On Life’s Diverse Colors

Tags

celebration, colors, diversity, spirituality, unity

As I walk outside on to the deck just after sunrise, I am greeted by a symphony of sounds and colors that are unmistakably spring. The blue hues of the lake shimmering reflections of the sky remind me of the much more expansive palette of the skies and waters of the Caribbean at sunrise on any given morning.

The greens of new buds on plants and the tiniest of leaves on trees in the forest encourage the grasses that are meandering their way back to life. There aren’t many reds or oranges or yellows or such yet, but I am sure that that palette will appear later during the sunset hour. I muse over my cup of tea…

What would our lives look like without the existence of color, or our ability to discern the beauty that the myriad colors of people’s experiences add to our lives? If our true wealth is the sum total of our shared experiences, then would we not be paupers without having experienced a multitude of hues of faiths, beliefs, cultures and such? Why is it then that…

There are so many who continue to insist that it is their color, their truth, their experience, their waters, their way of life, their spiritual practices, their books, their philosophy, their mythology, their culture and such that is superior and deserving of domination — and that all else must go.

It is like me trying to color the world around me with “my favorite color”. Or, perhaps it is like a color-blind person (yes, that’s me in real life) saying that a particular color doesn’t exist or cannot possibly exist or has no value because I literally cannot see it. Imagine if the extent of our universe was limited to our senses and their perception – would we not be living in denial of a large part of our human experience? I perhaps digress…

On this full moon of March, a weekend that marks the “festival of colors” or Holi in India, my heart asks more questions. What is the color of the falling rain or the dew drop or the tear in a mother’s eye? What is the color of the breeze that awakens the buds in spring? What is the color of the heat that warms the earth and causes the roots to stir to life? What is the color of love or fear or hate or joy or awakening? I don’t really know…

I do know that it is perhaps in embracing all our transitions through the experiences of all the myriad colors of our life, that we can prepare ourselves for the experiences which are colorless, formless, infinite and permanent. It is a form of Yoga. If we were to deny or negate the diversity of color in our world, how would we ever arrive at unity, let alone experience Oneness in our heart?

So, bring on Holi, I say, with all of its vigor of color, joy and celebration of all of humanity. Let there be color everywhere through light, so that its source can infuse love for all in our hearts.

Kumud

P. S. Join us to celebrate and share the colors of your life in our weekly chat – Sunday, March 28 at 9amET in #SpiritChat on Twitter. Namaste – @AjmaniK

What colors can your eye see in Spring?

Messengers of Equity

Tags

equinox, equity, harmony, spirituality, spring

The onset of spring often means that I get an opportunity to align my annual “work break” with my daughters “spring break” at school. This rhythm was fortunately restored this week, after the disruption last year due to the pandemic.

The rhythm’s restoration was accompanied by the opportunity to spend a whole week filled with twelve-hour long days and nights as the equinox approached and allowed for day-dreaming and natural observation. What emerged from simple observation without agenda? It was how nature tends to do such a wonderful job of being a messenger of equity in so many of her daily rhythms.

One such messenger that I got closely acquainted with this week was the sun rise over deep blue Caribbean waters every morning. The acts of waking up early to complete my morning meditation, followed by watching the sunrises became my new natural rhythm. I could literally set my watch to the song of the bird that would start singing while the dawn was still dark. Her faith in the new light that was imminent, was as unwavering as it was uplifting.

The sunrises were far from perfect, though. On most mornings, clouds of various width, depth and height would hug the sea, obscuring a direct view of the sun. And yet, every sunrise viewing was spectacular because every one of them started out unpredictably different. However, the conclusion and the Sun’s message was always the same.

Just before 7am, silvery linings would form on the edges of the clouds. Shortly after, the sun’s orb would ascend high enough in the sky to subsume the clouds with its golden brilliance. It seemed as if the Sun, in its rising, was messaging equity to all beings, regardless of their size, status or situation in the natural order of life.

How was this daily message received by the world? One example was seen in the appearance of the pelicans, who had a predictable rhythm along the shoreline while the sunrise’s drama was unfolding. Their timing seemed to based on a synergy between the sun’s emergence and the state of the tide. They often seemed to arrive peacefully, in groups ranging from three to maybe a dozen. With grace and peace, they fearlessly and repeatedly plunged headfirst into the waters for their morning catch. Their morning ballet was a pleasant, soothing contrast to that of the raucous crows and blackbirds!

