On New Foundations

Tags

foundattion, Gardening, spirituality

It was about this time last summer that I decided to undertake a project to “rock-scape” all the plant beds on the sides and the back of the house. I figured that this would be a sort of a permanent solution to the annual mulching of the beds in spring. The landscape fabric was first laid down around the existing plantings, and then a lot of “river rock” was put down. The fabric and rock was in effect  removing the foundation for weeds to grow. It looked great and the remaining part of last summer was essentially free of pulling weeds from the beds. And yet, my celebration was not to last through this summer.

I hadn’t figured on the ingenuity of nature. There are two bird-feeders stationed in two of the beds, from which seeds are constantly spilled onto the rock-scape below by the birds throughout the day. Earlier this summer, I saw some of these seeds starting to grow through small gaps in the rocks. I figured they wouldn’t last long, because their roots couldn’t possibly go past the landscape fabric. I was only partly correct. When I went to pull these new ‘weeds’, they did come out relatively easily because their roots had grown laterally along the fabric. 

That’s the story of the weeds that grew without a deep foundation anywhere and everywhere there was seed, water, sunlight, air gaps and a little bit of soil. They couldn’t grow deep, but they figured out a way to create a new foundation. Something similar happens to us humans too. Seeds of thoughts and emotions are always traveling to the soil of our hearts and minds. These seeds, seeking new foundations, travel to us from friends and family, co-workers, media and social media, Zoom chats, WhatsApp conversations, and much more. 

So, how do we ordinarily deal with these seeds? I have a bit of a “let me rock-scape my mind” approach. The idea is to prevent the  thought and emotion seeds to find new foundations in my mind. I have found that if I can keep my mind relatively “weed free”, then my heart has a good chance to operate at its optimal level too. Despite my rock-scaping, I still have to do a daily weeding of the seeds that find their way through and grow roots, shallow as they may be. And yet, there is another aspect to the notion of “new foundations”.

For establishing or renewing a garden or landscape with flowers and plantings, garden centers often sell young plants and flowers in planters. When re-planting these plants and flowers at home, it is vital to provide good quality soil, some fertilizer and lots of water so that they can establish deep, healthy roots and thrive in their new foundation. The storms and droughts of life, the re-plantings and re-growths are best handled by those whose foundations run deep in faith and love,

New foundations are best established by those whose spiritual practices help them to keep out the weeds, as well as grow healthy new gardens no matter where life takes them on their journeys. I invite you take inventory of your weeds and flowers among your mind. How is the health of your heart’s garden? What seeds have established new foundations in your heart and mind lately? 

Kumud

P.S. Join us in our weekly twitter chat, Sunday August 2 at 9amET / 630pm India. We will plant some new seeds with the #SpiritChat community as we begin a new year and build some new foundations for new friendships. Namaste – @AjmaniK 

A planter with marigold flowers is ready to be planted into its new foundation…

The Magic of Slowing Down

Tags

serenity, silence, slowing down, stillness

I have always been a fan of the number nine. I was delighted when I first found out that if you added the number nine to any number, and you sum up the resulting digits, you got back the sum of the digits that you started with. Nine is preservative in addition. So, let’s say we begin with 25. Two plus five is seven. Now, add nine, and we get 34. Three plus four is seven. Let’s add ninety-nine. 34 plus 99 is 133. One plus three plus three is seven. Try adding 999. 1132. Still seven.

Now try multiplication with nine. Nine becomes transformative. The resulting sum of the digits will always be nine. 25 times 9 is 225. Two plus two plus five is nine. 25 times 99 is 2,475. Two plus four plus seven plus five is 18. One plus eight is 9. Yes, we can play with nines like this all day long. Magical when we slow down to contemplate, isn’t it?

In human life, when nine is engaged in multiplication, it becomes an agent for transformation. For example, it takes nine months for a human baby to be born. Is there any greater act of transformation than two cells becoming a baby? Can you think of an example in our daily lives where addition by nine represents preservation? I will give you a personal example. 

Nine years ago to the day, give or take a few days, a few folks gathered on twitter on a Sunday morning at 11am ET and had a conversation about spirituality. The topic was, “On Slowing Down”. There was no agenda or expectation that there would even be a second conversation the following Sunday. It was simply an experiment inspired by a question posed by me to one of my good friends – why isn’t there any chat on twitter about spirituality? Wayne’s response was —  so what if there isn’t one? Why don’t you start one? 

Answer a question with a question. That’s the classic way in which a teacher and mentor can nudge us to do something that takes us out of our comfort zone. I remember thinking back then — what will I even talk about? So, I asked Wayne again. What should the topic be? His response was — what do you love doing most? Talk about that. Hmm. What do I love doing most? I love slowing down, sitting and doing “nothing”. I learnt that from my Dad.

He could sit and read the newspaper for hours. He could sit in absolute stillness and silence with a cup of tea at peace for what seemed the longest time. He could stand in the kitchen patiently and tend to the assembly of his seven-layered, seven-colored rice dish for what seemed like forever. You simply couldn’t rush him for anything.

So, in the last week of July, which happens to be his birthday week (he would have been eight six this year), on a Sunday morning in 2011, a few friends of mine gathered and chatted about “slowing down”. There were only three questions. I did not ask the first question until twenty minutes into the hour. We had no idea what we were doing except that we were all simply happy to be there, enjoying each other’s company as we held our cups of tea or coffee and wondered about the merits of “slowing down”. 

