Day 35 - What Namaste Really Means
- nataliedoesyoga
- Dec 21, 2014
- 4 min read
When we say "Namaste" in yoga, we are doing much more than greeting each other - doing much more than thanking each other - we are acknowledging each other in the most intimate possible way. We forget this. We say the words out of habit, without realizing the promise we are making to one another.
Namaste means, "The Light and the Darkness that COEXIST in me acknowledge and honor the Light and the Darkness that COEXIST in you. Because this Light and this Dark exists within all of us, we are the same. We are ONE."
I've found that many yoga teachers forget to mention this crucial balance. I've heard so often the repeated mantra, "The Light in me acknowledges and honors the Light in you." This is beautiful. It's positive. It acknowledges that there is a light within all of us; BUT it is so important that we also recognize, there is darkness in all of us, too. If we do not give each other permission to sit with our own darkness, we begin to feel it is unacceptable to give ourselves permission to sit with our own darkness.
I have struggled and fought with this concept for years. I have chased the light without ever being willing to embrace the darkness as essentially a part of me as the light. That space of darkness has always been painful for me - shameful, a space of weakness.
It is only as I have sat on the sidelines of another's great battle that I have come to truly understand and appreciate the darkness in others, and, through these observations, the darkness in myself. Never before have I encountered a more beautiful human. He is truly the most inherently pure individual I have ever met. But there is great darkness in him. What makes him remarkable is his self-control. He is wholly unwilling to release his darkness on those around him. He withraws. He turns inward. He hides himself away.
As I have come to know the pieces of him he's given me, I have come to understand that darkness does not exist in a space of shame, anger, confusion, and hate, as I've always believed it did. Darkness manifests itself in as many places, as many ways, as love does.
Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, and good people push the people they love away, with the hope of sparing their beloved's feelings. But the people who love us want more than anything to share our pain, to sit with us in our darkness, and just hold us. There is no higher human purpose or honor than to walk with another through the darkness, back into the light.
But people, myself included, we don't always allow it. It is a learned skill, to lean on the ones we truly love. We test our weight, never knowing how much is too much. We don't want to break the ones we love. We do them this disservice by refusing to acknowledge their own inherent strength.
When we self-isolate, when we push people away, it is always out of fear. But we cannot be blamed. It is easy to be afraid. It is harder to trust that love is as strong as it is. And we can't be upset with someone whose heart is too hurt to trust.
This is a lesson I've struggled to learn, struggled to understand. The darkness, I've always thought, was a place where things disappeared, where everything is hazy, and the truth is lost in the shadows. I was wrong. The darkness is a place where the truth - a light in and of itself - shines out brightest of all: the truth is, there is darkness and light inside all of us; both exist in equal measure, and without one, the other cannot be.
When I say Namaste to you, I am acknowledging both the light and the dark within you, I am honoring this yin-yang balance that makes you everything you are; I am telling you that I understand, because these opposing forces exist within me, too; and I am giving you permission to acknowledge, accept, embrace, and learn to love every part of what makes you who you are - the light and the darkness that sometimes feel like a great churning, tumultuous mass inside your chest.
You are not alone. I am not alone. You and I, we have each other. We have every person around us, who are beautiful cocktails of light and dark.
Namaste - we see each other for nothing more and nothing less than precisely what we are. We honor each other for being these people. We believe this is enough. And in acknowledging, accepting, understanding that these two forces exisit inside all of us, we may come to realize that we are the same. We are one.
So Namaste, my friends. And thank you, to the person who unintentionally, unknowningly taught me this beautiful lesson. It's okay to be in the darkness sometimes. I see now, that darkness does not make a soul any less beautiful. The darkness only makes the light a little brighter.
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