Our Spiritual Foundations

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awareness, foundattion, friendship, joy, truth

Many a great structure can be built upon, if it has been built upon a strong foundation. Conversely, if the foundation is weak, many a great-looking structure can easily crumble when subject to even a small tremor.  One may posit that the long-term health and viability of families, friendships, communities, societies, countries and planets depends on the quality of their foundations.

From a spiritual perspective, the strength of our foundation can be equated to the sum (or product?) of our values, beliefs and practices.

Our foundational values are often formed by those actions which have ‘risen to the top’ of our attention pyramid over time. These are the actions that attract the best investments of our time and energy. We often look forward to opportunities to sharing time and space with those who strengthen our core values. Conversely, we may find ourselves walking or drifting away from those who negatively affect the health of our foundation. This concept forms the foundation of the idea of  sangha or togetherness. Commonality of values infuses joy in our walk together. We learn to find joy in their joy, and they in ours. 

The second basis of a strong foundation is an awareness of truth. Where does this awareness come from? It comes from (spiritual) practice. If I regularly walk a particular path in the forest and I see the same white flowers bloom in the same culvert at the same time every year, my direct experience would plant a seed of truth in me. My practice will have thus informed my awareness, which would in turn have established a foundational truth for me.

The beauty of the blooming flower of awareness is that it need not be unique to me. When someone else has the same direct experience of the flower blooming in the forest, it plants a seed of truth in them too. When their seed of truth grows, it attracts my truth, it becomes stronger, and begins to matter. When two people share an awareness that the truth matters, it becomes the foundation for friendship.  

Our shared values, beliefs and practices can thus create a basis for joy (ananda), and a shared awareness (chitta) of truth (satya). When we walk in truth, awareness and joy, we can have direct experience of the Oneness that is the foundation of the Universe. 

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering, Sunday January 26th at 9amET / 730pm India. We will share on foundations, friendships and the truths discovered on our walks. Namaste – @AjmaniK

On Creating Clarity

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awareness, clarity, spiritual practice, stillness

Over the past twenty four hours or so, a warm front sitting over the state has removed all the signs of winter from the landscape. Fierce winds and rain have lashed the west-facing windows and sidings as a reminder of the transition. The “wind tunnel” effect that pulls the wind off of the lake and guides it in the space between the back of the house and the forest, has created a continuous roar for two straight nights.

The unseasonal weather has resulted in seemingly erratic behavior among many birds and animals, if not some humans. Unanticipated transitions tend to remove clarity from our minds and replace it with doubt. When our outer environment is greatly disturbed or disrupted, the antennas that monitor our inner space try to recalibrate and reorient themselves.

Our spiritual practices — those that help us build reservoirs of resilience, patience, calmness, jurisprudence open-minded acceptance, and discernment — are often tested during ‘unseasonal’ weather. It is in these seasons of great disruption that the heart draws on our reservoirs of intuition to restore clarity. When we evoke the heart’s trust, it helps ensure that we remember to operate from a state of calmness in the midst of confusion.

Clarity of the heart helps us see the temporary for what it is, and remember the permanent for what It is.

The forecast is for a bit of snow to return over the next day or so. The heart awaits in the knowing that every season brings its own clarity.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter gathering Sunday Jan 12 at 9amET in #SpiritChat. Bring your heart’s weather with you – I will bring some tea and we shall chat. Namaste – @AjmaniK

On Spiritual Awakenings

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awakening, awareness, new year, renewal

On some mornings, we awaken and we are full of energy. We may not be able to explain why we are so energized, but we can feel the difference as compared to those days where we wake up all tired and wanting to stay asleep a bit longer. 

Some years are like that too. Twenty twenty is one of those years where I seem to have awakened to a new energy. Or maybe I just feel that way because I have forgotten about how I woke up to twenty nineteen and the years before that. Or maybe it is all the cumulative effect of the “work” that I have been doing in the past year that is now fueling this new awakening. Or maybe all this new energy is a result of the natural optimism that comes with the canvas of a brand new decade and a new set of coloring markers. 

