Namasté is a composite of Sanskrit words ~
Nama - bow or bend
as - I
te - you
I bow to you.
The divine light in me honors the divine light in you.
A timeless connection between two souls, recognizing equality in all.
Hands meeting over the heart - 10 fingers coming together in unity, closing the eyes, bowing the head to another and knowing in truth that we are all united.
As a general greeting, namasté is a social transaction when greeting another as well as communicating happiness as the sight of the other. It has been said that by putting the hands together like a knife might allow one to cut through all differences moving straight toward common and shared ground known to all people in all cultures.
I close my yoga practice using namasté and I always privately add another blessing to each student as my class ends. I guess that is the Christian in me elbowing in to lay on more love. I have learned so much from the practice. Becoming fully present in the moment is one of the lessons I preach and am very, very good at during practice, and yet have a lot of room left for improvement off the mat. To fully experience the beauty and richness of life, you need to be fully present. Mostly present just won't do. Unfortunately, with the fast paced lives most of us fly through we become overloaded with stimulus. We allow our full attention to focus on more than one thing at a time - sometimes multiple things consume each minute. It can appear that we are slacking. Two timing our e-mail. Double-crossing the person on the other end of the phone. The cell phone, of course. Why would you stay at home and talk on the phone, when you can be driving somewhere and getting proactively somewhere ELSE. I am reminded of the movie "Sabrina" when the she asks Linus Laraby "What do you do with all of the time you save (by taking the helicopter to the private jet)"? He is so efficient that, although he has made a great effort to "save time", he is unable to really articulate what he accomplishes in aforementioned saved time. Later in the movie she tells him "Sometimes more is just more". It isn't necessarily of higher quality.
When we make the time that we have with our loved ones essential - we chose to make it superior. We chose to bring our focus to one special point.
By focusing only on them, in the essence of that moment, we validate the beauty of their spirit with our love. We seek the divine spark in them and meet it with our own divine spark and timeless connection is ignited.
Namasté.
