On Giving and Fragrance

Tags

fragrance, giving, heart, learning, lifestyle, light

It had been an exhausting day and a half of work as I was trying to wrap up the technical paper and presentation that was to accompany it. Finally, after what seemed like a really long day by the time it came three o’clock, I made some time for afternoon tea. I could tell that it was a brisk day outside what with the almost leaf-shorn trees standing still against the clear blue sky and the brilliant sunshine quickly fading to the south east.

Walking upstairs to “close up the office”, I noticed that the sun had created hundreds of spot-lights off of the stained-glass-like lamp sitting by the window. The reading chair called to me, and I walked over with the cup of tea, pulled the “Rumi” book off of the shelf and let the sunshine soak into my soul.

The next half hour felt like I must have traveled into a different universe where the silence becomes you. The sunlight lit up each page as I read poems about love without rules, the nature of what we are given when a loved one holds us to their chest, true silence that makes you feel like the soul’s belonging, and how spring awakens autumn from its slumber. Who says you can’t stumble into spring in the middle of a late afternoon on a late November day in autumn?

And so it went as I faded in and out of what seemed like forever. My tea sat on the small round table by me, slowly exhausting its warmth like the setting sun as it was fading quickly behind the rooflines of the homes in the distance. The thirty minutes of warmth felt like the fourteen years that I had spent being raised with love by my Aunt who had been born on this day ninety two years ago. The divine had blessed her with the ability to share her light. She gave of it freely to her kids, to strangers, to the fruit and vegetable sellers, to the part-time maids who came to do myriad home tasks, and so on. I was fortunate to bear witness to a lot of her giving.

Giving and its lessons can come to us from any direction at any time. The nature of giving is such that we often do not not know what we have been given until it comes our turn to give in a similar way. She would often remark that I would understand why she acted in the ways that she did, even when exacting discipline, when I would become a parent myself. When that day came, my understanding began to dawn, but it happened in an unexpected way. The medium was the giving nature of the one who gave birth to our child.

And so my slow learning continues. Now, our child teaches me through her peace and her gentility and her passion for social justice. The spiritual masters teach me by about limitless giving by their transmission of spiritual energy to all those who are willing to receive. And so on it goes.

Some of you may say that I look at life through rose-colored glasses. And that is okay. For one, I like roses. The rose keeps on spreading its fragrance, regardless of how many thorns are nearby. The rose knows who it is, and what its purpose is. Is that not a great example of the nature of giving? In addition, I can use the same rose-colored glasses to look at myself with love, kindness and compassion. If I only look at my own thorns, what is the world going to see when they look at me?

Yes. The spiritual path can be long, arduous, daunting, and even seem futile for the seeming lack of progress. There seems so much more work to do. Tagore says in his translation of one of Kabirdas’s poems:

“So, when I give up passion, I see that anger remains;

And when I renounce anger, greed is with me still;

And when greed is vanquished, pride and vainglory remain;

When the mind is detached and casts Maya away, still it clings to the letter.

Kabîr says, “Listen to me, dear Seeker! the true path is rarely found.”

So what is a practitioner to do? ‘Rarely’ does not mean ‘never’. One solution is to keep on practicing our nature of giving. Sustained practice improves our inner state, which enables us to create tangible changes in our outer state, create a new lifestyle. If we embrace giving by fully engaging our heart, we can find ourselves in oneness with the rose, whence the petals and thorns are indeed one flower. The fragrance of our giving than shall then know no limits.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly Twitter conversation, Sunday Nov 28 at 9amET / 730pm India in #SpiritChat ~ come share your fragrance with the community. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

Fragrance of the rose… attracts morning dew

The Creative Spark – by @JulieJordanScot

Tags

art, creativity, spark, spirituality

More than twenty years I was a guest teacher in a classroom of adults who were used to studying spiritual topics in depth.  I chose the topic “You are Art.”

What I remember most is before I started when a man who said, “I am a businessman, I am the furthest thing from art.”

I remember the naive, sweet version of myself felt a wave of incredulity sweep over me, “You mean, you don’t see your business as an art form?”

My poet, singing, life purpose coach self may have even gotten tears in my eyes.