For some, new awakenings comes slowly, in stages, like a slow burning log on a fire which occasionally sends forth a crackling spark.  For others, new awakenings can come suddenly, like flashes of lightning illuminating a dark forest during a thunderstorm. No matter how they come, the integrated energy delivered to us in the time span of the awakenings, is more or less equal. 

How do we know that we are ripe for a new awakening? One way we can feel an awakening is through the arrival of a new sense of clarity. A new clarity inspires newness of vision, hearing, feeling, sensing, intuition, and awareness. A new awareness leads to an elevation of our purpose, of our role in the world, and of our acceptance of accountability for our own awakening.

The result? In being open to it, a new awakening can bring  us face to face with a new commitment to goodness in our words and thoughts, healthiness in our mental and physical diets, and kindness in our actions. It inspires us towards growing our own inner peace, and we take another step towards awakening to all that which awaits us beyond the  circle of time, space and causation. Arise, Awake, my friends! 

Kumud

P.S. Join us Sunday January 5th 2020 at 9amET in our first gathering of twenty twenty as we welcome the new year and a new decade of awakening. I will bring some questions to keep us awake, along with some tea and cookies. Namaste – @AjmaniK

To new awakenings – an offering of light… (2020)

On Life’s Transitions

Tags

autumn, awareness, celebration, healing, spirituality, transformation

In this last week of September, as it is often its wont, my corner of the world begins a beautiful journey from summer into autumn. The fact that I have been part of this journey every year for over three decades, does not diminish the beauty of the transition. In fact, with every passing year, I seem to look forward to this transition more and more.

The falling of a single leaf, when witnessed with a cup of tea in hand while sitting on the deck, or in the midst of a nature walk in the reservation, is often an event of great silence. It takes me back to my first autumn in Southwest Virginia, and the surprise and immense joy that I felt when I saw, for the first time, all those trees change color. The oranges, yellows and reds and many more colors in between, seemed to create an aura of special warmth in my first season away from home. Autumn seemed to say to me – I feel and see your great transition, and I am transitioning with you. I will be your companion on your journey.

That was then and this is now. My journey, my transitions continue – and so do hers. Awareness informs me that every moment, every breath, every heartbeat is a transition. The loss of a beloved one, the birth of a new flower, sickness and storms, celebrations and new beginnings. The impermanent nature of life as we know it means that transitions are our constant companions. And yet, there is a certain fabric of permanence on which the needle of life’s transitions creates its embroidered artwork. The colors and the thicknesses of the threads may be vastly different, but so what? Is not Autumn present in all her brilliance for all of us who choose to see?

Just this week, I walked two long walks in two separate parts of the reservation – the river valley and the lagoon – three days apart. The river was shallow enough that I could walk into its middle and look back on each of the banks, and upstream and downstream. When the sun rose high enough above the trees on the cliff side of the valley, it shone its light on all that came in its path – every tree, every changing and falling and fallen leaf, every boulder and rock and piece of broken off shale, every flock of geese that let itself be carried downstream by the gentle streaming of the river, and more.

I observed that all they needed to do to be illumined was to be present to the sun’s light with patience – for the play of light and shadow changes day by day, hour by hour, instant by instant – such is the nature of transition. And what about those who seemed to be in ‘permanent’ darkness? I am sure that, in a different season, when the sun’s angle changes, or they choose to bend ever so slightly towards the sun, they would find luminosity too.

So, if you are like me, and you love and cherish autumn as much as I do, you are already well equipped to be in harmony with life’s transitions. If you are like some, who are in love with the idea of an eternal summer, you may want to consider taking a walk into the beauty of autumn.

Go. Stand in place or walk into the middle of a shallow, softly flowing river. Open your heart and take in a 360 degree view. Did you see any transitions?

Kumud

P.S. Join us Sunday, September 30 at 9amET in our weekly gathering on Twitter. I will bring some fabric – you bring some colored threads – we will create some transitions. Namaste – @AjmaniK

In the middle of transitions

On Loving Discipline

Tags

awareness, freedom, spiritual practice, spirituality

Have you ever thought that “discipline” was invented to put you in a “box”, restrict your freedom(s), prevent you from living the life that you were meant to live? Have you ever met someone who is allergic to, inherently resists the idea of “discipline”?

