The Power of Acceptance

Tags

acceptance, awareness, energy, manifestation, resistance

I am sitting in the downstairs window, bathing in brilliant morning light on a beautiful mid-February day. The two puppies are on the bench beside me, watching me write this as I pause to take a sip of my tea, wondering why their morning ‘cookies’ haven’t showed up yet. Earlier, I had been sitting in the upstairs window that overlooks the water, marveling at the thin sheet of ice still covering part of the channel that feeds the rest of the lake. I could hear the call of a goose through the closed window as he was probably laying claim to his nesting space for the season.

The conversation this morning, from the moment I woke up, started with the topic of ‘resistance’ and gradually shifted to ‘acceptance’ and then to ‘manifestation.’ When resistance came up, the engineer in was immediately drawn to the electrical analogy of voltage, current and power. As the conversation proceeded, I was reminded that it is the ‘night of Shiva’ – Shivaratri – a celebration of the power of manifestation of the One who is considered the greatest practitioner of Yoga in Hindu tradition. The belief is that Shiva’s ‘masculine’ power remains latent until and unless it is enabled and activated by Shakti, the divine ‘feminine.’ This activation happens on Shivaratri – the ‘ratri’ or night of Shiva. But I digress.

How is such activation of potential made possible in Nature? Using the electrical analogy, for a given amount t of voltage or unmanifesed potential, the lower the inner resistance, the greater the flow of current, or manifested potential. Manifestation ia inversely proportional to resistance. In spiritual terms, when the ‘Shiva’ within us lowers our resistance by accepting that the activation energy of Shakti is necessary to manifest our potential, the divine current flows naturally. Without acceptance, which is a lowering of resistance, our potential is bound and remains in a static, dormant, partly or fully frozen state, for all of time.

What may happen within us when we decrease our level of undue resistance? It is said that acceptance manifests divine current as life-force that literally moves us, accelerating us on our journey towards our ultimate goal in life.

Where does resistance come from? How does it accumulate over time? Could it be because we question, even protest so many things in our lives that we have very little control of? We question why, when and where we were born, and even of whom? We ask why we had a certain upbringing, traditions, schooling, set of friends and family, and so on. We ask why certain loved ones and relationships and friendships are no more. The resistance accumulates over life and times.

And yet, if we would turn resistance into acceptance, we could enable the current of life in this moment to flow and empower us. How do we turn towards acceptance? Perhaps we can begin with a decision to look at our past with a different perspective, with greater empathy, loving kindness, maybe even forgiveness and more. There are techniques and guides who can help us make this turn, lighten our past loads and help us create new pathways of increased acceptance in our hearts. We may need to seek, to ask, to be receptive.

Yes, all of this will take some work, but change and new flow is rarely if ever possible without some effort, is it? True, meaningful, sustainable and transformative acceptance requires all the power we can muster and the help and cooperation of all those who are able and willing to empower us. Don’t you think so? The result is that the more the current flows within us, the more power for good we shall manifest through our divine potential. With complete acceptance, Shiva and Shakti will become One within us, and a new cycle of creation will begin.

The infinite possibilities of the infinite await. Will we accept?

Kumud

Join us for our weekly gathering and twitter chat, Sunday, Feb 19 at 9amET / 2pmGMT / 730pm India in #SpiritChat, as we celebrate acceptance. Namaste ~ AjmaniK

Nature teaches us so much about acceptance, doesn’t it?

On Embracing Diversity

Tags

acceptance, diversity, embrace, growth, spirituality, unity

Sometimes, all it takes is a few drops of early morning rain falling on you as you walk, to erase the heaviness that you have inadvertently awakened to, despite a good night’s sleep. Little that you realize that the drops are actually harbingers of a drenching which is on the way!

The weekly Friday walk around the lake is colored with a wonderful cool breeze that precedes the warm front bringing a couple of forecasted hot days after some unseasonal coolness. The tree almost sound like the beginning of autumn. The lake surface is agog with waves rippling against the heavy, inch-thick layers of algae, which has taken over two thirds of the lake surface. I pause and lean against the wooden cow-fence, as the seeds of the river-birches welcome me back in much delight and ask – where have you been all week? Why don’t you visit more often? The four wooden and weathered steps in front of me invite me to come closer, so for the first time ever, I accept and sit on then last one step, where if I stretched my legs out, they would touch the grasses growing on the edge. A single goose flies over from the grassy knoll and joins me, loudly announcing the weather coming in as the wind picks up a couple of notches. I wonder if I should head back, to heed the warning of the heavy rain in its way, but I decide to press on. The forest cover will take care of me, I perhaps wrongly presume. In addition, what else do I have to do on this Friday morning?