I was grieved he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand that business is art. Getting dressed every day is art. Making a meal is art.

I don’t think that one particular hour-long session made a difference in his life, but I’m willing to suspend my disbelief to say “It could have. The creative spark could have risen from what we said and did in that session to invite him into the possibility that his business was, indeed, his creative project. His business was his art, his sculpture, his dramatic monologue, his pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, his photo, his poem.”

The creative spark – the initial entry into making things – beats in all of our hearts. It moves through our veins and is heard through our voices. 

American painter Robert Henri said, “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

This wonderful state Henri refers to is where sparks fly and gather into something more than a single light. The creative spark is at the heart of conversations that leave an impression and sit in our memory decades later. It is the space where we go on walks and suddenly see light in a new way. It is when we solve a problem into a solution that benefits more people than we knew it could.

The creative spark opens doors, breezes through windows and wakes us up from a long nap ready to dive into what we were afraid of before we fell asleep thinking we were stuck in a hopeless mess.

At the ripe old age of ten-years-old I first sang harmonies in a girls chorus class. My voice lifted up and hit higher notes than the melody. I could not believe how beautiful it was to join other voices to make such a glorious, blended sound I couldn’t make by singing alone.

It was like suddenly being a part of a divine miracle. Truth be told, it was a part of a divine miracle, never replicated.

By the end of that school year I abandoned my love of acting, a talent I possessed, was praised for and didn’t use again for three decades. 

I only started to act again because of a series of synchronicities and a moment of transcendence pushed me into a space where I could no longer deny this spark within me. 

Osho reminds us “To be creative means to be in love with life.” 

Let’s deepen that love, together, today and on as many days as possible in the future.

Julie

Author bio: Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she is working on finishing her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.

Julie’s blog: Creative Life Midwife / Julie on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

Julie JordanScott – creating a spark with every hug!

Kumud’s note: I am very excited that Julie accepted my invitation to host the weekly Twitter chat for the #SpiritChat community on Sunday, Nov 21 at 9amET. She has been a long-time participant, inspiration and spark-creator for us, and I know that the community will learn a lot from her as she steps up to her role as guest host. Thank you, Julie! – @AjmaniK

The Energy of Transformation

Tags

autumn, balance, exploration, transformation, walking

It’s autumn… and the forest welcomes me back…

It was an exhilarating return to the river reservation in the valley, after an entire summer of absence. The overcast skies and a light rain were not enough to deter me from visiting and checking on the health of my good friends. And so, I walked the wet and narrow fisherman’s trail by the river, and was welcomed with a familiar energy. It felt like a homecoming.

The transition to autumn was well underway in the forest, as there was already a thin carpet of wet leaves on the trail. The river nearby was calm and almost still, except for the the sound of raindrops falling steadily and sending ripples everywhere. The bright yellows on the trees were resplendent in the Noon hour, even under graying skies. The orange hues were beginning to emerge among the yellows and their stillness enveloped me, invited me to stand still so that the forest could do its work.

And so I paused, stood still, closed my eyes, and allowed the energy to do what it needed to do. The murmur of the river,

the play of raindrops on my head, the light scent of the lavender blooms, the holding of the earth beneath and the canopy of the trees and sky above – the cumulative energy and effect of it was all a bit surreal. Twenty four hours later, as I write about that energy infusion, my heart is still processing the experience.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t walked the particular part of the reservation, many many times before. And yet, this journey on a familiar path was transformative. I cannot explain why this experience was so different from all the ones I’ve had before. Maybe it feels transformative because this is the most recent experience and I have forgotten about the impact of my precious walks? Maybe it feels transformative because I have been diligent in my daily meditation practice, which in turn has made me more sensitive to the energy of the forest as it undergoes its own transformation? Maybe it is because I went into the walk without any expectation other than to simply walk, feel, touch, listen and immerse in the energy?

Perhaps the ‘why’ of the transformative energy isn’t as important as the direct experience itself. When does the energy flow around us become transformative? The first step is when we take steps to cleanse ourselves of the heaviness of anger, hate and energy-draining emotions – we balance our tamas, our propensity towards negativity. The second step is when we take steps towards proper actions in all our activities – we balance our rajas, our propensity towards outward activity. The balancing of tamas and rajas opens us to creating sattva or purity within, and allows for energy to reach deep into our heart.

