The Heart of Service

Tags

awareness, duty, privilege, service

As best as I can surmise, today’s twenty minute stint was perhaps my shortest weekly walk on the trail in quite a while. The weather front was turning rain to sleet, which meant that it was cold, blustery, pellets were coming at me sideways from all directions and it was as grey and foreboding feeling as winter can be imagined.

And yet I wasn’t deterred because it is these weekly walks that have become my inspiration for the ideas that turn into the weekly blog post which I often write after the walk. The clarity, lightness and simplicity that flow from walking in solitude and observing the dynamics of flora and fauna creates a portal through which the thoughts flow into words on the page.

At the start of today’s walk, I set the intention to invite feelings and memories related to ‘service’ into the heart. Swami Vivekananda talked about the notion of ‘service as duty’ and how we often engage in service as a means to fulfill our sense of duty. In 12th grade, we actually had a ‘subject’ called SUPW — socially useful productive work — which was on the schedule for one hour a week. As a teenager, I used to often scoff at the idea that one could do any meaningful ‘service’ in one hour a week. As is often the case, I was wrong. It was during SUPW that I discovered the work of organizations like UNICEF, and gained some awareness of how privileged my life was as compared to millions of children around the world.

As I walked the trail around the pond on the soggy grass, skirting temporary lakelets created by yesterday’s heavy rains, I remembered my ‘service’ projects in engineering school. The Saturday morning hours set aside to meet the requirements of volunteer hours for the National Service Scheme (NSS) brought familiarity with the Red Cross, learning about blood donations and such. However, the sense of ‘service as duty’ remained.

It wasn’t until my visit to a ‘nursing home for disabled children’ on an NSS Saturday that my heart towards service finally shifted. The hands-on and heart-filling experiences of seeing, listening, simply sitting and walking with those with life-long impairments, mostly children of my age and below, was transformational. The heart-shift meant that I couldn’t wait for Saturday mornings to arrive so that I could go visit the home and spend time with those that I had formed mini-friendships with. Service transformed from a sense of ‘duty’ to a sense of ‘doing good’ — over time, the one benefiting most from the ‘goodness’ was actually me.

At the halfway mark on the trail, where the wind had died down because the path was flanked by thickets of trees, I took a pause and reflected on my experiences with service through SUPW and the NSS. It is said that there are no small acts of kindness, and I am convinced that it was those small acts of giving that opened my heart and mind to the power of small acts of service. To paraphrase Swami Vivekananda, the world doesn’t need our help — we need the world in order to exercise our ability to serve. Our heart needs the world, so that it can feel the joy of serving and eventually arrive at a state where we feel that service becomes a privilege, not mere duty.

It is said that in the midst of our serving, when our heart is fully immersed, we become observers of the One who is truly serving and the One who is truly being served. Service thus becomes the unifier of people.

We realize that the day’s walk is over, the storm has becalmed us and it is time to return home to warm up with a cup of green tea and share our heart of service with the world.

Thank you for serving. Namaste.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat with the #SpiritChat community on Sunday, Jan 15 at 9amET / 2pmGMT. We will pause to remember Martin Luther King, Jr and discuss the topic of ‘heart of service’. Namaste – @AjmaniK

The heart of the rose has a unique aptitude for service…

Celebrating New Energy

Tags

awareness, celebration, journey, lightness

We are down to the last but one day of the year and after a week of fiendishly cold weather and ice-storms and travel havoc over the Christmas weekend a few days ago, it seems borderline criminal that I am walking the dogs in sixty degree weather. The skies are getting overcast and heavy enough with the promise of imminent rain, but it isn’t lost on me that the rate of change of the weather has been anything but dramatic over the past few days.

I would say that these patterns are abnormal, and would even dare say that I would prefer a ‘normal’ winter with its energy of snow and some icy days — but perhaps this is the ‘new’ normal — and we better adapt to it, and fast. The human body does have the ability to adapt quickly, but it has its limits to withstand environmental shocks and such, as we found out during the pandemic. Humans learn that living a full life is about maintaining a good energy balance, keeping harmony between the inner and the outer, discovering new facets of the diamonds that they are, softening their sharp edges as they journey, and more.