The response to the Sun’s message of peace, harmony, abundance and yes, equity, is often received and acted upon differently by many of us, isn’t it? Why is this so? Does the messaging need to be improved? Is nature using the wrong messenger?

I don’t have the answers. All I can do is relay to you the message of equity that was delivered loudly and clearly to me on this vernal equinox. Our future depends on our investment into working towards equity for all. Will we choose to listen to the messenger and act accordingly, or will we close our eyes to the light?

I hope we choose well in this new season of healing and wellness for all.

Kumud

P. S. Join us in our weekly chat, Sunday March 21 at 9am EDT / 730pm India as we celebrate the Sun’s passage through equity. I look forward to seeing you after my ‘break’. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Sunrise on the Caribbean…
March 20 2021, Vernal Equinox

P.P.S. My ‘break’ this year was made possible by being fully vaccinated relatively early (the 2nd dose was completed on Feb 6… ), and the invitation to a remote location #gratitude

Seasons of Renewal

Tags

light, new life, renewal, seasons, spring

Over the last week or so, I’ve noticed the slant of the sun’s light and the arc that sweeps across the sky in my northern latitude, has changed. My morning and evening walks have made me acutely aware of this change. As the sun rises more eastwards and sets more westwards a bit everyday, the March of increasing sunlight is difficult to ignore. Winter is still holding on, and yet, bit by bit, spring is loosening its grips on the earths and the waters where the Sun cannot yet reach directly. 

The increased range and angle of the Sun creates increased warmth in the earth during the day, which lets the soil do more its work of awakening the roots during the night. Or at least that’s what I imagine. The birds have already awakened to the season and the cries of fledglings demanding food in the nests outside our living room windows are ample proof of this. In addition, there is the music of the shrills of blackbirds on cattails harmonizing with the squawking of the arrivals and departures of new flocks of Canadian geese in the lake every morning and evening.

The not-so-hidden message in the midst of all this new activity seems to be a call to renewal. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the timing of this message coincides with the renewal of hope in our heart. We feel renewal because we can see the beginning of the end of the pandemic that brought a lot of components of our lives to a standstill over the past year. We may sense renewal because nature is reminding us of the consistency of natural life-cycles that have persisted through millennia, despite our ignorance of, or interference with them. 

It is often said (in metaphysics) that outer Nature is simply a projection of our own inner nature. The state in which we see the world without reflects the state of our world within. If this is true, then every season, every transition, every change in the amount and intensity of light and warmth within our heart is reflected in the external world of Nature. If this is true, then every moment that we invest in healing, reflecting upon, and meditating on the source of light within our heart becomes and opportunity for renewal of both our inner and outer world. 

I posit that This is the true invitation of the season of renewal. I further posit that we can evoke and invoke the season of renewal in whenever we so choose to renew the awareness of our heart’s light. It is when we awaken to the light of our truth that we can stream, and yes, even binge-watch, all the seasons of renewal within our heart.

And now, it’s time to walk the dog, or rather, let him walk me outside. It’s a beautiful spring day outside. Namaste.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering and chat with the #SpiritChat community, Sunday March 7 2021 at 9amET / 730pm Inda. Tell us about your favorite season of renewal! Thank you. – @AjmaniK

Sunlight falls on Autumn’s leaves in Spring – March 6 2021

On Creating Simplicity

Tags

awareness, freedom, simplicity, spirituality

Thirtieth January. It was on this day in 1948 that the simple life of Mahatma Gandhi was snuffed by an act of violence, as he walked to an outdoor prayer meeting in New Delhi. His final words as he breathed his last were, “hey ram” — a remembrance of the God Rama. Gandhi, the man who was instantly recognizable by his simplicity – a pair of glasses, a walking stick and a white cloth made of homespun cotton draped around his body, as he travelled all across India inspiring a nation to rise up in non-violence to shake off the chains of British rule.