In the perfect balance of our three propensities, we are ready to integrate, assimilate and propagate the energy which is forever flowing within and without us. On our spiritual walk, we now realize that every flower, every leaf, every drop of rain, every step on the trail, every living being, conveys energy to and through us. We awaken to discover that the door has been opened for us to transform into Shakti – that divine energy of protection, love, grace, and joy limitless.

And to think that it can all begin with a simple visit with a friend…

Kumud

P.S. Join us Sunday, October 10 at 9amET for our weekly gathering on Twitter in #SpiritChat. Sunday marks the mid-point of the nine-day Hindu festival of Navratri, which celebrates the ‘Energy of the Goddess’. Enjoy the transformation! Namaste – @AjmaniK

A station on the trail… time to pause and absorb…

The Heart’s Heritage

Tags

heritage, inheritance, legacy, practice, spirituality

As I stepped onto the trail on the beautiful, cool and crisp morning of the first day of October, I was reminded yet again of the forever giving heart of nature. I had been thinking of my cultural, religious and family heritage over the past week, and in her quiet and expansive welcome, it occurred to me that Nature is also an integral part of my heritage.

There is a period of two weeks in the autumn where Indian tradition pauses to remember, honor, and give thanks to the roles of our ancestors in our lives. The two weeks often coincide with the solstice — a period when all of nature seems to pause as it transitions from one season to the next. A period of transition can be a good time to ask some questions. Where did we come from? Where do we want to go? How may our ancestors and our heritage influence our journey ahead?

As we answer these questions, we may discover some parts of our heritage that have served us well on our journey so far, and other parts that may have held us back in some way. The weight of tradition informed by our strong fidelity to our heritage can often prevent us from exploring new paths on our spiritual walk. How do we balance our desire to honor our inheritances and be truthful to our heart’s voice?

We pause and we listen deeply. We examine our written and spoken heritage — and there is a lot of that, often an overwhelming amount, in Indian culture. We adopt and adapt the cornerstone truths and principles from our heritage that are congruent with our heart-led journey. As we walk forward on our path towards self-awareness and direct experience, we may discover that we have gradually derived our personal inheritance from our vast heritage.

How do we know that our personal inheritance, which may be in the form of our preferred spiritual practices, is right for our journey? One way to know try our chosen practices, and then to ask – do they add to our joy, increase the light within our heart, create lightness in our steps, inspire us to create a living legacy?

A rose blooms in October… a new legacy begins

Yes. There are a lot of questions we ask and want answers to regarding our heritage, inheritance and legacy. As I paused and kneeled on the path, letting the Sun that was apparently standing still, shine the same sunlight that it has streamed on my ancestors for generations fill my heart, I felt a deep connection to the permanent.

Maybe That is perhaps the heart’s true heritage.

Kumud

Autumn’s light streams through the trees… a reminder of permanence and heritage

Ingredients for Happiness

Tags

connection, fun, happiness, joy, purpose, satisfaction, volunteering

Every single muscle in my body seemed to be hurting. In addition, I was made aware of muscles that I didn’t even know I had. That’s what the better part of a day spent hauling mulch and power-washing does to a body used to sitting in front of a computer most days.

And yet, I was brimming with a feeling of happiness. Why? I had just spent an entire, beautiful autumn day working the annual ‘Day of Service’ at my daughter’s school. I wasn’t happy simply because i had spent the day volunteering. It was a combination of a few key ingredients.

According to Arthur Brooks in ‘how to build a life’, most people experience happiness when three ingredients come together. The first ingredient is Fun! Was volunteering fun for me? Absolutely! The entire school, including students, faculty and staff was out and about doing various service projects. It was fun watching them in action, and it was even more fun working alongside my wife as we got covered in dirt and grime and water fairly quickly. And who doesn’t have fun with power tools that make work easy?

Do you remember the last time you had Fun? When was it, and what were you doing?

