet wisdom that guides each faithful step. May our actions become expressions of love. May our words become instruments of peace. May our lives become offerings of compassion, courage, and service. Bless those who are beginning something new. Bless those who are waiting patiently. Bless those who are making difficult decisions. Bless those whose hearts are healing. And bless those who quietly carry the hopes of tomorrow while faithfully living today. And may we all remember that peace is not waiting at the end of the journey. Peace walks with us breath by breath. Step by step, as we offer ourselves fully to the life you have entrusted to us. May all beings everywhere know peace, may all beings everywhere know love, and may all beings everywhere know freedom, and may all beings everywhere awaken to the divine light in them through them. And as them guru. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Thank you for being here with us at Archer Shaw Temple. If something in this teaching helped your body soften or brought you back into yourself, let it keep moving. Share it with someone who's ready. This temple is sustained through conscious participation, through those who feel the resonance and choose to support the work from clarity, not pressure. If you feel called into write exchange, you're welcome to support the mission on Venmo at Merkaba Temple all one word. And if you'd like to go deeper, you can schedule a complimentary soul alignment session at archershaw.guru. Until next time, take care of your nervous system, walk gently, and stay close to what's true.