Several mornings each week, I practice gentle yoga at home with video instruction, in order to regain some flexibility that I have lost from a sedentary lifestyle of consulting and writing. The asanas are wonderfully calming but I always look forward to the closing statement from Tara Lee, the instructor, who speaks so eloquently to my spirituality. She softly shares, ” I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you where there is love, peace, truth and beauty. When I honor that place in you and honor that place in me, there is only one of us. Namaste.”
If we are aware of international and national events that graphically depict the wretched state of conflicts in the world, we can easily become outraged and then discouraged. We humans have created challenges for ourselves and others. What we do to others, we also do to ourselves. The entire universe resides within us – “the bad and ugly misguided behaviors” are manifestations of our fears and our amnesia. We have forgotten who we really are. We are committed to thinking that we can only survive in this life by conquering or competing with “others,” even when one conflict simply leads to another, in a seemingly never ending stream of “inhumanity.” We struggle to make sense of it all. The conflicts are all rooted in the illusion of separation -the belief that somehow we are better or different or less than others. But the truth is as Tara Lee reminds us, “there is only one of us.”