The second ingredient is Satisfaction. Is volunteering satisfactory? Absolutely yes! After a full week of not-so-satisfying intellectual gymnastics at ‘work’, a day of manual labor was immensely satisfying. It was a sort of ‘deep cleansing’ that the brainbox appreciated greatly by the middle of the day. By the end of the day, my brain was so deeply flushed that I had forgotten how to spell my name. Not really, but you get the idea. I was thoroughly satisfied with the results of the work done, even though I knew that it would have to be done again in a year. The satisfying feeling would pass, like water through a colander, and yet, it felt good to experience it in the moment. It was like a cup of good tea!

When was the last time you felt deeply satisfied? What brought on the feeling?

The third ingredient for happiness is Purpose. We often ask the big questions like what is our life’s purpose, why are we here and so on. These are good questions to ask because they give us a framework with which to align our actions. I hadn’t imagined that a day of manual labor would feed my sense of purpose, but the fact that there were so many other folks on campus working together towards a common goal, made it so. At the end of the day, it surely felt like I had done something meaningful and purposeful. The years of black grime on the concrete walls of the auditorium had been forever banished!

The combination of the three ingredients of fun, satisfaction and purpose created happiness. I think there was a fourth ingredient that was the cherry on the happiness cake – connection. I got to see and chat with so many teachers from previous grades, staff I hadn’t seen in a while due to the pandemic, and more. I heard wedding stories, birth and death stories, college graduation stories, and much more. It all felt good and my heart was smiling by the end of the day.

I didn’t go to seek happiness today at the ‘Day of Service’. It went thinking I would ‘serve’ in the hours before lunch and then ‘work work’ after lunch. I ended up staying the whole day because I could feel my happiness tank getting filled, even as my physical tank was getting drained. The result? One of the happiest days of the week.

I encourage you to reflect on your happiness creators. When is the last time you were having fun, feeling satisfied, doing something purposeful and creating connections, all at the same time? Was that when you felt you were face-to-face with happiness? Or are there other, different ingredients that create happiness for you?

Kumud

P. S. Join us for our weekly community gathering, Sunday Sep 26 at 9amET / 630pm India in #spiritchat on Twitter. Share your keys to happiness with us. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

Autumn Mums changing color… spreading happiness

An Attitude of Friendliness

Tags

friendliness, friendship, maitri, relationship, spirituality

Some would have been first seeded forty years ago next July. Others would have been planted thirty five years ago this fall. They have become strong, healthy, long-term trees that have endured the winds of time and stood the droughts of distance across continents. And then, there was the ‘online world’ of twitter, where a totally different garden of friendships was seeded over the past ten years.

Some years, it seemed like I would talk with my twitter friends much more regularly – at least weekly during our hourly Sunday morning chats – than I would with my ‘real-life’ friends. Somewhere along the way, I dropped the distinction between ‘online’ and ‘real-life’, because all the friendships had a human quality about them. If the heart is engaged, then the medium is simply a conduit. If there is no heart-engagement, then no medium is going to help develop a friendship, is it?

So, where does it all begin?

It is when we exclaim ‘you too!’ that the friendship seed can find common ground. You lived in that part of Delhi? You’ve been to Kashmir too? You are also a middle child? You had a tough time with thermodynamics in engineering school too? Oh, you’re looking for a roommate too in this small college town, seven thousand miles away from home?

That’s the ‘birds of a feather’ metaphor of the beginnings of friendships.

There is also the ‘opposites attract’ metaphor.

This happens when two people are brought together in time and space, and they are so totally different that their natural curiosity leads them to take baby steps towards each other. A half-dozen or so American friendships in graduate school began this way for me. They taught me about baseball, white-water rafting, late-night pizza, football, thanksgiving, living and thriving in small-town America.

More importantly, the gentle inquiries of my American friends about Indian society, religion and customs also encouraged me to delve deeper into my own culture. In trying to answer their questions, I begin to realize how little I knew about my own country and myself. Their questions got me started on the path to asking questions – my journey into inquiry was prompted by them. 

What makes for a life-impacting friendship? Does the impact depend on the stage in our life that the friendship begins? Is it the ‘birds of a feather’ or the ‘opposites attract’ type that is more impactful?  How many friendships can we meaningfully sustain? What makes a friendship sustainable in the long run? Let me try and answer that last question on sustainability. 