That was then. Nine years ago. It seems like a life-time or more in online years. And yet, not much has changed in some ways since 2011, has it? If anything, the need for us to experience the magic of slowing down is all the more greater, isn’t it? How else is one to engage in remembrance and gratitude, if not through the active process of slowing down? How else, if not by slowing down, am I to thank all of those who have sent hundreds of thousands of words of hope and inspiration to the #SpiritChat community over the years?

How about slowing down offline? It is in slowing down that I can watch and deeply feel the sun rise slowly at the eastern end of the street at dawn or feel the silvery glow of the sliver of the moon’s rising at dusk. Slowing down allows me to contemplate the beauty of the flower that was separated overnight and fell to the ground in homage to the earth. It allows me to touch the dew fallen in the grass with light feet, and inhale the air of the cool morning breeze before the heat rises and melts it away. And yes – how is one to engage in meditation, if not by first slowing down physically and remembering to bring myself to a state of rest?

So yes, slowing down allows us to return to remembrance. Regularly slowing down within allows us to be in constant remembrance.  What kind of remembrance? The external world will be relentless in its demands on us, and yet That stillness will remain in our hearts forever. It shall be patiently waiting for us to accept its invitation to visit with it, to let the outer world be, and to choose to be immersed in the world within. Will we make that choice? How much can we slow ourselves down? Will we observe the observer and remember that there is That permanent, indestructible, all-loving, all-joyous, all-truthful One within All off us?

That remains the great question, the great challenge.

Nature has some pointers for us. As fast as a hummingbird flies or a bee buzzes or a butterfly flaps her wings, they all have to slow down, to come to a moment of stillness, so that they can experience the magical taste of the nectar of life. What can we learn from their behavior? Even the new puppy, who can go a hundred miles an hour, has to pause for a drink of water, a nibble at her food bowl, before she can take off again like an express train towards her next station of play.

Like the piano virtuoso Wayne Mcevilly, who inspired me to start the weekly chat nine years ago said — the greatest classical music compositions are so because the composers put as much care into putting the pauses into the right place, as they did into assigning the notes that each instrument is to play.

Let us condense nine years into nine minutes. That is my invitation to you. Take nine minutes and be still. Watch your breath or the light in your heart or the sunrise or the sunset or a single flower dancing in the stillness. Absolute stillness. There is magic in all of That. Thou art That. That is all there Is. 

We all can experience all of That, if we were to embrace the act of slowing down. No magic necessary. 

Kumud

P.S. Join me and the #SpiritChat community on Sunday, July 26 at 9amET as we slow down to create some magic. I look forward to hearing from you about your experiments with pure stillness. I will bring tea and maybe even some cake – you bring your open hearts and we will chat. Namaste – @AjmaniK

A bee slows down to visit a butterfly bush in the front yard

 

On Time and Heart Space

Tags

family, heart, letting go, patience, reason, space, time

A few months ago, I started hearing the word in fragments of mother-daughter conversations in my home. She had been physically out of school since spring break this year, and we had been mostly self-quarantined for several months until school officially ended towards the end of May. No summer camp. No meeting up with friends. No getting together with cousins. I guess, somewhere along the line, she decided that the home – or rather she, wanted another dog to give her and our seven year old puppy some company.

And so her search started with online portals, spreading the word among her friends, calling local shelters and so on. Her  requirements were fairly stringent and that shortened the list of possibilities considerably. Almost every other day, Mom would help her put in adoption applications when there was a “match” online. A few days later the email would come, saying that the “match” had already been adopted. Week after week, I could see her getting more and more disheartened. 

“Give it some time, honey. Be patient, and it will happen. The puppy you are supposed to get will show up.” Supposedly comforting words from a Dad who had tried to discourage her from the idea from the very beginning. I wasn’t sure that she was “ready” for another dog in the house. More like I was the one who wasn’t ready. So, after eight weeks of this roller coaster of applying and being denied, it seemed like she let the idea go for a few weeks. Mom kept making phone calls, leaving messages for folks.

Then, one lady from Indiana called back on July 1st afternoon and said – yes, there is availability. Possibility. Hope. 

So, we decided that we were going to make an eight hour roundtrip to see if things would work out. A few hours later, another phone call. A lady whom my wife had called six weeks ago was on the phone. She said that one of her puppies was ready to be re-homed. In the course of the conversation, we came to know that our current seven year old had the same bloodline as the one that she was trying to get re-homed. Not only that, she lived two hours away and she could bring the puppy to our home the next day as she was going to be passing through Cleveland on a road-trip to north-west Ohio. 

Too good to be true, yes? If I hadn’t been witness to all of it myself, I would have said “no way” too. The combination of yielding time and space to a heart set on a love-driven desire can allow for the universe to work in our favor. On July 3rd 2020, virtually seven years to the day that we adopted “Tucker” ( who was renamed “Bubbles”), we received his sister “Flower” (who was renamed “Bindi”). Unfettered joy, some tears, a lot of broken sleep patterns, and a huge rearranging of our lives has happened in the past week. 