As we step into another New Year as deemed by completion of yet another revolution around our life-sustaining star, a lot of us can perhaps feel an infusion of, an immersion into, or even a surge of new energy in one or more layers of our existence on planet earth. I felt this newness of energy on the day after the winter solstice as I asked for permission of the waters, and then gently walked into a cenote in the Yucatán peninsula. It is hard to describe the feeling of freedom when a non-swimmer like me actually floats on his back and looks up at the high-noon Sun filling one with light — for a moment I thought I was seeing stars in the daytime — except that it was all a beautiful melding of the elements playing their celestial harmony within my heart.

Like at least some of you, I am looking forward to the New Year as an opportunity for new darings, new experiments, new ventures, new rediscoveries of what lies within, and more. Resolutions are not my thing. They never were. I can’t explain why. Maybe I am simply too content to know and feel the new energy that is continuously flowing my way, often ‘on request,’ glowing my path as I learn to soar and fly with my fellow travelers and guides.

How about you, dear reader and traveler? How does your energy level feel as you come into the New Year? Is there a sense of newness, of an elevated potential of being, or…? I invite you to consider, maybe even ask someone to help you reflect — they may point you to tools, practices and opportunities that you haven’t considered yet?

No matter which direction you move in, I wish you the best of the New Year’s energy. May it work to energize all those life areas that need harmony and integration, and suffuse more life within your life. May the new energy help you and me remember the directive of “That Thou Art” — the energy without is the energy within — the old and the new are One.

Namaste.

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat, Sunday January 1 2023 at 9amET / 2pmGMT / 730pm India, as we celebrate the energy of the New Year in Spiritchat. – @AjmaniK

The energy of a new dawn brings the goodness of Hope

Unearthing Our Gifts

Tags

awareness, discovery, gifts, giving, healing, receiving

“Dad. Look. The sky is yellow!”

After four straight days of heavily overcast skies, which really felt like forty by the fourth day came around, there was a sliver of a break on Friday morning on the way to school. I was looking to the west to see whether the full moon was still up, and instead, towards the East, between two trees on a farm, there was the Sun in all its glory blazing out from a break in the cloud cover. The underbelly of the dark gray cloud cover was being painted by the rays in the soft yellows that she exclaimed about.

Less than ten minutes later, as I set off for my Friday walk in the school’s trail, cloud service had been restored and the Sun’s remaining slivers cast golden streaks on the pond where the geese and ducks were maneuvering their way in the water as they tried to make space for the new flocks landing in from several directions. The play of light and shadows is very different as the Sun rises behind a mix of dark and light clouds which serve as natural filters for the observant traveler. The gifts that the eyes unearth are unique, as one sees things in silvery light that are hidden by the blaze of an unfettered, golden sunrise.

A beautiful gift it was, just like the gift of the clouds yielding the night before for a fraction of an hour, to reveal the gift of the full moon in all its silvery December glory, hanging like a brilliantly lit Christmas ornament defying gravity in the firmament.

Many of the gifts within us are perhaps similar in nature, unearthed only when we face long periods of overcast skies, storms, and the like – aren’t they? And thus, we of the human spirit, rarely stop waking and walking, remembering to do what we can control, and let what will be, be. Is it not true that as we look back on what seemed to be seemingly insurmountable odds against us in some of life’s moments, that we often unearthed gifts of strength, courage and resilience that we scarcely were aware of?

Can you think of moments where you were in so much pain and grief that you thought that your life would never be the same again, and yet you managed to heal and even smile again?

If yes, I invite you to write a few words about that experience. What gifts did you unearth, both within and without, in those moments of great personal challenges? In addition, are there any gifts you have unearthed, in moments of great joy and celebration? Are there also some gifts that we can unearth in moments when we aren’t residing at the opposite states in our life, when we are in relative equanimity? What may these gifts be?