Some shared experiences, some commonality of life experience, some diversity of cultural background, some openness of heart  towards forgiveness. These are some basic ingredients for sustaining healthy, long-term friendships. Is there an indispensable  ingredient for sustainability? To quote the Yoga sage Patanjali, an attitude of friendliness towards those who are friendly towards us, also called maitri, is vital. In other words, our attitude of Maitri is the essential sun, the seed, the soil, the wind and the water of all friendship.

As we grow our attitude of friendliness, we grow our heart through joyous experiences of deep friendships. Eventually, we see no stranger because we become aware of our sustainable friendship with the One who is the friend to all. 

Kumud

P.S. Join us in our weekly conversation with the #SpiritChat community this Sunday, July 18 at 9amET / 630pm India on twitter. We will kickoff an informal “Friendship week” and invite you to (re)connect with a friend or few, either online or offline, or within. Help us spread the attitude of friendliness. In maitri, Namaste – @AjmaniK

An attitude of friendliness makes space in the heart for the friendly…

 

On Spiritual Enrichment

Tags

enrichment, obstacles, prosperity, spiritual goals, wealth

It felt like an early autumn morning as I walked out on to the deck after a night of storms. The remnants of the coastal storm had brought some welcome relief from the heat along with overcast skies. However, one glance at the thicket of trees filled with green leaves was enough to bring me back to summer.  It was going to be a great outside day. Perhaps I would work in the garden and  pull weeds in the flower beds, I mused. 

My musing turned to three hours of first removing the overgrown grasses on both sides of the fence, and then working around the rose bushes on the weeds. Why do these weeds keep showing up, particularly in a six-foot portion of the flower beds? I know that I have put down landscaping fabric (weed barrier) and covered it with layers of river rock over the years. What’s missing?

As I dug into the six-foot portion with my special tool that helps me extract the weeds from the roots, I noticed that I wasn’t hitting any fabric beneath the rocks. Aha. Mystery solved, or so I thought. I now remembered that I had run out of landscape fabric when in that six-foot portion when I did the flower bed project a few years ago. No wonder the two rose bushes in that portion would always be out-shone by the ones that bloomed in the adjacent twelve-foot portion that does have the weed barrier, and a lot less weeds. 

A single shortcut taken by me three years ago, and I have spent an inordinate number of hours paying for it in maintenance and  lack of enrichment in that part of the garden. I essentially left the door open for the weeds to create ‘poverty’, right next door to the ‘wealthiest’ part of the flower bed. I felt like the farmer who keeps watering his fields while the back-stops on his sluice gates are left open. Do you ever feel that way in life, in your spiritual practice?

I felt like that for years. My progress, my heart’s growth would happen in fits and starts. I did a lot of reading, which I still do, because I love to read.  I spent a lot of time and learnt a lot in years of my visits to the local temple. I still do. I rarely missed an opportunity to attend day(s)-long retreats with spiritual Gurus visiting town. That didn’t happen over the past year, but I look forward to them again. And yet, something was missing. The aspect of long-term enrichment of the heart and soul remained elusive. I didn’t feel like I could call-up deep inner peace, silence, stillness, and such, at a moment’s notice. And then something changed.

I decided to try a new meditation practice. My ‘trainer’ asked me for a favor. “Make a commitment to practice for ninety days.” Ninety days? I had been practicing on and off by myself for years. Ninety days was going to be a walk in the garden, weeds and all! And so it began. Morning practice. Evening cleaning (weeding!). Night-time remembrance. Repeat next day. Weekly ‘deep cleaning’ (weeding!). Slowly, days turned to weeks, which turned to months. It has been over four years. Why am I still practicing?

My practice makes me feel enriched. Every morning – okay, more mornings than not – I feel like a kid in a candy store as I sit for the morning meditation. What new treasures am I going to discover today? In the evening, as I do the inner weeding, I prepare for the dreamless sleep that is going to come after bedtime remembrance. More enrichment follows. Some days I feel like I am immersed in all this wealth at random moments during the day. I can carry my peace with me because I feel like I have access to a secret treasury. 