In the small, last minute Zoom meeting on Friday, I asked Lucille – so, what’s new with you? I hadn’t told them any of this story yet. She said, “I just got finished reading the book – ‘When the Heart Waits’ – by Sue Monk Kidd. She talks about giving yourself the ‘chrysalis time’ in your life – time to let the caterpillar develop into the butterfly (of creativity).” How appropriate, I thought. Giving yourself time, allowing the universe to work in harmony with you when you sometimes feel as if the whole world is conspiring against you, your heart and your goals and dreams…

Chrysalis time for the heart and its space, the heartspace that is our constant companion. I dug up an Osho essay where he spoke about time, reason (the mind), and the heart:

Time exists only for the mind, for reason. For the heart there is no time; the heart exists in timelessness. So, the mind insists on haste, hurry, urgency – and the mind becomes tense. Things should happen instantly – such is the insistence of reason. But the heart knows no time, there are no clocks for it. That is why the heart exists timelessly and it can wait — infinitely. — Osho in Vedanta – The Art of Dying

So, here we are. Life teaches us so many lessons. It invites us to listen with the heart, to allow for our heartspace to simply be timeless. Timelessness invites us to disengage from the daily conflict of opposites. In timelessness, the heart of the caterpillar learns to rest in, allow for chrysalis time.

Kumud

P.S. After a few days, Bubbles and Bindi are starting to play together. His heart has accepted that Bindi is here to stay, that she is part of the family. All of us look forward to their football-like scrimmages at all hours of the day. He may outweigh here by a factor of five (that won’t last long!), but that doesn’t deter her from taking him on with the youthful heart and dynamic energy of one who knows not much about reason, time or space. 

P.P.S I invite you to join our weekly twitter conversation on Sunday, July 12 at 9amET in #SpiritChat. I may share a puppy photo or two with you, and give you the daily update of puppy mayhem. Yes, there will be questions and tea and cookies. It will be good to see some of you after a week’s hiatus… – @AjmaniK

Bubbles – the result, so far, of seven years of all-heart

Spirituality, unity and union

Tags

celebration, fathers, solstice, spirituality, union, unity, yoga

The longer I wait to write this post on Saturday morning, the shorter the shadows get in the back of the house which faces west. The Sun, slowly ascending towards its peaking of the day, on this day when daylight reach its ascendancy over darkness in the northern hemisphere, I contemplate union and unity.

A tiny baby dragonfly in resplendent blue with translucent wings lands in the center of the rainbow colored hula hoop encrusted with silvery highlights lying on the floor of the deck. An orange winged blackbird lands on the wrought iron post holding the bird feeder, squawks loudly as it departs without partaking, as if to say that I need to fill it again. The two boys on their swings across the lake have been going back and forth for the past half hour, unassisted, as they have surely mastered their art of Joy. The lake glistens and ripples as it often does in the harmony of the slight breeze and the low angle of the Sun’s light from the East. My cup of tea is empty but I am too enamored by it all to move off of the deck, lest I miss something vital.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Union and Unity. In the 5th century BC, the Indian sage Patanjali, compiled a treatise called The Yoga Sutras. It is said to be the collation of the knowledge and practices of the lives of the practitioners of Yoga of the time. Patanjali wrote about Yoga as a thread of aphorisms explaining the relationship between the natural world, the inner spirit of humans, and the unity between them.

The practice of Yoga can be simply described as any practice which leads to union between the external and the internal. Yoga is the manifestation of the unity that we often intrinsically seek in the paradox of living in the transient external world while seeking the permanent within.

Swami Vivekananda describes this striving for union in the form of four paths of Yoga, all emerging from One as we move outward on them, and then converging into One as we return home. These four paths are the path of work and action, the path of knowledge, the path of devotion and the royal path of meditation. Why do we need four paths? Why not just one?

Perhaps because all humans, like the colors of the rainbow, have different propensities and inclinations that they bring into their physical existence. So, the offering of four distinct and yet non-exclusive and equal paths of Yoga, invites the practitioners of love to practice love in the way that they may be most attracted towards in their current state of life. Very often, a human may practice all four paths simultaneously, with different levels of intensity at different times of the day and night.

The Yoga of action may dominate during the day, knowledge path may prevail during reading or observing nature, devotion may take over during prayer, meditation may subsume one at dawn or dusk or other times. Yes, we are all practitioners of multiple paths, whether we are aware or conscious of the particular path, or even the goal, for that matter.

And the goal? One goal is to manifest the unity of the four paths into the realization that our true state is where the states of permanence, knowledge, and bliss, unite us in our union with the One.

A sense of unity often precedes Union. However, we know that unity cannot be decreed by a constitution or any number of bills of rights or legislatures or courts or executives and their orders. It is just like a rainbow cannot be decreed to appear or be perceived — the sun and the rain drops and a number of other conditions have to come together to create it with harmony. The rainbow appears when human nature recognizes that the union of colors, while maintaining their independence and their right to individually exist as equals, can only enhance the beauty of the world for all who set their eyes upon such a union.

How does union and unity manifest? We can observe union in father-children relationships, in a bride and groom’s joyfulness on their wedding day, in a decision to be aware of and celebrate all the physical light steaming upon us during summer solstice. Perhaps the greatest manifestation of unity and union is in an individual’s decision to work towards their union with the divine through the path of Yoga of their choice.

To be friendly towards those friendly towards us, to be joyous for them in their joy, to be empathetic towards those suffering, and to be indifferent without attitude towards those with evil intent – these four practices of maitri, mudita, karuna and upeksha – are considered to central to Patanjali’s definition of Yoga.

As I finish writing this, a baby sparrow has arrived on the deck and is loudly tweeting in a sliver of shade by the bird feeder. It is as if she’s asking me to get off the couch stat and do my Dad Yoga of re-filling the feeder. Such is the life of a householder- to stay unified in the heart while performing the actions related to the feeding of the world around me.