It was Gandhi’s simplicity that made him relatable to India’s ordinary people who felt that they too could join him in his fight for freedom and justice. His mission was simple too — complete independence for India. Inspired by the Bhagavad Gita and the likes of Paine and Thoreau, he inspired many lovers of non-violence and freedom in his wake, including Martin Luther King, Jr.

We all have had experiences with simplicity, or at least the occasional and intermittent desire for it in our lives. We often marvel and reminisce about the joy and lightness that we felt in those stages of our lives when ‘life was so simple’. One reason that our heart may even ache for a rerun to simplicity, to create it again in our lives, is that it is our natural state.

The ease of flow that we experience in simplicity is what attracts us to create it again. Simplicity, and the allowance that it creates in our lives – the idea of living a simple life of observation instead of a life of a desire to control people’s behavior and the tendency to jump to conclusions and judgement. Simplicity engenders a life of peace, tranquility, lightness and creativity rather than a life living the death spiral of the ‘outrage of the hour’ brought to us by our hyper engagement with (social) media.

How do we begin to create simplicity (again)? One area we can examine is our daily habits and practices. What habits can we simplify, or even eliminate, without much effort? What (spiritual) practices are portable and sustainable? In what ways are we introducing more complex thoughts into our daily life? Some questions I often ask at the end of the day. For how long did I sit still today? What did I consume and how did it affect me? Did I engage with nature today? What was my greatest moment of Joy today?

As we ask these simple questions and watch the answers emerge, our awareness will create more simplicity in our lives. The more that simplicity grows within, the more we will be attracted to it because of its rewards and its ability to return us to our natural, holistic state. Simplicity creates sustainability and warmth for the heart, like the rising of the Sun. A sunrise is simple, and yet, is there any single act more effective and essential for the health of the planet?

Kumud

Join us for our weekly Twitter chat, Sunday Jan 31 at 9amET in #SpiritChat – we will ask some simple questions and create some simplicity. Namaste – @AjmaniK

The simplicity encouraged by Nature…

On Revisiting Joy

Tags

celebration, healing, journey, joy, spirituality

As late as last Tuesday, it appeared that we were drifting towards “skipping Christmas” this year. For whatever reason, and I can probably rattle off a lot of them, the family, including me, just didn’t seem to have caught the spirit of the season. We all seemed to be in silent agreement about the skipping and sleep-walking towards 2021. Some things are not meant to be, I thought.

And then came the snow on Wednesday evening. It wasn’t the violent snowstorm that had come a couple of weeks ago and dumped more than a foot of snow on us in the span of twenty four hours. No. This was the gentle, quiet, languid snow where every flake takes its own sewer time drifting towards the earth. There is a haze that sets up at sunset and it’s almost as if the overcast sky holds the last light of the day in its arms such that the radiance makes the night as bright as the day. The lights around the neighborhood come to life and their reflection against the water and the falling and fallen snow creates a sort of magic that extends the silent invitation.

Come play, it says. Come revisit. Come and remember. Find a single reason for Joy. You look at the new puppy sitting by the patio door with wide eyed pleading, waiting for you to open the door to the deck so she can go out and roll around in the fluffy white, even feast on it. Silently, the tide turns and my daughter announces that mid-Thursday that she is done with all her finals. My wife decides that enough is enough. She goes to the basement, and while I am on a work telecon, single-handledly digs out the eight-foot high tree that has been wondering if it will get to see the lights this year.

I am still wondering about reason, but the snow falling and the water swirling around me has other ideas. My daughter has decided that she is going to play with the gingerbread cookie kit sitting in the box. With that, the tide has fully turned. Cookies, my friends!

I am transported to a time where the heart feels like it is bobbing for waves in the ocean, where you have waded in just far enough and deep enough that your feet can still feel the earth. As you hold ground with the tips of your toes, every so often, a wave comes and lifts you clean off of the ocean floor into moments of joy and exhilaration. Every time you think you’ve had enough of the waves and try and return to the shore, the slightest of undercurrents invites you to stay a bit longer.

Revisiting Joy doesn’t happen like a flash of lightning during the middle of a late summer thunderstorm. It happens with the slow drift and soft lullaby of the peacefulness of every snow flake that is grateful that their falling has been cradled by grace and give brilliance to a single heart on some of the darkest nights of the year.