By the time I came back home from my walk, the clouds had finally decided to move on for good, and the Sun had resumed shedding its golden light everywhere, including on the chair by the front window where I sat and wrote this blog post. The forecast was for rain later in the day, overcast skies for the next few days, but it didn’t matter. I had been reminded that the play of light and shadows and nothingness affords equal opportunities for me to unearth the gifts of my choosing.

How about you? What gifts will you choose to unearth in this season of your life?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly community gathering and chat on twitter in #SpiritChat, Sunday Dec 11 2022 at 9amET / 2pmUTC / 730pm India. We will unearth some gifts together, and maybe share a gift with someone. Namaste. @AjmaniK

Walking the land, unearthing gifts in every step…

Mastering our Emotions

Tags

awareness, ego, emotions, intellect, mastery, mind, senses

The heavily overcast skies that had brought intermittent rain all morning, ought to have been an indicator for me to delay the morning walk. And yet, the breeze through the partly open window brought a warmth as it fluttered over the ‘morning pages’ of the journal that I had been writing over the past half hour or so. The restless ego nudged me to ignore the distinct possibility of more rain, and off I went around the development, to discover more of Nature’s variations.

I only made it halfway through, before the wind must have shifted, and I saw the first signs of the shift in the form of a multitude of small circles in one of the retention ponds at the end of the street. Turning around, I was now headed back home, but facing rain and wind as they gained speed, painting my face. The heron sitting by the pond must have seen me turn around, as it took off with its ever majestic flapping wings, perhaps towards one of the other ponds in the development.

I was only ten or so minutes into the walk and yet I had already run through a whole bunch of different emotions. The pride in having decided to walk despite the conditions, the annoyance at the onset of the rain, the relief at realizing that I wouldn’t get totally drenched before I made it back home, the exhilaration at the unexpected sighting of the heron, and much more. Ten minutes, and a plethora of emotions, many, if not all of them, seemingly ‘arising out of nowhere.’ Can one even imagine how many emotions we encounter in an hour, in all the waking hours of a day? How many of these emotional waves or currents are we even aware of, before one wave is replaced by the next? What con we do to develop better awareness of our emotions and their origins, if we want to develop ‘mastery’ over their effects on us? Why is it even important to gain ‘mastery’ over our emotions, and are there any particular ones that we need to focus on more than others?

We can begin to address the question of emotional mastery by first understanding the origin of emotions. According to the Ashtavakra Gita, “The ego can recognise the world only through its instruments of sense organs, mind and intellect.” The sense organs are the receivers, the mind is interpreter, the intellect is the instrument of discernment. The ego’s reaction to what the world feeds it on a regular basis is perhaps the seed-bed of emotions.

If we can learn to reduce what is fed to the sense organs, we can reduce the minds vagaries and restlessness, can’t we? If we quieten the mind, we can then refine, purify and strengthen our intellect, can’t we? Slowly but surely, by reducing the influence of our senses, withdrawing them from the world, we can reduce the outer noise and increase the inner signal. It is said that this is the essence of spiritual practice, of spiritual work. The result is that we purify the intellect by slowly getting rid of both, hyper-activity and aversion to activity. Dwelling in purity, the intellect will then be strong enough to control the mind, which will then control the senses, which will then control our emotional disturbances.

By taking back control from our senses, and giving it to the intellect, we can achieve emotional mastery and resilience. What comes next? We will be ready to evolve to the next level of self-mastery — the dissolution of the intellect and hence the ego, and the realization that we are one with the Infinite.

We can all get to realization — let’s begin by working on our senses and emotions, shall we?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat and gathering of the #SpiritChat community, Sunday Dec 4 2022 at 9amET / 2pmGMT / 730pm India. We will discuss emotions and their mastery over tea and cookies. I am grateful to my good friend Gopi Maliwal for the topic suggestion. Namaste – AjmaniK

Nature and its variations have a unique ability to influence our emotions…

Towards Integrity

Tags

awareness, harmony, integrity, Tao Te Ching, zen

What would our life and living look like if we were to experience it with spontaneity and without any ideological filters? What would happen if we were to remove the dichotomy and the separation between the material and the physical? What if we were to live in harmony with the silence, the silent balance between the yin (the seed) and the yang (the spark)?