Now where did I put away that 50 pound bag of bird seed anyway?

Kumud

P.S. Join me and the #SpiritChat community in our weekly twitter gathering on Sunday, June 21 at 9amET/ 630pm India. We will integrate Fathers Day (US), International Day of Yoga, Summer Solstice and the kickoff of four days of online and offline events for my niece’s wedding in India… Namaste – @AjmaniK

On Spiritual Restoration

Tags

action, Bhagavad Gita, dharma, discernment, justice, karma, nature, restoration, truth, viveka

A beautiful cool breeze is flowing this morning before the heat rises. The blackbirds are practicing their landings on the fence — the young ones are learning how to land on top of cattails. I notice at least four or five new bushes lining the forest side with their white flowers now blooming.

The sun crests the roof from behind me and starts to warm the left side of my head behind the ear. Flap, flap, flap goes the edge of my sleep shorts as I sit cross legged clutching my cup of tea, The back of my right knee is cradled on top of the left, both of them supported by the toes of my left foot, heel suspended in mid air, lifted by the wooden rail of the deck running crossways. The bullfrog announces his presence by blaring out a morning song. As if in cue, a skirmish breaks out among some blackbirds — perhaps a heated conversation about ownership of a particularly fruited bush.

My thoughts shift. The world has destroyed itself and reconstructed itself, over and over again, for centuries. My hometown of the city of Delhi, the center of many an Indian empire, is said to have been razed to the ground seven times by invaders, and been built again. So, I sit here watching the birds go about their morning routine, which is rarely if ever interrupted unless there happens to be a roaring thunderstorm that forces them to take shelter in their nests and ride it out. Unlike humans, they don’t construct permanent walls or roofs or tenements or try to brave the storm by driving through standing waters.

Yes, the younger, more impetuous ones do fly a bit faster than their parents, and seemingly a bit more recklessly in between the bushes and trees, and occasionally miss their landings atop the cattails to end up closer to the water than their mothers would like to see. But what would you do if you woke up one fine morning of your young life and realized that you had been given wings, and one of your parents, knowing that you were ready, brought you to the edge and gave your quivering young body — that is shaking with fear at the prospect of falling to your death to the earth below — a final push with a prayer beneath her breath and said, fly!

She knows that if she has misjudged the strength of your wings, you may end up on the storm soaked ground below and the earth will either gently catch you so that you may try again, or embrace you forever, orange and yellow flecked wings and all — such is the nature of life, of discernment. We try, we fail, we learn, we adjust, and we try again. No progress, at any level, from the march of an ant to the launching of a new rocket to carry humans into space, has ever been made possible by simply sitting in our nests with the fear of flying or learning to fly.

When compared to birds and bullfrogs and geese and spiders and ants and willows and roses and pine trees and even rocks, we humans are mere fledgelings in the lifespan of the earth, let alone the universe. So, the creator has endowed us with Nature as a playground and observation space where we can learn some valuable lessons that can help humanity either rise and soar, or plummet and destroy itself. The laws of time, space and causation cannot be circumvented without first understanding the basics of cause and effect. Natural laws always takes precedence over human laws, for the wisdom of the One who created the former far exceeds the ones who created the latter.

However, we humans have been given one extraordinary faculty that distinguishes us from the rest of Nature.

And that is the faculty called ‘free will’ by some and ‘discernment’ or ‘viveka’ by others. As I arrive at writing this section, the wind has shifted. A cloud has temporarily come over the Sun behind me. The blackbirds are starting to retreat and the geese have left the pond momentarily to take shelter on land. Discernment on display, and yet it is a cause and effect response to nature’s stimulus. A bit like a child touching a hot stove and learning, forming a memory that it isn’t a good idea to challenge the laws of fire and heat.

So, yes, ‘viveka’ is a faculty and a facility granted to us to convert our learning into experience and then into wisdom. When Arjuna, the aggrieved Prince of the Bhagavad Gita, refused to fight to restore the justice due to him because he did not want to kill his own half-brothers who had connived to cheat him of his rightful inheritance to the kingdom of Indraprastha — the city razed and built seven times — his teacher Krishna said to him: you have been given the duty of a warrior, so you are bound by the laws of Dharma (natural justice and truthful living) to act in the cause of its restoration; rise up and discard this despondency; stand up and fight or else an entire race of good people shall be decimated at the hands of the promulgators of evil or adharma; do not let emotion cloud your discernment, for ‘viveka’ is your greatest faculty — the ability and courage to do what is right for the greatest good; action with love produces detachment to the outcome, and yet detachment does not mean that you be attached to inaction.

It is the restoration of the good, of goodness through the use of discernment that elevates us within.

Back to my morning by the lake. When the mighty hawks stray and soar too close to the blackbirds and their young, the much smaller but deft in flight blackbirds do not hesitate to guide them back to their nests. Order is swiftly restored. The blackbirds’ size isn’t a disadvantage – they are much more flexible in changing speed and direction as compared to the hawks, because of their size. Each of us, as individuals, may be smaller than the big machinery that wants to endanger our young, and yet, with the exercise of ‘viveka’, with consistent action that works towards the restoration of ‘dharma’, we can engage in reconstruction of truth, kindness, empathy, friendship, and bliss.

