I watched a lot of Monty Python growing up, and this scene from The Life of Brian always left me laughing. And the joke, I thought, was everyone chanting in sync that they were all different while doing the same thing and thinking the same thoughts.
The revelation, which I understand now that I’ve lived more life than my 13 year old self, is that we are all the same. There is no piece of the One Human Experience that any one of us is experiencing anew. We are all sparks on a journey, and if we’re lucky enough to stay on the ride, chances are that we’ll pass through several different dichotomies of the One Human Experience.
In your lifetime, you will likely experience being a friend and an enemy. Perhaps you will be the child and the parent, the student and the teacher, the innocent and the guilty. Each of these are simply two sides of the same coin. This transformation from one to the other and revelation that they (we) are one allows us to immerse in the experience of Svādhyāya, one of the Niyamas of yoga, often defined as self-study, but also encompassing Non-Judgement.
Continue reading “Svādhyāya – Non Judgement”
