The Shades Between

In seeking to make sense of the world, humans always seem to be looking for things to be black and white. But most things live in the shades between. Perhaps you see this even in your own family: your elderly relative is kind and judgmental. Your niece is unwilling to help out and a joy to be with. You yourself are generous and easily frustrated.

Yoga philosophy is very clear on this. Since all is one, there is no such thing as a good or bad human; there are only people who are confused, damaged, wrong-thinking. There is no such thing as a good or bad event; there are only things happening all of the time and us trying to cope with it to the best of our ability and with as much compassion as possible, gaining wisdom as we go.

I know that this is a difficult concept. But if you are living with an idea that you can in or out, good or bad, deserving or undeserving, then you are going to be fearful, to struggle, to grasp onto things that are always slipping away from you, since the world is constantly in flux and will not be pinned down. This is no way to spend your time.

Yoga means union and if there is union, then it does not make sense to believe that over here we have the ‘good’ stuff and over there we have the darker ‘bad’ stuff. How can you talk of all being one, when you have separated everything out into two?

There is peace to be found in understanding that the world exists in shades of grey, there is kindness, happiness and honesty in it.

There is power in it too, this is certainly not about passively accepting wrongdoing. Nelson Mandela forgave those who imprisoned him. If he had believed his opponents were fundamentally different to him, the war would have continued, but in embracing them as fellow humans, whatever their misguided beliefs had been, he ended apartheid.

Mandela was a hero on the world stage, but we are all the heroes of our own lives. We don’t exist in black and white, we live in the greys. Do you have the courage to embrace this complexity? Two things concurrently can be true. And most often, they are.

Namaste x