Our greatest faculty and facility is the divine’s love that we carry in our heart. Let us wield that love with courage in all that we do, even if it means that we run the risk of being thought of as weak and ignorant. The evil and unjust are the ones who are weak, lacking in ‘viveka’ —and it is their hubris and heart calcification that will be their destruction. We, the wielders of love, will be the agents, the dispensers of that justice.

Natural justice is dispensed by the natural laws of time, space and causation. It is the law of karma charioted by the holders of ‘viveka’, that has for eons and civilizations, ensured victory for those committed to action for the restoration of Dharma — truth and justice.

For when the storm of natural justice arrives, it restores equality among all, regardless of size, strength, power, status or color — the hawk, the blackbird, the finch, all respond to the storm by taking refuge in their nests. Their use of discernment is in full display. Maybe we humans can observe, learn and use natural wisdom to restore ‘viveka’ in our lives too. I believe we can. How about you?

Kimud

Epilogue: Written mid-week during my week-long ‘virtual retreat’ to effect some inner restoration. A lot of wandering threads here, so feel free to take what appeals or relates to you. Namaste.

P.S. Join our weekly twitter #spiritchat on twitter – Sunday, June 7 at 9amET / 1pm GMT / 630pm India. We will talk about restoration, dharma, karma and more over tea, fruit and maybe even some cookies. Bring a story to share. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Spring flowers bloom… a sure sign of restoration

On EnLightening the Heart

Tags

faith, leaders, leadership, light, lightness, restoration, trust

From the very beginning on Saturday morning, I sat with colorless tears in my eyes that sealed my eyelids shut at the edges — perhaps not wanting to see any more darkness, perhaps mourning the state of a country ravaged by disease, death, destruction, despair, discrimination and disintegration.

And yet, after relaxation and prayer, there was the ever-present invitation to focus on the light within the heart…

After a few minutes, lightness came as a reminder of what many of us may need to do to cross the street safely – blinded as we may be right now by anger and despair and helplessness or even rage. What we may need to do is to hold on to the person in front of us… just like I would see the kids do at the school for the blind  which was virtually across the street from my high school in New Delhi, India. In a show of great trust, they would each put a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them. In a show of great hope that the person leading the line could actually see where they were going, they would safely cross the road towards light. 

Enlightened, emboldened, encouraged and empowered, I closed my eyes even tighter. Another thought came to lighter the heart. Perhaps all we need to do to walk the lighted path, to lighten the heart, is to be like toddlers holding on to the hem of the divine mother’s garment as we navigate these new worlds around us. By having child-like faith that the divine knows what’s best for us, and is lighting the heart path that is best for us, we can take another light step.

We take a step forward in a faith that has stood us well through previous trials and dark times. We take a step towards light and lightness, even though that path may occasionally lead us through some seemingly insurmountable obstacles. We take another step forward, even though the path may be filled with the thorns of divisiveness.  And yet, we need not despair, for we know from previous direct experience, that within all of us is planted the reservoir of love and light.

And if the reservoir of love, light, lightness is within us, then it is within them too. They may be unaware of the reservoir, but it is there — for its absence in them would violate the natural law of existence, of fairness, of divine justice. There is the existence of  love within, so that we may learn to lead with it. There is the light within, so that we can turn inward towards it in those dark nights when there are no stars or moons to guide us as the storm rages around us and within us…

Light and lightness within the heart grow trust and faith. They are good defenses against the heaviness of cruelty and injustice. When we add the personal practices of mercy, empathy and kindness, we become the blooming flowers that give light and soil and water to the next generation of leaders. With our example of an enlightened heart, we encourage a new generation of youth  to lead with a sense of fairness, empathy and justice. We construct a brand new world with a brand new generation of heart-centered leadership.

As a gardener, I know that it is often with the dregs of past growth, often called ‘organic matter’, that a brand new lawn or garden can be created. We spread soil mixed with organic matter over a barren land. We use good, enlightened seeds infused with great heart potential, fertilize them with hope, water them with trust and let them be warmed by the sunshine of divine grace. Then we step back and watch a new, kinder and gentler individual, family, community, society, and nation emerge.

It all begins with one heart full of light. An EnLightened heart. One heart that upholds truth, fairness, and yes, even justice — particularly justice. A heart that understands, respects, even reveres natural laws. How can I be so sure that a new lawn of leaders can be seeded? It has been said that “The divine is no respecter of persons”. My interpretation of this is that if it has been done by person, one set of people in space and time before, then it can surely be done by another person and another set of people again.

With that sense of faith and hope, let us heed the call to EnLighten our own heart. Our lighted heart full of warmth is needed to create a new landscape where flowers of truth and justice can bloom again. The woods may be dark now, but we need to keep waking and walking. “We have promises to keep” to those of the next generation holding on to us, as we lead them cross the street to light, just like we held on to the generation of light-bearers before us.

Raise the banner of love. Arise, awake, and stop not until the goal is achieved! – Swami Vivekananda

Kumud

Saturday, May 30 2020. 640am. 

P.S. I invite you to join our weekly conversation in #SpiritChat on twitter, held together by the glue of love and light. This week, we will gather at our usual hour of 9am ET / 1pm UTC / 630pm India. Come and share some practices, some stories, that help you EnLighten your heart. Namaste – Kumud. 

After the rainstorm – light and lightness of raindrops on flowers

On Spiritual Grounding

Tags

electricity, grounding, potential, resistance, witnessing

The the longer I sit here, cross-legged on the floor, the deeper and deeper the fog gets. It feels like it is now at the window, knocking on it, asking to be let in. It is as if I have come awake at one of those hill stations in India on a Saturday where the morning cup of tea on the porch, watching the fog do its magic, is a rite of passage of every summer vacation.