Some of these questions, and many more variations of the same, are posed in the Eastern classic, the Tao Te Ching. I pulled out my dog-eared and dog-nibbled copy of the translation by Ralph Alan Dale on Friday evening, as the rain that had been falling all day kept me indoors, in the company of multiple sessions of tea on the reading couch with the very puppy who had nibbles the bindings in her first year of life.

Earlier in the week, on Tuesday evening, I had taken my weekly walk in the reservation at the location where the East and West branches of the Rocky River meet at the base of a 350 million year old shale cliff. The lack of recent rain meant that I could walk halfway into the river on the shale beds by the shore, some of which are probably only a few million years old. I noticed immediately that the river bank had been cleared of a lot of older, dying brush and trees, and the shale beds were much more accessible and walkable. In the evening hour of sunset, I was grateful that I had half the river all to myself.

Kneeling on the layers of compacted shale to take some photos of the shale cliff in the distance, I noticed that some new layers of leaves from the trees on the river bank had started to cover the shale deposits I was kneeling on. It struck me that here, right before my autumn colored eyes, I was witnessing the seeds of a new layer of shale in their seeding. In that moment, with one knee on the river-bank, I realized that thousands of layers of existing shale were eventually going to accept, and then integrate this autumn’s offerings into their existence.

I imagine that that is how moving towards integrity, living with integrity actually manifests? One spontaneous experience at a time, one season at a time, one layer of Yin and Yang at a time, one layer of silence and song at a time, we chip away at the ideologies and dichotomies that keep us encrusted in dogma and duality.

In moving towards integrity, we may realize that we were always there, that we never left. One knee pressing new leaves into the layers of shale, one arm raised towards the sky, eyes flooded with golden sunlight, chanting our mother’s songs by the very river on whose shores the natives traveled for hundreds of years…

The spirit of life  
never dies.  

It is the infinite gateway  
to mysteries within mysteries.  

It is the seed of yin,  
the spark of yang.  

Always elusive,  
endlessly available.  

- Tao Te Ching (verse 6)

Kumud

P. S. What are the moments in which you feel that you are moving towards integrity? What do those moments feel like? Do share with us in the comments and/or our weekly twitter chat, Sunday Nov 13 at 9amEST / 2pm GMT / 730pm India in #SpiritChat. Namaste – @AjmaniK

The golden sunlight that integrates everything in its path…

The 350 million year old shale cliffs that form one bank of the Rocky River… (November 2022)

Our Inner Conditions

Tags

awareness, conditioning, resilience, sensitivity, spirituality

Partly cloudy days can provide beautiful lighting for outdoor walks. When the partly cloudy day happens to be the first day of autumn with a distinct chill in the morning air, one has the distinct feeling that there is a different calling for the weekly forest walk that day.

And so it was that I accepted the inner invitation to visit with the local bird reservation this Friday – a visit that I hadn’t made since the spring! All the familiar locations looked a bit different. A new water fountain in the pond, near the entrance where my favorite bridge is located, brought a welcoming freshness to the water and a delightful hum that warmed the ears. New signs in several trails educating visitors about the mission and the support needed for the good health of the reservation. And much more.

The trail itself had very few leaves on the ground yet, so the sun rising slowly through the forest created beautiful light and colors on the leaves still on the trees. Nature’s morning and evening light patterns can help create a beautiful inner condition of stillness and peace.

A visit with a favorite book or movie or podcast, an actual conversation with a good friend, a greeting card in the mail, a wave from a neighbor walking by as you sit on the porch — one or all of these ‘things’ can instantly brighten our inner condition.

Some of us may also have daily, intentional, spiritual practices which, over time, help us build resilience into our inner condition. Why build resilience? Such a condition can serve us well in moments where a random text message, a tweet, a news item, a harsh word or any such intervention by the outside world can instantly disrupt our condition. The higher the degree of resilience of our inner condition, the more quickly and easily we can find ourselves back in our state of equanimity after our mind’s surface has been insta-stormed by the world.