The same rose-bush that be-friended me last week, grabs my shirt again as i walk by, reminding me of our budding friendship. The tree-lined part of the trail is still heavy with mud, what with all the rain of the past week and the now heavily dense leaf-canopy that prevents the sun from reaching the ground. I pause at the bend, as the swift breeze calms down for a bit, breathing in all the goodness created by the stillness and the soft murmurings of the fledglings from the depth of the forest. More seedlings fall on me on their way to the earth.

If and when we open all of our sense receptacles to it, without any filters, and embrace all of the diversity of the world around us if only for a few moments, it can help lighten our world within. Yes, it is said that what we see in the world around us is a reflection of the state of our world within, and yet, until we get to that stage, the outer can help bring peace to the inner. The diversity of the outer tableau is designed, often by our own selves through our seeking, to fulfill our greatest inner needs. Perhaps that is why some love the water, others the forests, and some are attracted to the mountains, and even the skies.

No matter what aspect of diversity we are attracted to as individuals, they are all necessary in order to meet the need of the hour or season of each individual. Why else would there exist millions of species of plants and animals, with their variations in behaviors in different seasons, if not to remind us of the necessity of diversity and the infinite possibilities of the universe? Does nature not mirror the need for the infinite diversity of humans in the human race, and serve as a reminder that there would be annihilation of any society that is intolerant of its diversity?

Imagine a toolbox with only one tool in it, say, a screw-driver. Can you build a house with it? Imagine eating the same breakfast every single day. How healthy would that be? Imagine having only a single vowel in the alphabet. What kind of communication would be possible? Would we able to write prose and poetry without diversity of vowels? Imagine.

Progress in love, and towards light, is only possible through our embrace of diversity. The diverse streams of life that flow within us, when they mingle with each other, become the universal ocean. Is it not that when we commit to the work of finding the unity within our diversity, that we come closer to the experience of Oneness?

As I walk under the canopy of tall trees on the trail, pausing occasionally to write this post, the rain is getting increasingly heavier. My phone’s screen is filling with droplets of all sizes, varying from about a hundredth of an inch to about an eight of an inch in diameter. The beauty of this impromptu canvas is perhaps living testament that diversity creates peace and beauty. It’s a long way back to the car, so I find a tree with a heavy leaf cover, and try and ride out the downpour. As I wait for the rain to lighten, I am filled with a rush of gratitude for the fact that no matter the season, the diversity of nature has always embraced me, whenever I have visited with it.

Maybe it is in the unconditional embraces of nature where I have learnt my best diversity lessons. How about you?

Kumud

P.S. Do join us for our community gathering in our weekly twitter chat, Sunday, May 22 at 9am ET in #SpiritChat. We are a diverse group indeed, and are welcoming of all as we chat over tea and cookies. Namaste – @AjmaniK

The diversity of nature… beauty brings peace

On Life and Simplicity

Tags

acceptance, friendliness, joy, kindness, simplicity

As I sit here on the first morning of the New Year, watching and hearing a new flock of geese landing in the lake to rest for the day, I cannot help but marvel at the simplicity of it all. My awareness of the simple things has been heightened over the final two weeks of December in various ways.

The first of the two weeks led me to vacation with the family in the Caribbean among sunrises, ocean tides, sandcastles, the full moon and much more. There were many hours of one on one time with family members, family conversations over dinner, and simply sitting around in each others energies while doing nothing.

I had the opportunity to experience some deeper-than-usual meditations, read some books, learn bits of Spanish, and immerse in the peace of the locals. And yes, there were the extraordinary long walks on the beach, some moments of which I shared through photos with all of you.

I did not bring back a single souvenir other than the sense of how deeply we are connected to the elements — a connection that often tends to gets lost in rush and noise of our daily lives. It is difficult to describe what happens within you when you watch the sunrises over the sea for seven straight mornings while the ocean roars at your feet, as you walk the beach watching the seagulls and pelicans gliding over the water, and the glistening of the reflections cast by the sun and the full moon.