And yet, amid the fog, I feel grounded. Grounding. Yes. Connection with the earth that reminds us that gravity is what keeps us attached to this planet. Without gravitational force, we would all be like the fog, floating, simply existing in suspended animation. Actually, gravity is what keeps the fog hugging the earth too. It is perhaps evidence that suspended animation needs gravity and grounding too. In that way, fog is a bit like electric charge.

I think of electric current as the flow of potential across resistance. Potential, in order to do its best, useful work, seeks closure. It seeks to return to its source, the power plant from whence it originated, by the shortest distance possible. It can only achieve that ‘return to source’ by finding ‘ground’ or being grounded.

Did you ever wonder why every structure or device which flows electricity also includes a path to ground it? It’s a safety mechanism. In the absence of such a path for (excess) current, electricity and its surges would fry our electronically devices, our toasters and refrigerators, and even our homes. Electricity behaves badly when it isn’t grounded. It resorts to short-circuiting.

Humans are electrical beings too. This means that grounding is essential for us to make best use of our potential. Most of the external inputs fed to our senses raise the energy of our electrons. Their internal potential rises, and if their energy doesn’t find a path to ground by the discharge of that energy, they change state. In a sense, our electrons, and we, get short-circuited, suffer burnout or permanent (negative) change without regular grounding. The result is emotional, mental, physical, spiritual ‘crackling’ within us. We become ‘noisy’.

The solution? Give the electrical surge a path to ground. Develop a practice of inner grounding. Where may we begin? During the weekly Zoom chat this week, Sharon shared her deep ‘grounding experience’ when simply sitting by a campfire. Yes. The simple act of putting down our armors, our pros and cons, our devices, can quickly bring us to the grounding that we intrinsically need.

What is the result? Osho describes the experience of inner grounding as ‘becoming the witness’. Grounding will help us simply listen — to birdsongs and waterfalls and partners — without interpreting. Grounding will let gravity do its work on us, as we let it hold us and hug us. Grounding can allow for our inner current to find its way to the heart’s playground, and uncover the path for the heart’s current to flow into us in return.

Over time, with regular spiritual grounding, a lightness of flow will emerge within us. The humming of the divine song will become our constant companion. The song divine will lighten us so, that we will float our way home, listening to its melody.

Ready to try experience grounding? Consider it as a four step process.

We gather our best energies to build up our potential. We ground the inner electrical circuit to source. We recalibrate our resistance by regulating our inputs. We then watch, be witness to the flow of the inner current.

We can do this. Let’s begin. Let’s meditate.

Kumud

P.S. Join the #SpiritChat community in our weekly twitter gathering, Sunday May 17 at 9amET. Some say that it is quite a unique, even a grounding experience. I will play host with some questions – but I mostly show up because it is an excuse for me to drink tea and eat cookies! Namaste – Kumud

P.P.S. In the time that it took me to write this post, the Sun emerged, the fog cleared. It’s a brilliant day. And all I had to do was to sit and watch, be witness.

Spirituality by Numbers

Tags

mathematics, numbers, oneness, spirituality

The Big Numbers

If some of you are like me, then the month of April probably felt like it had much more than the normal thirty days. Some days  seemed like to run into another, and we would sometimes forget what day of the week it was. Some days even seemed to last longer or shorter than the usual twenty four hours depending on our frame of mind. 

So, it was a bit of welcome relief to actually see the calendar roll over from April to May. There was a sense of freshness about seeing the single digit, 1, in the calendar icon on my phone’s home screen. It felt like the universe was nudging me to begin anew and re-establish some sort of a normal schedule — whatever ‘normal’ even means or will mean any more. As I looked back at April, I couldn’t help but think about some numbers.

We dealt with a lot of really big numbers in April. Trillions, billions, millions, hundred thousands, tens of thousands. In various different contexts, these numbers with lots of zeroes attached to them, came into our awareness. Some of these large numbers  will perhaps remain in our awareness for a while, if not permanently. We may rarely ever again treat them as mere numbers, because they attempt to quantify the impact of Covid19 on our collective consciousness. 

However, numbers big or small, did not always a role, or any role in human life of the past. Humans only invented numbers a few thousand years ago. Before that, humanity led a life on Earth for a fairly long time without numbers. This doesn’t mean that the ancient humans did not know how to count – they probably didn’t use numbers in the way that we use them. Some of us humans like me, even get obsessed with numbers occasionally. 

Learning Small Numbers

One of the very first things we want to teach toddlers is the skill of counting. As parents, it is often a great moment of accomplishment and pride when our child can learn how to count from one to ten. It’s a milestone of sorts. If they didn’t learn  how to count, children would be greatly impaired to function in this world. The parents and teachers would be deemed downright failures. And yet, I would posit that counting, numbers and the ability to eventually learn mathematics is mostly a mental skill. 

So, I reflected on the question – how do we remove ourselves from our dependence on numbers, if only for a moment? Nature provides the immediate answer. Walking the forest trail, I have never counted the number or trees. I have never even thought about counting as I walk across a bridge, marvel at the river’s flow, watch the woodpeckers tap on the trees, get blinded by the sunlight streaking through the trees or watch new flowers springing before my very eyes. When the storm starts to build up over the lake and the clouds do their dance, numbers are erased from my consciousness. You get the idea.

