Namaste

If there is good, there must be bad. Or so we tell ourselves.  Is this really the truth?  It is if we decide it to be.  A situation is only good or bad if you choose to give it that label.  The label we place on it then determines how we react.   Labeling and reacting is nothing more than a form of resistance.  The only way to react to whatever situation comes our way is with love.  Through love, we encompass and extend joy, forgiveness, and compassion.  We project no blame, no anger, no sadness.  Even in the most seemingly dire of times, we are at peace.  Significant loss, such as the loss of a loved one, often challenges us in this understanding more than any other circumstance.  But even in these times we can be at peace.

I attended a wake a few months ago.  As I knelt in front of the casket, looking at this person I had known since childhood, I understood something that I've heard over and over in yoga, but had not entirely grasped - that we are not our body.  Looking at this body, I could feel the emptiness inside of it.  But this emptiness was not a bad thing.  It was exactly as it should be.  The body had served its purpose and held a life inside of it.  Just because the body, which is temporary in this world, was no longer functioning, didn't mean the life was gone.  How could it be?  It simply doesn't make sense for everything that we are to just go away when the body no longer works.

Several years ago, I had a very close friend who was killed in a car accident.  He was in his mid-20s.  I remember going to his funeral and looking at him in the casket.  The first thing that came to my mind was that this was not the friend I knew.  It was an empty shell that held his life.  And now, that life is free.  It, like every life that leaves the body, is with us now more than ever.  When we lose a loved one, they don't leave us.  Not being able to physically touch, hold, or speak to them doesn't mean they are no longer there.  We just think that we need this proof of them in order for them to be with us.
This doesn't mea that death shouldn't or doesn't make us sad or in pain.  But when we can accept our situation and let it be what it is, then everything will be ok.  And then we will find comfort and peace.

As soon as you stop resisting what IS, you have given life permission to work for you.  In yoga practice, we end with "Namaste" which means 'the divine in me recognizes and honors the divine in you.'  That divine is the light within each of us that we all share and have in common.  It is what connects me to you and you to every person you might ever (or never) encounter in your life. It's what connects and continues to connect each of us to our loved ones who have passed forward.