Living Namaste
A Spirit of Non-Negative Judgement
By Chris Hansen
Let’s face it, we all ‘judge’ the people around us; it’s simply part of the human mind to make informed judgments of the world we live in and this, naturally, includes people.
Yet, how many times have any of us made derogatory commentary, either out loud or in our minds, about people we see and interact with in public?
Our minds, after all, are awfully judgy things; geared to protect us from the outside world.
While the need to assess our surroundings and the people we come into contact with tends to come naturally, the negativity we oftentimes lace it with is a character flaw that has been normalized in our culture through entertainment, media, etc.
So we run those stereotypical judgmental tapes:
'What is she wearing?', 'Did he even bother to brush his hair?', ‘They’re buying that with their benefits?', ‘Could she have put a clean shirt on that yougin?' (and the list goes on) within a spirit of condemnation and enmity.
But why?
Mostly, we unknowingly judge others as an offensive; judging first to get the proverbial upper hand or higher ground. It is an offensive defense mechanism, our brains way of attempting to protect us from harm before the fact.
For those of us, and this unfortunately tends to relate for most folks nowadays, having had an all too heavy dose of trauma, we tend to live with a heightened awareness of the people and things around us. Yet, that heightened awareness need not be of all the negativity we witness, we need not react or initially act out in negative judgmental ways.
Fact is when we become less judgmental toward others we BECOME less judgmental toward ourselves as well...it's a win/win.
The way to rearrange this negative judgmental attitude is through the concept of Namaste.
Namaste is a Sanskrit (Hindu) term which simply means, 'I bow to you'.
There are much deeper meanings behind the term and its uses, yet, for our use herein Namaste can be defined as: 'bow(ing) to...’ or acknowledging the Divine that resides in each of us.
By training our mind and spirit to recognize that each of us holds (and all things actually hold) a spark of Divine presence we begin to manifest an acknowledgement of love, compassion and unity rather than adding more negativity to the space we reside in.
You can begin NOW!
We all critique and judge yet, when we do so through the positive outlook of the eyes and heart that sees a Divine spark before we see the physical characteristics (through a lens of trauma and fear) then we are able to separate our own human flaws from our humanity.
Then are we able to truly walk in a state of Living the Namaste concept of ‘bow(ing) to...’ our fellow humans in reverence and service.
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