Words cannot do simplicity justice for they can only attempt to describe the mind’s construct of thoughts and rarely capture the imprints on the heart. Perhaps there is a better way to preserve and grow such beautiful and rare moments of connection with nature, even when we are not in its presence on the beaches of the world?

This was the question that I asked myself in the final week of the year when time seemed to be passing in ultra-slow-motion. One answer that emerged was from the Yoga Sutras of  Patanjali, which describes four practices that can help to simplify our life by purifying our mind and heart.

Be kind to those suffering – practice Karuna or kindness.

Be joyful in the joy of others – practice Mudita  or joyfulness.

Be friendly to those who are friendly towards you – practice Maitri  or friendliness.

Be accepting towards those with malicious intent – practice Upeksha or acceptance.

These four simple practices can become the guideposts for our life’s journey. And yet, so often, we run into challenges with one or more of them on a daily basis, don’t we? Can you relate to any of these practices that are a challenge for you?

The invitation of simplicity is simple, but the acceptance and practice of it is often made complex by our mind-thought-word-action system of living. We know that simplicity can be as simple as giving free reign to the heart, and yet we often walk away from it as we stay entangled with the mind and its complexities.

Perhaps the advent of the New Year can help bring us closer to simplicity, as we accept its invitation, one day at a time. Maybe we can say yes to four simple practices – to kindness, to joyfulness, to friendliness, and to acceptance.

Kumud

P.S. Join us in our weekly gathering with the #SpiritChat community on twitter, Sunday January 2 2022 at 9amET / 730pm India. We will consider the invitation of simplicity as we step into the New Year. Namaste – @AjmaniK

A flower’s simplicity… in December

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…

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

A Spirit of Humility

Tags

acceptance, humilty, self-reliance, spiritchat, spirituality

Four weeks ago in this space, we had a conversation about the spirit of self-reliance. Eight weeks ago, we, the #SpiritChat community, engaged in a conversation about acceptance. This week, we broach the subject of humility, while keeping the concepts of acceptance and self-reliance in mind. 

So, in the context of our spiritual journey, what is humility? Some may define it as being related to “letting-go”, in the vein of “self-surrender”. Some may define it as modesty or a “shrinking of the ego”, such that it reduces our own sense of “self-importance”. Having grown up in the East, and now lived in the West for more than half my life, I have observed that humility which leads to acceptance, seems to come more readily to those with a spiritual bent of heart than those with a scientific, proof-seeking bent of mind. This is not about a battle between Spirituality and Science – in fact, it is quite the opposite – but that’s a different conversation 🙂

This is not to say that humility, per se is a virtue, in all conditions. In what situations is humility not a virtue? Some of my good friends have argued with me (on and off of social media) about the fact that a false sense of humility does harm to our self-esteem, our self-reliance, our sense of acceptance. And I would agree. If we act in a humble way in order to merely impress others, in order to flaunt our humility as a virtue, we are simply refusing to live our own truth. No amount of humility can cover the façade of living an inauthentic life. 

Regardless of what we may think about the virtues or non-virtues of humility, some enlightened Masters – well, those that I consider enlightened anyway – have stressed the role of humility in the master/teacher/sensei and student relationship. Approaching a teacher with a humble attitude of learning, lowers our ego barriers and puts us in a position to receive. Without humility, the energy flow, the energy transfer, encounters excessive resistance, and the current flows poorly. My grandmother used to say – when it rains (blessings) on us, we cannot collect rain with a closed fist; we have to open our palms, put them in a humble, receiving mode, to receive the blessings!

Yes, humility can put us in a position to let the energy of those who may have the ability to influence and help us, help us. On the other hand, I wonder if all of this talk of humility is perhaps anathema to the often praised virtues phrased as “self-cultivation”, “individual achievement”, “pursuit of excellence”, and more. If it is anathema, can we somehow, albeit temporarily, lower our own sense of self, take a deep breath and step back a little from our sense of self-importance? What would we stand to gain in the process? How would our friends and families benefit from our practice of humility? How would our communities benefit?

In a book on Yoga entitled “Light on Life”, BKS Iyengar states that the reason we are often advised to “take a deep breath” is so that we can follow that deep breath with a deep exhalation. It is in that exhalation that we practice a little bit of self-surrender, a bit of humility, as we come to the awareness that we need the next breath, in order to sustain life. No matter how adept we may become at “holding our breath”, we have to eventually exhale. Or, the emotional toxins will accumulate in our bodies – the toxins that I call R.A.G.E. – Resentment, Anger, Greed, Envy, and perhaps more.