My hope is that you get to revisit too. We can only resist the invitation of nature for so long. We can resist our intrinsic nature even less, and our intrinsic nature is Joy. That is what we were built for. To remember, experience and share it.

Joy to our world. Let us revisit and soar again.

Kumud

P.S. The house keeps filling up. Lettered stockings have now appeared on the fireplace. Santa is getting his delivery ‘truck’ ready… Come join us and share your story of Joy. I hope you can find a reason. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Learning to fly by revisiting Joy

The Heart’s Transitions

Tags

changes, seasons, transformation, transitions

I hadn’t seen them on the pond lately, which seemed to coincide with the fact that it had been heavy, overcast and a bit gloomy over the past few days. The cloud cover had been so thick that it was difficult to discern the sunrises and sunsets. However, last night, as I was woken up by the almost-full moon shining outside the window among scattered clouds, I anticipated that today was going to be different.

Sure enough. They came by the hundreds, in groups of two dozen or so, as they landed ever so immaculately in the water and made their way on to the frost covered ground that was being quickly warmed up by the languidly rising sun. The ones who had already claimed their temporary abode on the shore, raised quite a cacophony to welcome the next batch. The first transition that had started at sunrise, was fully underway. 

The second transition would happen around noon. All of those who had gradually made their way into the warming waters, would now reverse course and park on the grass for their afternoon nap. I did not see them make the third transition today, but I imagine that it was sometime before sunset. They had all taken off, onward in their migration south, by the time I went outside at dusk. 

Nature teaches us a lot about transitions, and how to possibly simplify our lives by paying greater attention to them in our daily actions. The rising of energy into the heart at dawn, the peaking at ‘solar noon’, and then the waning at dusk — all these transitions give us guidance, if we so choose to pay attention. On a slightly longer time-scale, there are the transitions marked by the lunar cycle — one which is most noticeable to the heart at the advent of the full moon. Further more, there are the seasonal transitions. The farther away we live from the equator, the greater is the variation in the length of daylight with the seasons.

The seasons makes for a more subtle energetic transition for the heart . We often become aware of this transition hrough our emotional response, particularly when the days trend towards becoming really short between fall equinox and winter solstice. And so, here we are. The short days of late autumn and the full moon is upon us again. A lot of nature’s daily, monthly, seasons, and annual transitions are temporary. And yet, the heart does not need to necessarily follow suit.

What if we were to prepare our heart for some permanent transitions. What if we were to permanently transition our hearts from indifference to compassion? From doubt to faith? From weariness to resilience? From indifference to empathy? From callousness to kindness? From arrogance to humility? From sadness to joy? From condemnation to respect? From prejudice to inclusion? From debasement to dignity? What would our inner world look like if we were to effect one or more of these permanent transitions?

When, where and how do we begin the heart’s transition? More importantly, why would we want to do so? Even more importantly, what would we be willing to give and accept, for such a transformation of the heart? 

Kumud

P.S. The migrating geese, another few flocks of them, will be back tomorrow. It’s supposed to be another day of sunshine. Join us for their  morning song and conversation with the #SpiritChat community on twitter, Sunday November 29 at 9amET. I will bring some tea, cookies, and yes questions. We will work on our heart’s transitions. Namaste – @AjmaniK

When transitions become transformations…

On Giving Through Conversation

Tags

conversation, giving, speech, thankfulness, thanksgiving

Sometimes, it isn’t easy to find what we are looking for, particularly when it’s right in front of our nose. This challenge seems to get even  greater as we grow older in years. We walk into a room looking for something with intent and then stand there like icicles frozen in a stiff winter wind, wondering — what did I come in here for? We rush out of the house because we are running late, and halfway to the car, we realize we’ve forgotten our phone. We rush back to the front door, and realize that we can’t turn the door handle because one hand is holding the keys and the other hand is actually holding the phone! 

Do you remember how you felt on New Year’s Day, January 1, 2020? In a decade that started with great hope and aspirations for millions, it is perhaps difficult for many of us to find reasons to give thanks as we approach the end of November. And yet, here we are in the USA, staring at the annual holiday of ThanksGiving. The “third wave” of Covid-19 cases has brought stay-at-home orders, curfews, overflowing hospitals, case and death numbers that are difficult for our minds to comprehend. As if that weren’t enough, we are squarely in the middle of a constitutional crisis and a threat to our very democracy from within. 

