Me Is You.
{Francesca Woodman}
I am an internationally certified Kundalini Yoga teacher amongst other things, and in Kundalini yoga, we also teach some general knowledge about the current age and energies that we are living in.
There is something called the Aquarian Sutras that Kundalini yogis often refer to: these are five basic rules that apply to our current planetary situation. There is one in particular that I am thinking of today (do not worry, I will address the others in future articles).
The one I want to talk about today is called:
Recognize that the other person is YOU.
On the basic level, this means all the things that most of us (I hope) learned in school: all human beings are equal in worth, no matter their colour or socioeconomic background. We all laugh, cry, bleed, breathe, think and poop, and we were all born from the woman who is our mother.
I was having a conversation with someone who keeps commenting on their appearance and weight regularly in negative terms. I have usually let comments like that slide; after all, I do not take someone else’s insecurity about his/her appearance personally. But this time I felt a subtle itch as I listened to the familiar “I’m too much this/too little that” formula.
And it dawned on me that this kind of self-criticism that is born out of measuring oneself against an exterior ideal not only affects the person taking on that external belief system, making them wrong for not conforming, but it makes everyone else wrong too.
If you are saying you are too fat or not slim enough, then you are making anyone your size wrong with you. You are also making those on the other end of the scale equally unacceptable — too thin, too slim, not ‘fat’ enough. So when we judge ourselves, we automatically judge others too. And the interesting thing is that we are vibrationally linked in a huge energetic network.
We are like vibrational transmitters and receivers!
We take on emotional vibrations from other people on a daily basis, especially when we are not conscious of it. This is how we take on the “sins of our forefathers” — we simply entrain to their vibrations around a range of matters. I guess this is how issues about physical appearance are transferred from mother to daughter, for example.
Also this might be the root of why so many women feel subtly criticized by their mothers for their appearance. Not a word needs to be said, all it takes is that the mother looks at herself with criticism. Or the boy who learns to suppress his emotions simply by feeling what his dad is doing. We live and learn through entrainment. So, what is mine and what is yours? And more importantly, which parts do we want to keep and which ones should we discard?
The other person is YOU.
And that begs the question: how do you approach yourself through your interaction with others? Where do you cheat yourself by not having respect for other people? Where do you betray yourself by not bringing your A-game, aka your authentic Self, to a relationship? Where do you settle for giving others a Disney version of yourself, instead of the fullness of who you really are? When we cheat others, we cheat ourselves. When we cheat ourselves, we cheat others.
We cannot subvert the law of karma: the law of action and consequence.
When we begin to understand that every rejection we make of others is simply a rejection of ourselves, and that when we criticize ourselves we always include another in that criticism, our whole game changes. Life becomes softer and more mindful, more forgiving and more about understanding the bigger picture than taking everything personally. We see that projections of negativity from others are, really, just pointing out their own sore spots.
We begin to be able to empathize and understand the underlying causes of other people’s behaviours, and become conscious and clear about our own.
YOU are the other person. The other person is YOU.
I will give you a positive example of the same sutra/rule:
I was visiting a friend in the UK this past summer, and we went to a huge Hindu temple to do some spiritual sightseeing. Since neither of us is Hindu, we took care to be respectful, and visited the various altars and gave thanks. I happened to be standing at the main altar and a line was forming behind me; I turned to leave and happened to glance at the woman standing behind me. Her face was open with awe and devotion and tears were rolling down her cheeks. At that moment, I understood that there was no difference between me and her; her face was my own. There is no difference in heartfelt devotion, no matter what and whose name you chant.
We are all the same. Our egos — the fearful, protective, limited parts of us — would like to tell us otherwise, but we are really the same. And the way to recognize this is to forgive. Forgive the conditioning into separation, forgive the rejections of fearful people, forgive ourselves for believing the utter lie that we are alone, abandoned and somehow flawed. When we find the connection to our Self, there follows effortless connection to others.
I believe we were all created perfect, but as the Buddhists say: we are perfect, but we can all use some improvement!
We are here to learn from each other, to grow together and to blossom into union with ourselves. And through that union, we know the other person as ourself. We can do this. It is time.
Let us do it together.
*****
{Perfect Creation.}
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