To quote Shakespeare — “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. I would take some liberty and replace ‘philosophy’ with ‘numbers’ — particularly the really large numbers. The ones with all those zeroes, particularly those which quantify pain, suffering and death, tend to overwhelm the heart and mind. It isn’t that every single person’s grief and healing isn’t important. It’s that when we look at suffering in mass aggregates, we run the risk of losing empathy for the individual.

Spirituality and Significant Numbers

And yet, there are some numbers which are very important from the heart’s perspective, from the spiritual perspective. In the vein of ‘paint by numbers’, let us be creative and look at them as ‘spirituality by numbers’. I was going to list a countdown from twelve, but for the sake of brevity, I will limit it to five. So, let us begin. 

Five. The number five represents the elements, and our senses. Our body is considered to have ten (a multiple of five) doorways, through which we receive sensory input. It is the tenth, the invisible space between the eyes, the third eye, which is the most significant from a spiritual perspective. It is used by many as the doorway to travel within, and as also the seat of awakening. 

Four. The four quadrants of the heart space and the cardinal points come to mind with the number four. In spirituality, there are the familiar three — the heart, the mind and the body — and also an additional fourth, unexplored, unearthed dimension. Can you think of any more spiritual interpretations of the number four?

The number three immediately evokes the Trinity of Christianity. In Sanatana Dharma (hinduism), three represents the powers of creation, sustenance and destruction that govern the cycle of life. The notion of word, thought and action, all interconnected, represent the number three. There is no thought without word, and thoughtless action notwithstanding, there is no action without first being impelled by thought. 

What about the number two? The philosophy of duality follows from the notion of two. Man is created in the image of the divine. Man eventually merges into the divine. These flow from the ideas of duality, which are often the creators of the ego, which can be the cause of great pain and suffering. One proposed solution is to discard the notion of duality. 

Finally, we arrive at the number One. The idea of Oneness is very appealing to many, because it represents our Universal nature. If we can remember to constantly embrace our fundamental nature of Oneness, then the world would be one of infinite love. And yet, the practice of Oneness is a work in progress. It is a seemingly huge task and yet it can be accomplished if we begin by recognizing and experiencing our own Oneness with the divine. The heart is our instrument, our flute to the experience of Oneness — if we let the divine breathe the breath of love through it. 

The lesson for me from April has been that it is easier to focus on the small tractable numbers. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Learning to count, all over again. Not to be outdone or ignored, zero is possibly the most powerful number of all. Zero can take any number, no matter how big or small, and by multiplication. reduce it to itself. Zero can also take any number, big or small, and by division by itself, create infinity.

From zero to infinity. That is all the spirituality by numbers we will ever need in our new present, won’t we?

Kumud

P.S. Longest blog post ever, isn’t this? I get carried away by numbers. Thanks for reading. And join us for our weekly gathering of folks in #SpiritChat on Sunday, May 3 at 9am ET / 1pm UTC / 630pm India. We will talk about some small numbers over tea, coffee, fruit, cookies, and a few questions. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Sunset – Spirituality, beyond the Numbers

Our New Spiritual Earth

Tags

commitment, earthday, healing, simplicity, spiritual earth

Earth Day celebrations this year followed the trend of so many events that have gone virtual or online over the past month or so. It has been a month where every day seems the same, and some days we are hard-pressed to remember what day of the week it actually is. In such times, one would have ample reason to forget about Earth Day, let alone celebrate it in any meaningful way. 

On the other hand, this is a year where the fiftieth Earth Day and Earth month observances could not have come at a more appropriate time. The incidence and spread of the SARS Covid-2 Virus or the Novel Coronavirus has brought large parts of the world to a virtual standstill. Some are referring to these times as “The Great Pause”. Country-wide “lockdowns” and “stay at home” orders have entered the vernacular of our awareness. 

There have been many visible and measurable effects of the pausing, the slowing-down, the stopping of everyday human activities on our planet. Early on in the pause, we saw satellite imagery of noticeable reduction of pollution over countries like China, large parts of Europe, India, and more. Residents of a city in northern India woke up to a new landscape of reduced air pollution. After almost three decades, they could now actually see the snow-capped peaks of their neighboring  Himalayas. Scientists have reported that the great pause had actually changed the level of seismic activity, the way the Earth was moving.

It is reasonable to expect that the effects of this unprecedented, large-scale pause in human activity are going to be short-term in nature. However, if seeing is indeed believing, then these changes have shown us how rapidly and dramatically we humans can effect change on our planet. One may argue that we are in extraordinary times, and that the current drastic reduction in human activity is a blip on the radar. That argument is probably correct. However, even small, incremental, persistent changes in our behavior can eventually change the energy and the vibration of our planet. It is like boiling cold water – it often seems like it is taking forever for the water to warm up. Once the water reaches 211F, it only takes a single degree of change, for it to change state and becomes steam. Massive change often comes in slow increments, from small commitments.

The newly minted weekly video gathering of #SpiritChat folks occurred on Earth Day this week. Four of us gathered briefly, and contemplated asked the question – what does Earth Day mean to us? Sharon (@awakeningtrue) offered that her hope was that more folks would take the opportunity to meditate on Gaia and her warm, golden, healing energy. Julie (@juliejordanscot) said that she was going to act on a challenge to hug a tree deeply, with a warm loving embrace, and feel its energetic, inner vibration. Quratulain (@iquarattariq) spoke about how the great pause has led her to ‘reduce her footprint’ on this One Earth, and to be grateful for her abundant life, when compared to so many others’ lives. On behalf of the community, I offered a reading of a short poem by Emily Dickinson…

Nature rarely uses yellow
Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets, —
Prodigal of blue;

Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
Like a lover’s words.