At the individual level, life as we know it, is in some ways, unrecognizable from what it was at this time last year. We may have lost a loved one, lost our jobs or endured business losses, suffered a physical or mental health setback, and more. We may have become way too familiar with the workings of Zoom or Google Meet or other video conferencing platforms. For those with kids of all ages or older adults at home, we may be feeling overwhelmed in our new roles as full-time care-givers, educators, and more. 

I am sure that I am just scratching the surface of the ‘litany of woes’ that this year has brought our way. And yet, you well know that I wouldn’t be writing all this if I weren’t going to eventually ask you to pause and take a deep breath. Let’s do it together. Let’s pause, close our eyes for a minute, and take a deep breath and feel the inhaled air travel deep into our lungs, purifying the blood, returning it to the heart, and then bringing the impurities out of our body with a deep exhalation. Go ahead and do it a few times. I will wait. 

If you did what I suggested, you should have felt a bit lighter. Breath awareness creates an environment which shuts off the wanderings of our mind and activates the light of our heart. In moments of pure breathing and its awareness, we give our mind permission to breathe too, and allow it to let go of our micro and macro challenges. As the mind exhales the chatter of challenges and preoccupying it, it creates space for giving and gratitude to enter the conversation. Once gratitude enters the heart-mind, we can then give it forward to others, can’t we?

One Sanskrit word for expressing gratitude or ‘giving thanks’ is dhanya-vaad. The first part of the word is dhanya – its root is the word dhan – which literally means ‘wealth’. However, as is often the case in Sanskrit, the word dhanya has many meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. According to the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English dictionary, dhanya refers to one who is fortunate, who is blessed with wealth, happiness, goodness, virtue and joy. The second part of the word is vaad – which means ‘having a dialog or conversation’. Hence, dhanyavaad can be said to be the sharing and giving of our wealth through speech, dialog and conversation. 

Awareness of our wealth has to precede its giving. If we are unaware of the wealth within our heart’s treasury, we will feel that we have nothing to give or share.  Millions of families will attempt to celebrate ‘Thanksgiving at a distance’ this year. As we gather, we can perhaps share a few seeds of kindness, shine some rays of the heart’s light, and nourish each other with some sweet waters of gratitude. If we can do any or all of that, it will be a celebration full of healing and remembrance of the power of giving. 

Let me say dhanyavaad to all of you for being you. May peace, health, wealth, and yes, breath, be always with you and yours, and may you share of your moments of abundance with joy. 

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat with the #SpiritChat community on Sunday, November 22 at 9amET / 730pm India. We will share some moments of giving (and receiving) through conversation. Namaste – @AjmaniK

 

When the heart is engaged in giving, sky is indeed the limit… Breathe the sky…. 

On Being Forever Young

Tags

divinity, energy, feminine, festivals, youth

To put it mildly, the year 2020 has been a challenging year for the human race. For many of us, our share of problems, fears and anxieties has reached new highs in this year. So, how do we find solutions for them from a spiritual perspective? Let us step back and consider the root cause, and try to find some remedies. We can begin today, October 17, which marks the beginning of the  festival that celebrates ‘renewal of divine energy’ over the forthcoming nine days and nights (Navaratri).  

Let us consider. The problems that we have, which manifest as our fears and anxieties, can be viewed as the that of the body and/or of the mind. If this is true, then would our problems ‘disappear’ if we were to lose awareness of the body and the mind? One ’state’ in which we lose this mind/body awareness is when we go to sleep every night. Of course, we often carry our fears and anxieties into the sleep state, because they manifest as dreams (or nightmares). On days like that, we may sleep for a long time, and yet, we wake up tired because our mind did not find any rest from our fears.

And yet, there are some nights (or even afternoons :)), where we sleep that deep sleep of the newborn who does not have any worries, who is not lying awake wondering whether she will have ‘milk to drink’ in the morning. Then, in that dream state, the  consciousness has traveled beyond body and mind, and we wake up rested because we were freed of our fears and anxieties. 

