Namaste means : the light in me bows to the light in you.
We’ve just returned from India, where we met for the Advanced Yoga Teacher Training immersion. We were in the land commonly known as Mama India, during the important celebration of Durga. Navratri is a nine-day period of introspection and purification. The festival ends with Dussehra, the celebration of good triumphing over evil, during which in some regions a huge statue of the demon Ravana is burnt.
Read more: Celebrating the sacred feminine through the 3 aspects of Shakti
In Europe, since the autumn equinox, and in the month of November, we are also invited by nature to follow its cycle towards darkness, to enter a period of introspection.
This season offers us the opportunity to plunge into our emotional depths, to face our apprehensions and fears in order to transcend them and allow ourselves to be transformed.
In these particularly difficult times, let’s go in search of that light within ourselves.
This takes courage, because in our daily lives it’s so easy to simply go looking for the light outside ourselves so that we can continue to be productive, socially correct or emotionally “stable”. Because it takes courage to free yourself from the “hearsay” and the “you shoulds”.
It takes courage to set out on a quest for oneself, to take this path towards the shadowy zones within. Because it’s only possible to pay for something once you’ve identified what it is.
It takes courage to look at what’s going on in those shadowy areas, to finally find the spark. For without darkness, there is no light. Because you can only appreciate the brilliance of the stars when night is at its peak.
Meet the shadow that Carl Jung called The Shadow.
“Carl Gustav Jung believed that at the end of the arduous exploration of our unconscious lies the discovery of the self, our inner light, the part of divine wisdom buried deep within ourselves. But the Swiss psychiatrist asserted that before reaching this light, the explorer must first encounter a character he called the shadow. The shadow can be defined as our inverted double, the person we could have been, but are not. It’s our dark side, and contains all the character traits that have not been able to develop in our personality. In a way, it symbolizes our opposite twin brother hidden in the depths of our unconscious.”
Le Pouvoir du miroir by Daniel Cordonier
It takes courage to face up to these particularly obscure external and internal events. Let’s take a look at the extent to which breaking the peace, division and judgment can destabilize us and (re)plunge us into our deepest fears.
To find this courage, let’s weave constellations of stars, links between us, communities free from communitarianism.
Let’s reconnect to that quality intrinsic to the human species, that of compassion and Love. Let’s ask ourselves how this spark of life present in everyone can be honored, without distinction. For each of them is reflected beyond borders, religions, colors, thoughts and traditions. Together, these sparks can light up the whole world.
Shanti, shanti, shanti ♡
Peace, peace, peace