– Nature XXXI #EmilyDickinson #CollectedPoems

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunset in the backyard (Fall 2018) 

What may Earth Day mean to you? We have a few more days left in this Earth month of April. We still have time to consider some small changes that we can make in our lives — changes that will eventually make a huge impact on all the elements of our planet. The water we drink, the earth we plant seeds in, the air we breathe — all these elements, this ecology, is looking forward to helping ensure for our healthy, long-term survival. On this Earth day, in this Earth month, we can perhaps commit to meeting the planet and its elements at least half-way, can’t we? And yet, we have something greater to do.

The greater commitment we can make on this Earth Day is to take a great pause, and examine the state of our inner Earth. What can we do to cleanse our inner Earth’s elements of the toxic pollutants of fear, anger, jealousy, prejudice, and the like? How can we create a sustainable, rare Earth that embodies the five elements of simplicity, purity, peace, amity and compassion? If it is true that the outer world reflects the state of our inner world, then let us accept the invitation to begin within.

Let us embrace the opportunity provided by the great pause with a sense of urgency. The time to act is now. We have the heart and soul of the planet to heal. 

Kumud

P.S. Please join us on Sunday, April 26 at 9amET / 1pmUTC / 630pm India for our weekly gathering of the #SpiritChat community on twitter. We will discuss our commitment to action to the Earth within and without. Thank you for reading. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Do the best you can, until you know better; Then when you know better, Do better — Maya Angelou

On Spiritual Liberation

Tags

freedom, liberation, moksha, nirvana, spring

The idea of liberation, of freedom, is perhaps as old as humans have been around on planet Earth. One of the freedoms that we seek in our daily lives is to be liberated from the bondage of the laws of Nature and its hold over us.

We want to climb a mountain? Nature stands in our way. We want to grow crops? Floods and droughts thwart us. We want to reach the Moon and Mars? We have to overcome gravity. We want to cross the oceans? Storms pose all kinds of disruptions. We want to be in good health? We are constantly fighting off all kinds of microbes, germs and viruses.

How finite it seems that we are! How helpless like soft clay in the hands of the potter who moulds us and our lives on his spinning wheel of time, space and causation! How little control we seemingly have of our own existence, for we do not even know whether we will get the next breath or not!

So, it is natural that we seek liberation, seek freedom from the agency that Nature exerts upon our every exertion towards progress. Our seeking for liberation is essentially an affirmation, a confirmation, an assurance that we are not just finite, but possibly Infinite. How can we be both finite and Infinite?* How do we resolve this conflict?

To resolve conflict, the first step is to heal, to harmonize, to integrate with Nature. When we take actions to live in integrity with Nature, then our life becomes more peaceful.  In the presence of this peace and healing with the without, we can begin the journey to exploring our Infinite nature within. On this inner journey we can experience the bliss Absolute of our integrity with the whole, with the Oneness. When we experience that divine Oneness, we have the opportunity to become the living free, the jeevan mukta — one who walks awake in the state of moksha, of nirvana, 

The how to question of spiritual liberation, of experiencing the infinite, is often much simpler to answer than the why to question. The paths to the inner experience are many and multifarious. Some say that walking the path is more that important than the path itself. In that vein, some prefer the methods of deep prayer, practicing intuition, extra-sensory perception, divination, and the like. Some prefer the method of withdrawing their attention seed from the external, from Nature, and sowing it within, in meditation. Through the regular practice of meditation, we can give the seed sunlight and water, and an opportunity to grow in the heart’s soil.

How do we know that our spiritual practice(s) are being effective to move us towards liberation? We begin to experience our   Infinite divine nature is experienced  by us as a state of bliss absolute, a state of permanence, a state of truth and higher knowledge. Once we have experienced a glimpse of the infinite, of our divine reality, we are on the path to liberation from our limited, finite nature. We are breaking the shackles of the external, of Nature itself. True liberation is thus  like the butterfly who emerges from the cocoon of finite existence, with her wings having been energized with the experience of its own infinite potential.

Yes, butterflies are still subject to the laws of nature, to cause and effect, to life and death. And yet, every flap of their wings as they defy gravity and gracefully glide among flowers sends messages into eternity. They seem to be saying — yes, you are finite like us, but you have also been given the opportunity to realize your Infinite nature.

Let us heed the messages. Let us not hanker for or rush to return to the old normal. It didn’t serve many of us very well, did it? Instead, why not pause to create a new normal with our newly discovered infinite nature? Can we imagine a new, sustainable world of caring, compassion, courage, empathy, forgiveness, giving, healing, joy, kindness, purity, simplicity, solidarity, and Ubuntu?

Are we ready to realize our Infinite nature? What do we have to lose? Let us take the first step. Let us begin with simplicity. Let us take responsibility for our own spiritual liberation.

Kumud

*Swami Vivekananda. The Open Secret (Los Angeles, CA, Jan 5 1900)

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter gathering and conversation – Sunday, April 19 at 9amET / 1pmUTC / 630pm India. We will talk about the finite and the infinite, and yes, even a bit about liberation over tea and coffee, fruit and bakery. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Breaking free – expressing their infinite potential – the first blooms of spring…