Except that it wasn’t a secret. All it took was wondering, asking the right questions, waiting for the answers, and when offered the help of a new practice, accepting the invitation to make a small commitment. It was like deciding to fix that six-foot piece of missing fabric, and see if the weeds would stop taking the roses’ bloom away next season. It was learning that enrichment isn’t about accumulating a wealth of practices, but more about doing that One practice which consistently gives us great joy, peace, harmony and whatever makes our hearts glow with purpose. 

What is that enrichment practice going to be for you? If you are already practicing, you are already on the path to enrichment unlimited. If you aren’t, then pause and consider. Ask some questions. Be open to the answers. And keep sight of the knowing that you, just like anyone else, deserve to be enriched beyond your wildest dreams.

This is your time. Don’t shy away. Be still. Listen. 

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly conversation with the #SpiritChat community on twitter, Sunday July 11 at 9am ET / 2pm UTC / 630pm India. I know that you have the ability to enrich someone with your experience and insights. Come share with us. Namaste – @AjmaniK

 

Let’s make no mistake – weeds and thorns contribute to enrichment too!

On Belonging and Detachment

Tags

attachment, belonging, detachment, purity, truth

In conversations about spirituality, the ideas of attachment and detachment come up regularly. The motivation for practicing ‘letting go’ is that it can potentially help us with our progress on the spiritual path. The question is: how does  detachment really help us grow spiritually?

According to the Indian sage Adi Sankaracharya, doing our work with an attitude of detachment to the rewards helps us purify our inner being or heart. It is when we purify our heart that we develop the burning desire to know the truth. It is when we want to know the truth that we develop the desire to work towards liberation. If we string together the pearls of purity, truth and an inner attitude of detachment, we can travel the path to liberation. 

The path sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And yet, it is often so difficult to walk in daily life. We are constantly getting more and more entangled in the web of attachment woven by our actions. We share something on social media or write a blog post, and we immediately await the ‘reward’ of likes, shares, reactions and comments from others. We are incessantly subjected to a stream of advertising, marketing, and messaging that tries to deepen our fear of missing out on the latest activity or product that will make our life ‘better’.

We want to embrace simplicity and minimalism by reducing our impact on the environment, and yet our desires and possessions seem to keep on increasing. So, what can we do to reclaim our attitude of detachment in our daily living and actions? The Yoga practice of aparigraha – not grasping in any way – can help us reverse course. Aparigraha is a simple, two part practice. The first part is to work towards identifying and then freeing ourselves of our existing attachments. The second part is to turn our focus towards our internal world, which will automatically reduce our focus and attraction to the ‘shiny objects’ of the external world.

Our two-part Yoga practice of Aparigraha or developing detachment can be viewed as an invitation to live our lives in a non-clinging, non-acquisitive, non-transactional and non-possessive manner. When we reduce the transactional nature of our actions, we begin to notice more lightness, purity, and caring emerge in our heart. If and when we truly care about our fellow beings, then giving and sharing can follow. Sharing can create space for us to belong to each other and replace the desire to constantly transact with one another. 

The sense of belonging can create a beautiful heart space. Loving detachment can bring us closer to that space. Working together, belonging and detachment can bring us closer to our divine potential. Let’s work towards that, shall we? 

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly chat, Sunday June 27 at 9amET / 630pm India on twitter. We will talk about detachment and its practice. We hope that you can join us for our #SpiritChat gathering, and grow our circle of belonging. Namaste – @AjmaniK

 

Detached from each other, they bloom best in a shared sense of belonging – hydrangeas

On the Raising of Fathers

Tags

children, fatherhood, Fathers Day, imperfection, spiritual fathers

Let’s get this out of the way at the very beginning. There are no perfect fathers, just like there are no perfect children. That could be the end of the blog post right here. In fact for some of you, “father’s day” doesn’t exactly fill your heart with warmth. It may even bring back pain, anger, grief and hurtful memories. And yet, allow me share a bit of my personal story with you.

I was fortunate to be raised, and influenced, by three wonderful men who played tremendous father figures in my life. My birth Dad, my Uncle whose family I spent fourteen wonderful years from third grade on, and my Uncle’s brother in the USA whose family pretty much adopted me from the moment I landed in the USA for graduate studies. All three of these men played roles in my life, most of which I did not understand until I became a Dad myself. 