So, if in some states of deep sleep, we can have the awareness of no-body and no-mind, then what is it that remains? Who are we, really in that state of sleep? And, can we develop that same awareness of no-body and no-mind in our waking state? If we could  develop the awareness that we are something greater than mere body and mind, then would we come face-to-face with our real existence?

Many would argue that such an awareness, such freedom from body and mind, is not possible or practical. Living in the world, we are immersed daily in a sea of time, space, action and causation. Fear, anxiety, pain, loss, distress, aging, and such — these are the things of the “real world”. We need to face all of these things of daily life, for which we need strength and the courage to overcome. So, where can we draw our strength from?

Vedanta philosophy (the ‘end of knowledge’) speaks to three sources of strength. The first, ‘moral’ strength comes from our adherence to truth, even when we may stand to suffer great personal loss as a result. Hence, Satyameva Jayate – the truth is always victorious. The second, ‘religious’ strength comes from a belief in a power greater than us, and the faith that That power source ‘has our back’ all the time. The third, ‘spiritual’ strength comes from the knowing that we are not the body or the mind — affirmed by the direct experience that our reality is That indestructible spirit.  

If we can develop these three sources of strength, and keep replenishing them, then we can be walking, talking, sleeping, dreaming and waking in a state where fear and anxiety do not exist. We can develop strength and courage through the renewal and celebration of divine energy and awareness within. Join me in the renewal.

Let us all celebrate our journey of becoming forever young. 

Kumud

P.S. Join us in our weekly twitter conversation on twitter as we gather to renew our strength and courage by sharing our stories through questions and answers, and a sharing of tea and cookies. Namaste – @AjmaniK

On Knowledge and Knowing

Tags

acceptance, awareness, choices, healing, invitation, knowing, knowledge, remembrance

It’s good to be welcomed back home again

— where all the stress that you brought with you is instantly dissipated by the first few steps of immersion in the stillness of the forest where the leaves are turning orange

— where all the energy that the trees have accumulated in your absence is seemingly showered on you in the falling of a single leaf

— as if you had walked into the ocean whose waves instantly wet every corner of your body – no matter how long you might have been away

— the ocean and the forest does not ask – where have you been? What did you accomplish there? Why have you been gone so long? How come you never wrote or called?

Maybe the ocean or the forest don’t ask these questions because of their state of being. Or maybe they won’t ask those questions because those answers would be from knowledge – whereas they are immersed in their own knowing.

Their own awareness, and their existence is not really influenced by our comings and goings — to them, all our knowledge is of no matter. Our knowing? That is a different matter.

I had been gone for six months. The fisherman’s trail off of the entrance path into the forest was welcoming as always, with the murmuring of the river inviting me to go left or right – or maybe straight down the middle to the bank where the trees overhang the water in suspended animation amid the stillness, and the mosquitoes immediately find you unless you find a spot with the slightest of breezes, whence they will leave you alone.

The crushed rock of millennia still holds the bank in place for those days when the river will rage – but not today, certainly not today. Today, the invitation is to walk into the middle of the river as the invisible force guides me with one hand and holds the flowing waters at bay with the other . And so, I accept the stillness and the gentility and the whisperings and the noontime birds speaking sweet nothings, stepping gently on one flat rock at a time, some of them barely big enough to hold all of my toes — and as soon as I can go no further into the river, the breeze that comes around the huge bend upstream greets me with an embrace that turns my heart into the wings of the monarch that has long gone South.

And yet, no matter all of that. You are here, You are home, in the center — maybe slightly left or right of it, but the center holds you— and you stand still. And then, an unprecedented invitation, to sit on the dry part of the river bed beneath your feet. You hesitate, but then you decide, that this is the moment for you to surrender to knowing.

So, you sit on the rock in the middle of the stream and absorb all the energy flowing upwards into you from the earth, flowing downwards into you from the overcast sky, from the waters flowing on either side of you, a bit faster on your left because it is devoid of the cluster of rocks that form eddies and lagoons on your right — so much peace, feeling the universe holding you in its knowing — and all you had to do was to accept the invitation.