By asking and observing ‘what is it that disproportionately disrupts my inner condition?’, we can get heart-smart about the actions we take to decrease the frequency such disruptions of our condition. As we adjust our practices to decrease our sensitivity to the disruptors, we can improve our inner condition, and then do more of those practices which works for us. A positive feedback loop can thus be established within, and over time, the heart-mind-body system becomes less and less ‘allergic’ to our ‘irritants’.

If we want to establish, maintain and enhance a condition that is active but not reactive, a daily walk of self-observation of our condition is essential.

Yes, it takes ‘extra’ work, but what if it is perhaps the best work we will do on a daily basis? Start with a small daily commitment and bring a joyous attitude to the walk. Journal what happens daily. Watch the changes in your condition over ninety days.

Consider. If you start a new walk today, you may have a brand new ‘gift of inner condition’ for yourself by the end of the year.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly chat with the #SpiritChat community on twitter, Sunday Sep 25 at 9amET / 1pmGMT. We will take stock of our inner conditions as we gather over tea and quotes! How to start that new walk? Ask me if you need suggestions. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Sunflowers in various stages and conditions as autumn arrives…

On Life and Perceptions

Tags

awareness, bliss, mind stuff, perception, reality

It was perhaps the first time ever that I did my Friday morning walk on the school trail without my phone. I forgot it at home when I went for drop off, considered going back to retrieve it, and then thought… perhaps this will be an interesting experiment!

On a typical walk in the trails, I walk, pause, observe, take photos, walk some more, pause, and so on. It often ends up that it can take me almost forty five minutes to an hour to walk a mile or so. However, today’s walk was different, not just for the pace, but for the nature of the pauses and what I felt during those pauses.

Walking phoneless felt less like I was gathering, and more like I was simply observing. The lower angle of the Sun in the same hour as compared to last week. The hearing of leaves rustling and the raised white tail of deer bounding away as they sighted me. The almost complete coverage of the pond surface with green algae and slivers of rising sun reflecting in the blue patches. The wooden sign that said that the pond is a ‘scientific observation facility’ and hence ‘no swimming, fishing, skating’ and such. And so much more different views and perceptions on a trail that I have walked at least a few dozen times over the last year.

The experience made me ask. Why does perception matter anyway? How does it change over time? How we change it when necessary? What is its origin, and what is its connection to our spiritual journey?

It is perhaps no coincidence that I have pulled my weather-worn “Upanishads” book off of the shelf this week, and have stumbled upon a chapter describing the ‘five layers of existence’ within us. Perception is one of the layers — it is the fourth layer, sitting between the third layer, which is the mind, and the highest layer, which is bliss.

One may infer that in order for us to travel from the mind towards the highest layer of bliss, one has to walk through through the layer of perception. How do we best accomplish this? Are we aware of the quality of our perception in our daily life? One way to evaluate our quality of perception can be to observe our reactions to what is fed to our mind, voluntarily and involuntarily. Another way is to examine our fears, particularly those we had in the past, and what were the outcomes of those fears in our life?

We can further ask – to what extent did the perceptions of the possible outcomes of our (worst) fears keep us from experiencing bliss? What have we learnt from those self-limiting perceptions of self? What have we learnt from past perceptions and then adjusted our awareness, in order to get closer to and remain in bliss more consistently?

Some say that ‘perception is reality’. I would tweak that and say that ‘perception is the doorway to reality’. What is reality? According to the Upanishad, reality is the awareness that we are ‘well made’, perfect beings in the eyes of the divine. Our destiny on the path is bliss, except that we tend to get ‘stuck’ in the perceptions fueled by our mind, which is fueled by our senses, and so on.

Towards the end of the walk — a walk that was uncluttered by my desire to take a bunch of photos and share the best of them with all of you — I realized that there was a unique clarity born from this new experience for me. By removing the tasks of fiddling with the phone-camera’s filters of framing, perspective, lighting, focusing and such, a different kind of perception of the trail was revealed.

