It is perhaps in seeking a large refill of inspiration that has made the weekly nature walk a lifestyle habit for me. This week, I happened to make a list of some of the sights and sounds that were sources of inspiration on Friday morning.
A narrow bridge between two small mounds of grass. Blackbirds showing exquisite flight control in the midst of a swift breeze. The play of light and shadows under partly overcast. transitioning skies. Remnants of last night’s campfires in fire pits. Lunch tables in the grass, arranged in a circle. A white tailed deer who sighted me and bounded away in the forest. A windmill by the water that alternates between stillness and speeding up to the pace of the wind. A hare that sighted me and scampered across the path to the apparent safety of his brood.
And there were so many more elements that filled me with inspiration in the short walk. Every single element had a lightness, a simplicity, a nonchalance, a spontaneity about it; perhaps that is what made them unique, never to be repeated sources of inspiration. It is when we encounter the unexpected in nature, when we get glimpses of the infinite possibilities of life in our daily living, that we get filled with inspiration, don’t we?
I often wonder if my weekly walks are to remind myself of the truth that the greatest source of inspiration lies within me; nature simply reflects my remembrance of that source. How about you? What are some of your sources of inspiration? What are some qualities of those sources that keeps you returning to them? How do you stay inspired between ‘refills’ from your source(s)?
Kumud
P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering and twitter chat, Sunday May 21 at 9amET / 1pmGMT / 730pm India ~ share your inspiration. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK
It’s Earth Day today, April 22 2023. I am waking to heavy rain bringing in a cold front. Rain, shine, fog or snow, I am deeply grateful whenever my day begins with…
The first step is to sit comfortably and feel the healing light and energy from the Earth entering the body through the tips of each and every toe. This light is then moving slowly through the feet, the ankles, the legs, the knees, the thighs, and pausing in the torso. The Earth’s light then moves up along the back, rests in the shoulders, shifts to the front and moves up along the stomach and the chest, and relaxes the entire upper body. Down along the arms and elbows and wrists it goes, reaching all the way to each fingertips, filling them with light. The Earth’s light then shifts to the neck, the jaw, the face, lips, nose, eyelids, ear lobes, forehead, and finally emerges from the top of the head, relaxing everything it touches.
Every single morning that I remember to accept the grace of the Earth’s healing light, and practice the sequence of relaxation described above, I am reminded of the Earth’s ever-presence and its ever-giving. In my experience, the beauty of the relaxation practice is in its simplicity, its accessibility and its sustainability.
I imagine that every one of us has their own ‘go-to’ practice of relaxation, renewal and inner restoration that taps into the ever-abundant grace of Mother Earth and her ever-flowing resources that are all around us. There is often one or more of Earth’s five core elements that we may have an affinity for – water, earth, fire, air and ether – and the elements we choose for our practices may even change over time.
Which of Earth’s element(s) do you have an affinity for in your daily practices? Are there any particular physical senses that are most effective for you to connect with the core of Earth’s ever-loving grace? How does the health of your physical relationship with the Earth influence your inner awareness of truth and existence?
Kumud
P.S. Join us Sunday April 23 at 9amET for our weekly gathering and conversation in #SpiritChat on twitter as we celebrate ‘Earth Week’. Bring some of your favorite Earth-photos and Earth-poems to share. Namaste – @AjmaniK
Resources: More details of the ‘Earth’s healing-light relaxation’ are available at heartfulness.org or in the free HeartsApp app.
Apple blossoms blooming… (Earth Day 2023… Happy Birthday, Mom!)
Nothing is permanent, the only guarantee in life is that there will be change, and that things come and they go. As this presents challenges in our lives, it also encourages growth and reveals opportunities.
Although the word “struggle” usually has a negative connotation, it really is just a sign of growth and evolution. It is an invitation to show up for life and discover what is meaningful, and which gifts you possess. It is an opportunity to use your superpowers.
What kind of superpowers do you possess? How did you find them? What are some superpowers that you admire in others? How do they demonstrate these powers? These are questions that could never be answered without struggles, and they reveal so much beauty in our world. The fact that we must struggle makes the world more beautiful.
When life is looking dreary and lacks luster, it may be time to invite a struggle. Whether it is releasing a toxic relationship, finding more meaningful work, or adjusting your priorities, there is something that must change to bring color back into your life, to shake things up and look for a new path to walk. Remember, everything is temporary, this too shall pass, just be present.
Looking forward to #spiritchat tomorrow to discuss the Beautiful Struggle.