In my younger (read ‘teenage’) years, discipline was perhaps the last thing that I wanted to be subject to. The very notion that I was expected to make my bed before I went to school seemed like an injustice. And the bus came at 6:30am! In high school, there was no ‘sleeping in’ on weekends. Saturday morning discipline included going shopping for milk, vegetables and groceries. Then there was the choice of dusting the furniture and bookcases, folding the laundry, putting away the washed dishes, setting the table for lunch or dinner, clearing the table after the meals, and much more. There was no escape from the seeming prison of chores and discipline. And I haven’t even talked about the take- no-prisoners attitude of discipline of some of the teachers at school!

But little was I to know that it was all preparation for what was to come my way a few years later. On my arrival as a graduate student in the USA, I realized that the ‘prison of discipline’ in my aunt’s home in India had taught me self-awareness. I was pleasantly surprised that I knew exactly what it would take to thrive on my own in a foreign land. I was able to work out chore-sharing with my roommates, just like I chore-shared with my cousins growing up. I quickly became aware that grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, cleaning, and even cooking, were all things that I was already good at. I actually began to fall in love with the idea of discipline!

After the self-awareness, I began to realize that freedom from the ‘prison of discipline’ had led me to the practice of self-discipline. The more I practiced it, the more my self-respect and self-image grew. With this growth, I found that I was comfortable in reaching out and making friends with all sorts of nationalities, and particularly the Americans. The land that I considered foreign, adopted me over time.

I believe that this two-way adoption happened because self-respect grew into self-love. It took self-love to keep an open mind to learning about western customs and culture, and harmonizing them with my eastern foundations.

As a parent and teacher, I began to consider that most of our parents’ (and teachers’) discipline is perhaps borne out of love for us. By by ‘drawing lines’ for us, they are teaching us self-awareness, self-respect, and self-love. Theirs, and now mine, is evolving into a loving discipline indeed.

Loving discipline manifests because true love takes some discipline, and true discipline takes a lot of love. What’s your take on ‘loving discipline’?

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. join us for our weekly #SpiritChat gathering – Sunday, Aug 11 at 9amET – I will bring some questions on discipline – with love 🙂 – Namaste. Kumud.

Nature’s discipline takes many forms – mostly of a loving nature!

Common Sense Spirituality

Tags

awareness, common sense, healing, practicality, spirituality

While preparing for last week’s chat on freedom, I had come across a reference to Thomas Paine’s essay titled “Common Sense” – an essay, written by an Englishman, published anonymously in early 1776, that is said to have greatly influenced and inspired the writers of the American Declaration of Independence. I was intrigued enough to get an electronic copy, and have been reading it this week.

Towards the end of the week, my reading of “Common Sense” was complemented by my (re)reading of “Practical Spirituality” by Swami Vivekananda. I couldn’t help but be struck by the common threads in the two writings, by two people who were so far separated by time, space, and causation. However, as often happens, when East meets West, and the waters of thought and action meet in Oneness, harmony is the result.

So, I paused to consider. What is the message of harmony that I could take away from these two treatises, for the cause of “Common Sense Spirituality”? Let me share with you the four quadrants of the message – I invite you to play in the template of four quadrants and arrive at your own interpretations of “Common Sense”.

Identify, focus on, and devote your best energies to the “big rocks”. How often do we begin the day, the week, the month or the year with good goals and intentions, but tend to “lose our way” among the little pebbles of life? For me, some of the the big rocks are morning meditation, tea and coffee conversations, walking in nature, sitting in evening reflection, and such. What are your “big rocks” and what quality of time, space and energy do you invest in them?

Feeding is important. It sounds simple, but the quality of what we feed our mind, body and spirit greatly influences the quality of creative energy that becomes available to us. Common Sense invites us to evaluate our feeding, our intake through all our senses, and develop awareness of our output. Are we emulating GiGo Garbage in Garbage out) because we are led by FoMo (Fear of Missing our)? If so, we are spirit-bound to course correct and improve the quality of our intake.