The ‘full-frame’ of nature, as designed, as intended to be perceived by us by the grand designer, was unfolded. I believe I had a sighting, for perhaps the first time during a walk, the doorway to bliss. Perhaps the door has always been there and I have been busy fiddling with trinkets? Perhaps next time, I will walk through the doorway of bliss, and even stay for a while.

Now where’s that phone? I need to write down my perceptions of today’s walk before I forget. I guess it will have to wait till at least my return home. Maybe I’ll just take the blog-post photo in the backyard and share that with all of you.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering and twitter chat with the #SpiritChat community, Sunday Sep 18 at 9amET / 1pmGMT. We will discuss the perceptions of our weekly walks, and I welcome you all to join in. Namaste. – AjmaniK

Ref. ‘Five layers of being,’ Taittiriya Upanishad, Chapter 2

The last(?) of summer’s roses blooms in the backyard…

Paths of Openness

Tags

awareness, fear, lightness, openness, vibration

Rarely, if ever have I not felt better after walking in Nature’s embrace. I have often wondered during my walks – how does this happen every single time? Is it the stillness and the silence and the vastness and the constantly changing variety of the path? Or is it something more, something that logic and intellect are unable to adequately explain?

Perhaps what fills the heart and soul when we get out of our own heads and walk the open path, beyond the limitations of our knowledge and even our knowing, is beyond mere reason and words to explain?

And yet, having experienced the heart-affirming outcome of every single past walk in vast openness, there are days when I hesitate to walk… why is this? The world and its seeming urgencies and pressures of time and space create mental barriers.

How do I overcome the barriers to openness? I remember the light, the flow, the radiance, the glow, the energy transfer that creates temporal transformation that lightens the heart and points me upwards. The gravitational pull of the final destination, the path to it, winds through openness, does it not?

The open path often finds us walking alone. This doesn’t mean that we need to stop living in the world, isolate ourselves from feelings and emotions. Being open can help increase our awareness of the feelings and emotions that are creating excess and imbalance within us. Our ‘practices’ are ‘working’ when they open us, orient us towards equilibrium, and harmony with the world. Over time, openness can teach us how to conserve energy, so that we can do our best work while moving in the direction of our heart’s destiny.

The alternative to openness is closedness, driven by fear. What does the path to closedness create? Perhaps more fear? The first law of thermodynamics states that ‘an isolated system cannot change its internal energy, and hence do no work’. The corollary is that the work done by us depends on how we un-isolate ourselves, connect with energy sources around us, and allow for change in the level of our internal energy.

Maybe that’s the answer to the original question. Why does Nature, and by extension, some people, raise our internal energy and vibration when we associate with them? Is it because we allow for them to do so, by being open to them? If yes, then the choice becomes – what kind of path and what kind of energy association will we open ourselves to, to get closer to our destination?

Sunflowers on the open path by the river… some thrive, and some…

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter gathering and open conversation, Sunday Sep 4 at 9amET / 1pmGMT / 630pm India in #SpiritChat. Namaste ~ AjmaniK

On Living Transitions

Tags

awareness, change, transformation, transition

It begins with a silent, almost imperceptible drizzle… maybe a leaf or two from every other tree 🌲 or so, as their soundlessness matched the sun filtering through the leaves on its ascent upwards in the morning hours, creating infinite patterns of yellow and gold with the multitudes of shapes and sizes still very much present on the branches…

The overcast nature of the morning creates even more variations as the transitioning clouds modulate the light intensity that comes through the forest… you look up from your pause near the vintage house and notice the tallness that you have been waking amidst…

The mosquitoes trailing you have finally left you alone… have you ever noticed how a single mosquito will bite you multiple times even before you realize the bumps on your neck, your jaw and your ear? Someone had once asked me – what purpose do mosquitoes even serve? I said then that I’d get back to them. Today, I realized that they perhaps exist to teach us persistence? And yet I digress…

Let me get back to transitions. They are everywhere, they appear in all forms, and we would be dead in no time without them. And yet we often resist them, because we either aren’t ready for the unexpected ones or we take the routine ones for granted…

We may resist transitions because we may associate them with turbulent experiences in our lives. While that may be our past, it doesn’t have to be our present. For one, we can choose a different past, in the sense that we can ask – what did we learn from that previous transition, inspire of the turbulence that it brought our way?

