The light in all of us

When you end a yoga session, you put your hands together in front of your heart, bow slightly and say, “Namaste.” The other day my instructor reminded me that “namaste” means, “The light in me honors the light in you,” and it got me thinking.

Here’s what I like about this: to do this, you have to first recognize and acknowledge the light in yourself—“The light in me”. I have to say that there have been times when I’d have been hard-pressed to find light anywhere in my vicinity and certainly not in myself. Saying “namaste” means that—for at least the moment—I recognize and acknowledge and honor it.

And then you have to recognize and acknowledge the light in the other person(s). And sometimes this can be difficult. (Not WRT my yoga instructor, obvs, but just thinking of “other people”.) You accept that every single person has something of light within them, even if they’re doing everything possible to be nothing but darkness. You’re looking for the light so you can acknowledge and honor it.

I realized recently that this is not my default setting. (I was chatting with a colleague about a work situation, and I said, “[Other colleague] assumes good intentions. I want to think I assume good intentions, but it turns out I assume jackasses.”) I have a tendency to dismiss possible good, especially when I am presented with irrationality, hate, anger, racism, misogyny, stupidity, bloodymindedness and about a squillion other high crimes and misdemeanors. I confess that I don’t know that looking for light beyond or through all that crap will provide a return on the effort, but it might be interesting to test the theory.

This is something I can work on—looking for and honoring the light; both in myself and in others. And I wonder...if more of us tried looking for the light, perhaps—I mean, just maybe—it would bring more of it into the world?