Weeding is directly connected to feeding, and the two combine to influence growth. As a gardener, I am well aware that no matter how hard I try, weeds have the propensity to appear “out of the blue” with alacrity and regularity. In order to prevent the mind garden from being overrun by weeds of fear, hate, judgement and the like, regular weeding is common sense. Regular weeding also ensures that our spiritual feeding has the maximum nutritional effect on our subtle body.

In the fourth quadrant, is breathing. Although breathing is an autonomous function, which is a good thing, we do have the ability to develop control over its rhythm. Beyond the purely physical benefits of breath awareness, the art of breathing directly influences our nervous system, its currents and its energies. The common sense way to regulate the perturbations in our emotional state is to watch the state of our breath. Emotions feed our thoughts, which often feed our focus and the actions that we take in the first quadrant of “big rocks”. Harmonize the flow of life-force provided by the breath, develop flexibility and resilience, and all the four quadrants can come into harmony by returning us to the center of wellness.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. I am sure that you can think of many different “common sense” ways to fill the four quadrants… share with us your ideas in our weekly gathering, Sunday July 14 at 9amET in #SpiritChat on Twitter. Namaste – Kumud

The “four quadrants” of Common Sense

Towards Spiritual Graduations

Tags

awareness, celebration, graduation, spirituality

As life-defining events go, “graduation” is often considered to be one of the primary ones. For some, it can be a time to celebrate the milestone that has been accomplished, a time to reflect on the journey that has brought one this far, a time to express gratitude to all those who may have helped us along the way, and a time to look ahead to the next milestone. For others, graduation can be a portal, a doorway, an opportunity to begin anew, a new journey and a new phase of life.

My personal journey of formal education gave me many opportunities to graduate, and even though I did not attend any of the ceremonies until the one for my final degree award, they all were significant milestones. Each graduation opened the door to a new learning environment, new teachers and friendships, a breath of fresh ideas, and an awareness that the world was indeed my oyster. All I had to do was accept the opening invitation.

It has been many years since my own graduations, and now, I look forward to experiencing them every year through the eyes and words of my friends’ and relatives’ children. The light in their eyes, their hope to effect change and transformation, their desire for improved equality and justice, and much more, is written large in their essays and stories and actions.

So, how may we, our generation, best serve the graduates of today? If personal example is the best way to demonstrate leadership, then perhaps we can ask — what is our next graduation milestone? What is our (spiritual) curriculum? Who are our friends, our teachers, our guides, our mentors, our confidantes on our (spiritual) journey? Are we going regularly to ‘class’ or are we ‘sleeping in’ more often than not? Are we taking initiative and ‘asking for help’ outside of class when we know we are stuck on a project or assignment? Are we aware of our fellow students’ struggles and lending a listening ear or a book or a song, or providing a gentle nudge when we discern the need?

Yes. Graduation can take on many colors and hues and in this season. Maybe our own progress towards painting our masterpiece is light enough for others to pick up their paint brushes and share with us their strokes of genius.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us in our weekly conversation on Twitter – Sunday, June 2 at 9amET / 630pm India, as we continue our journey. I will bring some questions, along with some tea. It is in the journey together, towards graduation, that we can unveil the answer to the grand question – “what is That, knowing which, all else can be known?” Namaste – Kumud

Looking ahead – towards the next horizon, the next graduation…

On Discovering Essence

Tags

awareness, challenges, essence, essentials

What a difference a week makes. Last Saturday, an early morning storm with a lot of rain and electrical activity, tripped the breaker on the sump pump in the basement. The battery backup pump, which I thought was working, but hadn’t tested lately, didn’t work. The result was a minor flood in the finished basement, and a day of phone calls to insurance and restoration companies. Oh well, we needed new flooring and carpeting in the basement anyway.

Later that night, I evaluated how my wife and I responded to this “life event”. In the big scheme of things, we determined that we “got off easy”. Yes, it was inconvenient that our weekend had been disrupted, but at least we were home, and managed to minimize the damage (the main pump kicked right back on after I reset the switch :)). Yes, we needed to reevaluate our emergency systems in the basement and the home in general. And the greatest revelation from the evaluation?