“Exhalation empties the brain, and pacifies the ego, bringing it to quiescent humility. Exhalation is a sacred act of surrender, of self-abandonment.” – BKS Iyengar (Light on Life)

A quiescent humility. A surrender. A self-abandonment.  We can live it with every breath, if we choose to do so. Will  we?

Kumud

P.S. I invite you to join me and the #SpiritChat community on twitter on Sunday July 20th at 9am ET  / 2pm UK / 6:30pm India. We will have a conversation about humility, take a few deep breaths, and exhale! If you are not able to join the live chat, I invite you to share your thoughts on humility in the comments below. Namaste, and Be Well. 

The Spirit of Acceptance

Tags

acceptance, healing, spiritchat, spirituality

 

By Guest Co-Host,  Samantha S Hall

Join us this coming Sunday, May 25, 2014, as we courageously explore the topic of ACCEPTANCE together!

In a society and culture where shame is still highly prevalent, learning how to not only FIND our true selves in the raging seas of other people’s expectations, but to still have the capacity to extend acceptance to ourselves can be a daunting task.  

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

We spend the majority of our lives learning other people’s belief systems and unconsciously adopting all of these beliefs as our own.  Part of this is perfectly natural to our learning, evolution, and growth.  However, we can totally lose ourselves if we ever found it at all in trying to be what other people have attempted to mold and shape us into.  At the end of the day or more importantly, at the end of our life….

• Did we even know ourselves  at all? 
• Did we learn to think for ourselves or did we blindly adopt what others thought? 
• Did we know what we really felt; whether it was good or bad?  Positive or negative? Or just plain old indifferent? 
• Did we know or give ourselves permission to learn what it is we like and didn’t like? 
• Did we give ourselves permission to experiment and fail? 
• Did we even know what we wanted?
• Did we know what we really needed?

At the root of acceptance is knowing ourselves.  Without censure.  Allow that to sink in for a moment as for many, I’m sure parts of your mind and body are already squirming at just the thought.  It may feel uncomfortable to consider simply noticing what we think and feel in any given moment without judging it because we’ve been so conditioned to deny so many things about ourselves in order to be acceptable to others.  

Unfortunately for many, we learn to deny basic needs.  We learn to deny and stuff our feelings and wind up remaining imprisoned in situations that we feel we are  powerless to do anything about.  And we don’t, so long as we can’t even acknowledge and accept what we really think and feel about anything.

So what would happen if you took a baby step and began by simply acknowledging what your body is feeling right now?  What if you took a moment to scan and simply NOTICE what you are experiencing while in your body?  For many, this will be unfamiliar.  We spend so much of our time focused on externals that we avoid or deny our own internal world.  We become detached and lose the most important relationship we will ever have.  The one we have with ourselves. 

Our ability to connect and develop in intimate relations with others (intimate to mean a relationship beyond the superficial…they have true depth), is directly linked to the intimacy we have with ourselves.  If we aren’t intimate with our own selves, how can we be with anyone else?

This Sunday we are going to explore this vast topic on the nature of acceptance.  Perhaps we might only lift the lid on it in the brief hour that we will spend and share together. It is my hope that each of us will walk away accepting a little or a whole lot more ourselves and each other then we did before.  

• We will also explore common misunderstandings and myths about acceptance. 
• We will also take a look at shame’s role in our sense of unworthiness and inability to accept ourselves.
• We will also explore ways we can find and extend more acceptance and compassion to ourselves without forsaking true responsibility. 

All of this and more this Sunday!  So we cordially invite you to join us for #spiritchat at 9am EST/6am PST on Sunday May 25, 2014.  We look forward to ‘seeing’ you there!

 

 Samantha S Hall

Connect with Samantha at her website: TweetConnection
Twitter: @Samantha_S_Hall

Please accept the invitation of co-host @Samantha_S_Hall as she leads us in a journey towards a greater “Spirit of Acceptance”. The blog post above may have given you a preview of the breadth and depth of our chat. Samantha has been a member of our #SpiritChat community for quite a while, and she has framed a lot of excellent questions for us. Thank you, Samantha! – Kumud