💖 MerryB
The beautiful struggle depicted by the angry sea on a stormy day (Wells, Maine)
Join in our weekly gathering and conversation, Sunday March 19 at 9am EDT with guest host @merryb923 in #SpiritChat on twitter. Thank you for stepping up and leasing the chat, Meredith! – Kumud
Small though it was, the bridge itself had never actually moved. I thought it had been removed by human hands because it was in relatively poor shape, but the fact was that I had just stopped seeing it. I had assumed that it was gone, and in its place was a relatively small stretch of water which I could just as easily jump move for walk around to get to the other side of the embankment.
All of that changed this morning, after six odd months of getting my shoes wet while navigating the stretch of water. The bridge reappeared in my awareness, where it had always remained, slightly hidden beneath the overgrowth. It hadn’t been touched by human hands, because some of the boards were still missing and others were still broken. A few feet left long, about a foot wide, just enough to support one human’s or deee’s crossing at a time, over an invisible body of water.
My delight at meeting this old friend was instant. It wasn’t that the friend had walked away from me. I had just stopped noticing my friend by thinking that it had disappeared from where I thought it once used to be – over that same patch of water which I was now regularly jumping over or walking around. It was a beautiful reunion today, as I walked through the tall grasses, stepped on the first of the boards gently, and slowly crossed over the few feet that held me as surely they always had in the past.
Once on the other side, I looked back and said thank you for reappearing, for giving me space to explore alternate pathways to the other side. It felt like a reunion with a long lost friend who I had stopped observing because I was too busy or distracted, or because I made the assumption that they did not want to be seen by me any more. The power of observation works in many different ways, doesn’t it?
Have you have ever experienced the sense that you have been observing certain things differently within you on your walk of life? Which observations tend to come from wisdom, and which ones come from assumptions? How has the power of observation affected your relationships with others?
Kumud
As I was leaving for home, the Sun started emerging from behind the clouds above the tree line in the distance and I realized that like the bridge, the divine rarely move away from us – it is we who shift our heart’s focus of observation. The good news is that it remains within our powers to shift our focus back to divine awareness, whenever we so choose to observe it again.
P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering and conversation, Sunday Feb 26 at 9amET / 2pmGMT on twitter in #SpiritChat. We will discuss our powers of observation among friends who are with us in our journeys. Namaste – AjmaniK
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?
It has been at least five years, and I remember the feeling like it was yesterday. During one of my morning walks on a fisherman’s trail by the river, I came around a bend and stepped into a clearing that was filled with hundreds of daisies. It was a clear blue-sky kind of day and there was a spring-like warmth in the air accompanied by the soft gurgling of the river as it flowed lightly. I paused, and did something I had never done before, and have rarely done since.
I took off my light jacket, and lay done on the grass, among all of the daises, face pointed towards the heavens, arms stretched out by my side, letting it all flow through me. I will never forget the coolness of the grass, the softness of the flowers, the sunshine smiling at me and the feeling of the sounds of the vibration of the earth’s hum as it held me softly. It was as safe a moment and space, an opening of the heart, that I ever remember experiencing in nature. The music of the earth and the waters, and the stillness of the sky made it feel like all the senses had come awake simultaneously.
After laying in the clearing for a few minutes, it seemed like all the sounds of the birds, the river, the breeze and the earth had merged into the one wordless harmony of celestial music. I am sure that you have had experiences with natural or man-made music that affect your heart in a way that words cannot describe. We all know that the vibrations created by music can affect our moods and emotions, and transport us to places that transcend our ordinary planes of daily experiences, don’t we? Imagine a state or states of existence where we have developed the ability to be constantly attuned to the celestial or divine music that plays continuously within us.
What would our life feel like if we were to primarily live in a state of higher vibration than we currently do? How do we develop the ability to spend most, if not all of our waking, working, resting hours in tune with that music which helps us live and love our best life?
Yes. It may takes practice, even a lot of practice, to live in that state of attunement with divine music. What do we get in return for all that practice? In my experience, once we have laid down in that field where we have felt embraced by the universe and all her elements, we never forget that state of superconscious joy.
If and when higher bliss is experienced within, we cannot then wait to wake up and walk, sing, write, meditate or practice whatever it is that brings us closer to our natural state of higher vibration, can we?
I invite you to practice to listen to the music play. We can surely all hear it and heart it, can’t we?
Kumud
P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat, Sunday, Feb 5 at 9am ET / 2pm GMT in #Spiritchat. Bring some of your favorite music to share. I will bring some questions. Namaste – @AjmaniK
Sunrise on the Caribbean… the playing of celestial music…
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…
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
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
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…
The #SpiritChat Community 