We got a new perspective on what is truly essential, on what it is that defines our essence. There is a lot of ‘old stuff’ in our basement that has been with us through two moves over fifteen years. How much of it is essential to our lives? And, as I delved a bit deeper over the past week, I asked myself some more questions.

What is it that defines my essence? How do I know what is truly essential to me in a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level? Some of the answers have been filtering through me, and my exploration with the question(s) continues.

On Earth Day (two days after ‘the event’), I went walking my favorite trails. I often find that I have to make a conscious choice to accept the invitation to walk. The call is often so strong that the car seems to self-drive itself to the park on the way to work. So, I deem that walking the forest is essential to me. I have found that there is prose and poetry that flows through me as son as I step onto the trails. Here’s a sample:

Find your trail and walk

She will welcome you with open arms

From the tiniest of flowers hugging crocuses

To the tallest of trees holding birdsong

Her gifts will shower down upon you

Amid the remembrance – that her greatest gift is birth…

So, one way to connect with our essence may be through those actions that bring us face to face with unmitigated peace and joy. The world around us recedes like the floodwaters after the storm, and we can feel the essence of the tiniest of flowers, the freshness of new greenery emerging, the calming presence of tall trees gently swaying in the breeze, the river gurgling by past the boulders in the valley where it has been flowing for millennia.

What is the essence of our mental state? Is it our intellect? Is it intelligence and our power of discernment? We all have thoughts that swirl like eddies, or the thoughts are stirred by fresh emotions that cause highs and lows? The temporary nature of their existence surely means that they cannot be essential, right?

Awareness of our mental and emotional essence can be unfolded for us in physical stillness. Being still is not easy for many of us. Stillness is an essential that often needs to be cultivated. That which makes us still gives us the opportunity to connect to higher awareness – we can become observers of our mental and emotional states. As observers, we can then find our essential That by saying – it is not this, it is not this.

Allow me to posit that once we have found the trail to our physical, mental and emotional essences, and know how to (re)connect with them, our heart is ready to receive the spiritual essence. The invitation to receive then comes through clearly. We then awaken every morning, ready to receive the essence with joy, peace, silence and stillness, as we watch the source of light reveal itself to us in our heart filled with love.

We arrive at the awareness that the same spiritual essence energizes all of us, gives us life, and yes, a return to a dry basement…

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us Sunday, April 28 at 9amET as we resume our weekly twitter chat in #SpiritChat ~ I will bring the essential tea and cookies. I invite you to bring your favorite flavor of essence. Namaste – Kumud

Spiritual Hospitality by @llake

Tags

awareness, hospitality, spiritual practice, spirituality

 It’s 9:00 am. The toddlers are fed and playing quietly. The entire house is spotless. I look around and feel very accomplished. Time for a shower! Dinner guests are coming tonight. I want the evening to be extra special. My plan is perfect, and I’m on schedule. 

I skoosh down to talk to my kids to let them know I’m going in the shower and I’ll be out in 5 mins. (moms and dads have this down to a science) I ask them to please play quietly, and we’ll have snack time when I get out. 

I head into the shower feeling excited and confident that tonight will be epic! I get out of the shower. Dry off. Dress. And then the surprise hits. 

I look into the dining room, and indeed all three wee ones are playing quietly and happily. My son had gotten out his matchbox cars, bull dozers, and backhoes, and all three (under the age of 5) were playing in the dirt from around my large elephant tree. They had spread the dirt from one side of the hardwood floored room to the other. Inside I was extremely upset. I quietly (this is how my kids always knew I was really mad) told the elder two to go to their rooms. I didn’t want to see them. We would talk “later.” The littlest one I picked up and put in her highchair. I told her I didn’t want to hear one word. Not one. 

I wanted to cry. How in the world would I get this room clean again? I still had dinner to make. And how would I ever have time to get those kids cleaned up? 

Most of us have been in a relatable situation. We extend aninvitation. It feels right. Then when the day gets closer, we wonder “what was I thinking?” My house is dirty! What will I make for dinner? We begin to feel unaccomplished and “not enough.” Where is the joy?