In Vedic practice, the times of nature’s daily transitions, turbulence and all, are considered to be optimal times to pause, rest, reflect and prepare for the next phase of the day. You may recognize them as sunrise and sunset, dawn and dusk, and such. The rate of energy transfer between the layers of existence is said to be highest during these times…

And just as I finish my walk, jotting down my thoughts for this post, a gust of breeze brings down a multitude or so leaves. I look up and the Sun is still at play with its backlighting of the trees. Now that I am fully awake, I am aware that I better not stand still too long or else the mosquitoes will find me, the lone human in a quarter mile radius around the lake which is partly covered with thick algae. It’s a living lake – the algae will be taken care of by the next big rainstorm…

Living Transitions. How do we best do that? Perhaps we can be more aware of them, accept them, find joy in them and live our best life amid them. Need some hints?

Look within the moment. What’s transitioning? What’s remaining still? What’s lightening you? What’s enlivening you?

Until next time. Be well.

Kumud

Join us for our weekly gathering and twitter chat, Sunday Aug 28 at 9amET / 1pmGMT in #SpiritChat ~ we welcome all of you to share with us. Namaste – AjmaniK

One hydrangea cluster continues living its best life… amid the transition to autumn

Focusing on Abundance

Tags

abundance, awareness, focus, opposites, spirituality

Abundance is often only a few feet away… we may have to get off the carefully laid out trails, follow the ones running narrow and winding that trace the rivers’ curves and bends, teeming with greenery of all shapes and sizes…

And then you come at the resting spots where the silence and stillness invites you to be part of it all of its resplendence on a late summer afternoon. It is beginning to feel like autumn beneath cloudless blue skies where the only filter for the streaming sun are the leaves still in fullness of green and the cicadas let off some accumulated heat by tuning up their orchestra…

The ‘lack’ that was following you intermittently all week long seems to vaporize with the gentle breeze that takes it all away. The energy of anger at the lack of civility and decency, the weight of heavy memories that you thought were long gone, the struggle between being and doing – are all replaced with a calm, confident and clear sense of simplicity and abundance, an assurance that all becomes well when we focus on the fields of wellness within us.

We aren’t often aware of or give expression to abundance because, like breathing, it is one of our natural states. We instead tend to feel and give words and voice to pain and lack and hunger and thirst. Why? Perhaps because we have been deluded into believing that we are ‘more alive’ when we feel those things which remind us of what we lack? How do we refocus on abundance?

It takes a certain effort, a certain attitude, a certain commitment to going beyond happiness towards joy and bliss, and the willingness to even surrender those when the time is ripe for realization. Then, we can be aware of the ocean of abundances that we live and breathe and see and taste and smell and hear in every single moment of living.

The question isn’t whether abundance is present. The question is how much of our energy and awareness is attuned to it, focused on it, from moment to moment. Yes, we have access to infinite energy, but we surely aren’t in any position to harness more than our heart and mind can handle in any given moment. We surely aren’t going to be given freedom for the asking when we aren’t ready for the abundance that comes with it, are we?

It is said that in order to know the abundance of the ocean, we have to be willing to get wet, to be able to be at peace with the rising and the falling of the waves, to be accepting of the times of happiness and misery alike. And yet there is more. In order to truly know the ocean, we perhaps have to be willing to be one with the ocean – “to be like the salt which dissolves our i into the I – and then, abundance will be us.” – Osho

No reminders will then be necessary. We will be beyond all opposites of arrivals and departures, life and death, truth and untruth, higher and lower, light and darkness, and all that separates us in name and form from permanent abundance.

Are we willing to focus on what we truly want, nay, what we already are and have?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering and twitter conversation in #SpiritChat on Sunday, Aug 14 2022 at 9amET / 1pmGMT / 630pm India. Yes, we have abundant space to welcome you all… Namaste.

Focusing on Abundance… on the trail…