All my Dads taught me more about sacrifice and grace in motion, than I could possibly hope to learn by myself. And this was all before I had ever read a single word of my ’spiritual guides’ like Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Yogananda, Ramakrishna, and more. Perhaps I was too busy taking notes in my heart about what my ‘real Dads’ were trying to teach me with their lives. Over the years, one by one, they all went to the eternal flame, as all mortals do. In their passage, they each left me with a hidden challenge —  to keep their flame in motion in the world around me. 

I became aware of the challenge when I was presented with the gift to raise my own. In the process, In raising her, I gained greater understanding that I was really raising myself in small ways every day. Could my daughter be raising me through direct experience of empathy, kindness and listening? Could it also be that the tough challenge of raising me had helped raised my Dads in some way? 

Psychologists stress upon the critical role of ‘fathers’ in their children’s lives, but what if the ‘fathers’ are resentful or afraid of the role presented to them? It is hard enough for willing and dedicated Dads to ‘do raising right’, so one can imagine the challenges of those who feel unprepared or unwilling.  In such cases, could the role of ‘raising’ be done more effectively by teachers, mentors, willing relatives, spiritual guides and more? 

There are no easy answers, because no matter how much we talk about ‘simplicity’, life is messy and complicated. The best advice that I got from my Dads was that they gave very little advice, if any at all. They left the door open for me to figure it out on my own  because they had no way of forecasting what I would be facing when doing my own ‘raising’. If anything, my Dads’ best ‘advice’ was in the kindness with which they all treated their family, friends, guests, and those who asked them for help.

The older I get, the wiser my Dads’ life lessons seem to get. I have a ways to go on my journey, and yet I know that they, and my guides, are raising me up every time I stumble and fall. I also know that there is a loving energy in the universe that raises you too. I hope you believe the same. 

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. Join our #SpiritChat community in our weekly twitter chat, Sunday June 20 at 9amET / 630pm India. We will talk about Fathers, imperfections, and raising each other on our path. I will bring the usual goodies and questions. I hope you join us – @AjmaniK

 

The three who raised me… they show up often in nature…

A Spirit of Acceptance

Tags

acceptance, healing, knowing, knowledge, pain, remembrance, suffering

ery time I tried to come out of it, I kept falling back into the light – that’s what happened multiple times as I tried to emerge from the morning meditation session. It was a bit like the oceans current pulling you back as you try to come ashore after a swim. I did not resist the pull of the light. Every time I was pulled back, I emerged a bit lighter as a result. 

It was a good thing that this happened on a Saturday morning and I could engage this dance without any time constraints of a work day or a school day. Any other day, and I would have resisted being pulled back or falling back, because I had ‘other things’ to do. Such is the nature of the balance between acceptance and resistance. 

How much time and energy are we willing to give to the clearing of our mind and the opening of our heart? When the messengers of pain and suffering come our way, are we going to be accepting of their messages and sit with them, or are we going to rush them away like unexpected guests at our doorsteps? 

Acceptance has another dimension. Our acceptance of our own beauty, our talents, our abilities and our frailties often meets with internal resistance. At some point in our lives, we all have perhaps had a nagging sense that we are not enough, that we don’t belong, and that we are somehow even deserving of our undue share of pain. Our emotional and mental health suffers as a result. 

One pathway to acceptance of our selves is knowing who we are. This self-knowing is different from the knowledge (about who we are) given to us by others, no matter how well (or ill) intentioned they may be. It is useful to ask the question, and ask it often – who am I in this moment? What is my truth? What am I feeling and where did this feeling come from? And so on.

Eventually, when we have had enough immersions in the answers, we may not need to question any more. We come to realize that we are the ocean, and that our separateness from it is a form of forgetfulness of that knowing. 

Through remembrance, comes the knowing of “I am That”. From knowing, come acceptance. With knowing, we can then stay in the ocean or emerge from it. It does not matter either way, because we are then in constant remembrance that we belong to each other. True healing and helping can then begin.

Kumud

P. S. Join us for our weekly gathering with the #spiritchat community on Twitter, Sunday May 16 at 9am ET / 630pm India. We will talk about acceptance over tea, fruit, flowers and cookies. Namaste – @AjmaniK

The sun crests over the trees on a spring morning…