Isn’t there supposed to be joy in offering hospitality? Isn’t hospitality supposed to be about serving others? Sharing what we have that others may also feel joy? 

In the moment of seeing dirt spread across the room, I was not feeling joyful. But wait. 

“Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.” 1 Peter 4:9 (NIV)

I remembered the looks on my babies’ faces as they looked up at me gleefully and showed me what they had done. After all, I had asked them to play quietly. The road configuration they had created was a masterpiece! 

My heart softened.

Hospitality is mentioned numerous times in the Bible. Every religion or spiritual guidance mentions hospitality and ways of ceremoniously expressing our joy by sharing with others. Why? What do we miss about being hospitable when we become obsessed with the “Pinterest” version of sharing what we have instead of the spirituality behind being hospitable? 

The truth is we don’t have to be in a specific location or have specific food – although, both add to the moment and it’s a nice gesture. The menu does not have to be spectacular. Our homes do not have to be the “Better Homes and Gardens” version of shiny and spectacular.

The spirituality of hospitality – the true meaning of hospitality – is when we put our guest first and be present with them. We focus on them. We love on them. We cause them to feel joyful in knowing they are appreciated and are special. They relax. Their pressures melt away. Love in action.  

– Lillian

Lillian is a Maine-based writer and compassion consultantwhose topics explore everything related to food, human trafficking, and caregiving. She is patiently honing three writing projects – a “love of home” cookbook, a collection of interviews with caregivers of all ages, and inspirational cards for children. In the summer of 2018, she swam a total of 2 miles to rescue a 70 yr old kayaker and push him and his kayak back to shore.

Editors Note: I am excited and honored to invite you to join Lillian Lake (@llake) as she hosts our weekly #SpiritChat on Twitter, Sunday March 3rd at 9amET / 730pm India. Please do join, and enjoy her wonderful heart-filled hospitality. Come. Sit. Stay. Namaste – Kumud

Common Ground Spirituality

Tags

action, awareness, healing, relationships, spirituality

Common ground, like common sense, is becoming increasingly difficult to find. It isn’t that common ground doesn’t exist any more – it is perhaps that it has become buried under the layers of our increasingly fragmented lives – like the bulbs we planted in autumn, biding their time waiting to spring from underneath the layers of snow and frozen earth.

When we may think we have reached the end of the line, and that we have nothing more left in common, perhaps we can dig a little wider. We can step back, take a walk, or even sit in morning meditation and ask – what is it that we may have ignored or overlooked? And the answers may surprise us…

Commonality of backgrounds (immigrants from different continents), forgotten common interests, overlap in family values, shared beliefs (in goodness and kindness), common celebratory practices (food!) – even agreement in things we disagree about, things that annoy us, our shared dislikes, and much more….

Such was the invitation this week… to (re)discover, uncover common ground. To (re)search for it and renew it yet again. And the more I stepped back and looked with fresh eyes of the heart’s light, the more I found it in my close and distant relationships, even some faded and forgotten friendships, and particularly among the few that are especially close to me.

I discovered that it is perhaps in retraversing that common ground that the heart can find new paths, and find reasons to do some (not so) random acts of kindness. It is beneath frozen lakes and lagoons that the lighted waters flow again from the spring thaw in the heart. It is tending to common ground that enables us to repair the bridges that have grown algae because they haven’t been tenderly paused on, gently walked on, lovingly talked to and softly sung to for so long…

But why would we bother to do the work to find common ground in the first place? To assuage our guilt? Or to save, heal, being back to thriving, that which is worth keeping? And why is it worth healing? Because we have invested so much in it and come so far? Or whether we still see the potential for future growth, success and expansion – the spark that can kindle a thousand more micro explosions of joy when given the proper conditions of pressure, temperature, timing and ideal mix of fuel and air in the combustion chamber that is called common ground?

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us in our weekly twitter chat, Sunday Feb 24 at 9amET / 730pm India – walk and share some common ground (over tea and cookies) with us. Namaste – Kumud.

Visiting some ‘common ground’ bridges and pathways… as spring broke through briefly (Friday, Feb 22 2019)