In his book on Zen, Osho talked about the difference between knowledge and knowing. They are both limitless, and yet, knowledge binds us and knowing frees us. Knowledge creates desire to know even more, whereas knowing releases us from desire. The wave that surges from the ocean to touch the sky of knowledge, falls back into the ocean and is home again — in the ocean’s acceptance is the wave’s knowing of peace, love, joy, serenity, tranquility, silence, stillness, truth and kindness.

I am sure that you have all felt the light and lightness of this knowing in your experience with certain people, places and practices. I hope that you choose to accept their invitation, visit with them, and sit with them for a while in the days ahead.

Kumud

P.S. Join us Sunday, October 11 at 9amET / 630pm India as we gather on twitter for our weekly #SpiritChat in the knowing that we will partake of tea and cookies 🙂 Namaste – @AjmaniK

Author’s note: ‘stream of thought’ written while walking the Rocky River Reservation, October 6 2020.

Sitting… in the knowing that the Universe holds me with Love

The world flowing around me… as I sit in the river bed

Towards Peace Supreme

Tags

justice, peace, source, spirituality, supreme

Monday, September 21 was the observance of the International Day of Peace (IDP) sponsored by the United Nations and celebrated with various events held by organizations across the world.

I became aware of IDP through the Heartfulness organization’s effort called “Connect for Peace”, whose goal was to connect 40 million people in meditation over a period of 24 hours on that day. In order to understand “what does peace mean?” to different people (kids, athletes, change makers, spiritual leaders and more), a video of responses was compiled and shared (see link in the footer… highly recommended)

So, what does peace mean to you? How and when and where do you best experience it? How often do you seemingly lose it and how do you restore it? How can we experience Supreme peace, and be established in its awareness in the majority of the moments of our daily lives?

Some of you may have heard the story of the monk getting ready to meditate by the river bank who sees a scorpion drowning in its effort to swim. The monk picks up the scorpion from the shallow water, and as she is about to put him down on dry land, the scorpion stings her. The monk is unperturbed, and gets ready to meditate again. The scorpion wades into the water again, starts drowning. The monk rescues it again, and gets stung again. When this happens a third time, an observer sitting by the bank cannot resist asking the monk – why do you keep rescuing the drowning scorpion when all it does is keep stinging you in return for your kindness?

The monk replied – the scorpion, one of apparently much lower awareness than me, is holding true to its nature, which is to sting. I, of higher awareness, ought to also hold true to my nature, and which is to be kind and perform kind actions, don’t you think? Why would I give up my peace, my serenity, my stillness, my Dharma (way of being) in response to the scorpion’s sting?

Such is the nature of our living in the world. The world stings us when we do kind things. Let us not forget that sometimes we may be the scorpions – maybe not in action, but with our thoughts and words. Often, the stings are unprovoked, undeserved, unexpected, unjust and unfair. How do we respond?

We respond to the stings of the world in accordance with our height of inner awareness and depth of inner peace. We are not all monks (yet), but some of us are on the path to becoming aware again, remembering again that supreme peace is our intrinsic nature. By associating with those people, places and practices that evoke peace within us, we connect with our peace within. Through regular connection with supreme peace, we raise our awareness to the point where we lose our sting, and the world, our mirror, loses its sting too.

Have you ever wondered why new born babies tend to make everyone around them happy? One reason is perhaps that the new born is still immersed in its connection with the peace supreme. The newborn hasn’t had an opportunity to forget that It is That or that That is all there Is. The newborn isn’t questioning whether it is the drop or the wave or the ocean. It is simply being peace.

That is the state of newborn peace which our spiritual practices can return us to. When you and I practice peace, we contribute to creating supreme peace for all of us. Why create peace? Peace creates a channel to convey natural justice based on natural law and order, which is indeed supreme.

Spirituality teaches me that peace supreme is above all and within all. There is no journey towards it, because I am already there. It is infinite, and that is enough for me. How about you?

Kumud

P.S. Join us in our weekly community gathering on Twitter with #SpiritChat folks – Sunday, Sep 27 at 9amET. We will gather in peace and play with some questions and answers. Namaste – @AjmaniK

YouTube link for compilation of answers to “What does peace mean to you?” – https://youtu.be/TEKSFltSsvs

When the bee meets a flower – Peace flows Supreme