Namaste and Nowmustgo

November 17, 2014
Day 201

Namaste (Nah mah stay)

My friend Reverend Laura Tria first introduced this word to me years ago, and it's happily stayed with me now in one understanding or the next.  My favorite definition of the word is, "The spirit in me sees the spirit in you." 

I absolutely love this concept, whichever definition you use, because it tells us multiple things at once!

1) We have a piece of the divine spirit within us.

2) Everyone else has a piece of the divine spirit in them too, and...

3) We must SEE/HONOR the divine in others all the time.

All of this is wonderful, right?  We can all agree that in an ideal world, we'll all always feel this way about all people?  But we don't live in an ideal world.  We live in this world, a world with pain and disease, imperfections and horrors of all kinds.  Sometimes our namastes don't stay.  They leave.  They're just not there when we most need them.  Sometimes, amid all the heartache and pain we experience, we don't want to go up to a person and cheerfully tell them how much our spirit is happy to see their spirit.  Sometimes our namaste is more of a nowmustgo. 

And strangely enough, I think this is a good thing!  If we're not able to fully connect with a person, whether they be a lover, a friend, or a relative, why torment both them and ourselves with forced peace?  Why force anything, even a smile? 

If you truly believe in the possibility for a perfect place in heaven once this life is done, you ought to also recognize a solid truth about this life: none of us have our wings yet!  We cannot expect others to be angels if we ourselves don't exactly feel like being one too often either.  We are, all of us, weak, broken versions of the higher self we'll some day be. 

So I will keep saying my namaste whenever I can, whenever I'm able, but I also won't feel ashamed to admit that sometimes I need to send someone a nowmustgo instead.  It doesn't equate to a "rot in Hell" or anything like that.  It simply means that right now, until we're both in a better place, let's not force a relationship.  Later maybe, and that'd be awesome, but for now?  Well, nowmustgo.