Namaste

Namaste

I have always loved the word Namaste, a traditional Hindu greeting that has found its way into our Western culture. It symbolises reverent respect for the essence of ourselves and others. No translation can fully capture its meaning. Rather, it is a meaning which expands for us as we grow in respect for all life forms. It is sometimes translated along the lines of “the divine and sacred within me respects the divine and sacred within you.”

Machaelle Small Wright expressed this beautifully in her book “Behaving as if the God in all things matters.” Deepening spiritual growth includes the capacity not just to behave as if the God in all things matters. Gradually we expand into knowing that it does. Not only intellectually, but on a profound level of consciousness, in our bones, as it were.

Namaste: the Essence of the Sacred

Namaste recognises that, regardless of a person’s behaviour or attitudes, at core those who seem to be the most “evil” in our eyes are made of the same “God-stuff” as those we regard as saints.

I remember hearing a spiritual teacher asking his audience, “could you feel the same reverence for the essence of a Hitler as you would for that of a Mother Theresa?” He didn’t mean that we had to approve of Hitler (or whoever represents evil to us), or even like him. But if we couldn’t recognise that even the most seemingly evil people still have that essence of the sacred within them, it may be because we didn’t fully recognise the sacred within ourselves.

Namaste Prayer

“I honour the place in you in which the entire universe resides.
I honour the place in you which is of light, of truth, love, and peace.
When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, we are one.”

Namaste Words Set to Music

Several years ago (around 2011) I put together a YouTube video with the following words, set to the beautiful music of Brother Seamus Byrne and using photos we had taken around Ireland. Whenever I watch it, it reminds me that, at core, we all share the same divine spark. We can also share the same sense of vulnerability and uncertainty.

Often it is seeing the beauty in others that reminds us of our own. This reminds us to be kind and compassionate. Even if we have to be very firm, set boundaries or are in a position where we have to curb someone’s inappropriate behaviour, this will work far better if there is an underlying sense of respect for the other person.

Namaste Video Words (link to video at end of post)

I see Love rebirthing itself in you

I see you remembering how to love yourself

To accept yourself

I feel the Love you radiate and the Love you long for

I feel your truth, your tenderness, your strength, your vulnerability

Sometimes, I feel you feeling that what you are may not be enough.

Sometimes not even realising that this might be what you are feeling.

Awe and Wonder

I feel your concern that if I saw right into your being, that you would feel exposed and that it would be too painful.

I feel all of this because I have the same fear, that if you saw to the core of me I would feel exposed and vulnerable.

And yet when I feel even a hint of your deepest core, my heart melts in wonder, in awe, in absolute adoration, in reverence at the exquisite essence of you.

Reflections

I can see that everything in your garden is at its perfect stage of being for your truest purpose

The roots and seeds of the next flowering of your being

The flowers that spring from the waters of eternal life

The magnificent blooms

The quiet times of retreat, solitude and seclusion

The playful, joyful, boisterous delights

The frog that is just as precious as the prince

Mirrors

I honour the place in you where Spirit lives, breathes, plays, sings and loves

I honour the place in you which is of Love, of Truth, of Light, of Peace

I honour the place in you which is of the purest beauty, of the tenderest vulnerability, of the most joyful playfulness.

You are in that place in you, and you remind me that I am in that place in me.

The divine and beautiful in me recognises the divine and beautiful in you.

And, in the most intimate core of my being, shows me, with the mirror of reflection of me in you and you in me

The All-One-ness of all life

Rising in Love

And as I gently, gingerly, sometimes hesitantly rise (not fall) in love, with the Love that had never gone anywhere but out of my own awareness,

I know again, as if for the first time, the wonder that we and all of Life are One.

A One-der that is even more precious for having been forgotten.

Love is learning more of its own essence through our lost-and-found ebbs and flows.

Love is indeed a many-splendoured thing, and the splendour lives within the core of our own being.

Namaste