On Mothers and Beyond

Tags

celebration, healing, mothersday, not hers, spiritual practice

If you live in North America, you are most probably well aware of the significance of the Mother’s Day holiday, which falls on the second Sunday of May (May 8 2022). To be honest, despite living in the US since 1986, I wasn’t much aware of this holiday until about 2010. My awareness probably coincided with my becoming a parent myself!

Over the years of hosting Spiritchat on Mother’s Day, my awareness of the role of Mothers, and the range of emotions that this holiday evokes, has grown tremendously. I used to wear magenta-colored glasses (my birth Mom’s favorite color!) about the all-loving role of Mothers towards their children, and about children towards their mothers. The people of Spiritchat have taught me that there can be a lot more to the Mother-child relationship than the predominance of love and joy.

I am grateful for the education. The truth is that there are many who have never felt the love of a birth mother, and had to find the ‘Mother’ role in another female, or sometimes, male figure in their lives. I have learn that, yes, the ‘Mother’ and mothering role can extend to aunts, sisters, grandmothers, teachers, and sometimes even to neighbors, nannies and maids.

I have also learnt that all too often, there is very little education and training of ‘how to be a mother’, particularly in a society where the majority of households are a ‘nuclear family’. Where does a new birth-mother find good role-models, particularly if their own experiences with their birth-mothers have been filled with pain, anxiety, lack of warmth, and more? How do we break this cycle of ‘mother-child dysfunction’ if we want to have a good chance to raise thriving future generations?

We often jest that there is no ‘guidebook’ to parenting – you are supposed to learn as you go! While that may have some truth to it, we can do better. What if we were to raise the value of the role of the ‘Mothers’ significantly higher than what we currently assess it at? We can debate about the ‘how’ of doing this, but unless we know the ‘why’ to do it, we won’t get out of the starting gate, will we? One small thing we all can do, and it doesn’t incur much cost, is to educate ourselves about the current contributions of those in Mother roles in our societies.

Here are some numbers for the USA. There are an estimated 85 million mothers in the US. In 40% of households, Moms are the sole or primary income earners. 80% of single parents in the US are mothers. 56% of working mothers have children under the age of 18. Hopefully, these statistics give us an idea of the extent of the contribution of Mothers to US society. What do the numbers in your country look like?

I know that I am far out in left-field from what I had initially intended for this post to be about. But, as often happens, the heart’s current is driving my fingers as I type, and so, here it is. Mothers Day. A day for remembrance, for healing and forgiveness, for awareness, for empathy that will create compassion which will translate into action. What will we do and/or be as individuals, as societies, as the world, between this Mothers Day and the next one? That is the question I am considering. How about you?

Will we be inclusive and have loving understanding of those who aren’t Mothers, and may choose not to be one? Will we pause for a moment and send love to the Mothers of the disappeared and the ones who lost their Mother figures over the last year, so that they can heal and hope? Will we give thanks to the Universal Mother whose grace and abundance flows to us constantly, whose kind gaze soothes us like the coolness of the moon, and whose loving light warms us in every sunrise and sunset? What else can we celebrate about those without whom love and life itself would not be possible, in this, our temporary home of a physical body, as we walk our path towards our permanent abode?

Thank you, to all my Moms. I am fortunate to have had many who filled that role, and continue to do so. My gratitude for all of them knows no bounds. Namaste.

Kumud

P.S. This was supposed to be a short post. Oh well! Do join us for our weekly twitter chat with the #Spiritchat community, Sunday May 8 at 9amET / 1pmGMT / 630pm India. If you would, bring a memory of your Mom (or your kids if you are a Mom :)) to share. I will bring some tea and cookies, and maybe a question or few 🙂 – @AjmaniK

Mother Nature… grateful for her omnipresence

Our Spiritual Companions

Tags

celebration, companions, harmony, spirituality

The warm front that came in last night made short work of the onset of the freezing over of the lake and softened up the ground around it. The activity level of the birds this morning would make one think that it was spring in the second week of December, what with grass full of robins feeding on winter berries and more. Several flocks of geese were overhead, in the lake, and on mounds around the lake.

Not to be outdone, the squirrels and woodpeckers seemed to be highly active too. I believe I had my first ever sighting of a black-and-white downy woodpecker! In the midst of all this activity, I did notice that there was nary a breeze to dislodge the few remaining leaves off of the trees. The starkness of the trees did unveil the dozens of nests everywhere – those which were hidden in plain sight in the spring and summer.

As I stood at the inflection point of one of the s-curves on the trail, I marveled at all the companions who walk with me, keep watch over me, as I often walk these trails. I know that the geese in the pond watch me as they often swim in the opposite direction of my travels. The heron always sees me before I see her, and takes off before I get too close. And yet I know that they are all with me, whether they are in the seen or the unseen.

I am grateful for them all, just as I am grateful for all the fellow seekers, the silent and the vocal, who share their journey with me. We may think and believe that we walk our spiritual path alone, and yet, we would be well served to remember that there are many who often walk with us. Our companions may be known or unknown to us — and yet their energy, and their commitment attracts grace to us all on our journeys.

As we walk our way home, aren’t we also “simply walking each other home?” Are we to really believe that we can undertake the greatest journey of our lives, on the basis of our own strength? If so, then is that not our outsized ego leading the way? It may seem paradoxical that our shared journey is also a highly personal one, but that paradox can only make us more aware and grateful for our fellow travelers.

Nature teaches us that there is great strength in numbers that travel with each other towards a shared purpose. As I listened to the symphonies of birdsong this morning, I was reminded that we can all bring our sweet instrument to the choir. No matter the song, there is room and need enough for the sopranos, the altos, the bassists and the tenors alike. The conductor of the symphony needs them all to synthesize a beautiful harmony. Isn’t it time that we recognized the unique voices of our companions, accept their strengths that strengthen us, and offer support to them other on our journey?

When grace flows, it attracts and gathers many to its banks, and then touches them with love. I choose to believe that that is the way the universe works. It is no accident that when we hear and answer the call, we often find ourselves in a sangha – the company of fellow seekers. In such companionship, where we feel empowered to walk our own walk, we can raise the vibration of truth, awareness and joy for all. That’s cause in itself for celebration, isn’t it?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat with the #SpiritChat community, Sunday Dec 12 at 9amET / 730pm India. Bring your singing voices and we can create some new harmonies. Namaste. – @AjmaniK

Birds of a feather… traveling home for winter

On Words of Light

Tags

awareness, celebration, darkness, diwali, light, words

It is the final day of the final lunar fortnight of the year (according to the Hindu calendar) and I sit in the low slant of the fading light of autumn as the sun starts to descend behind the trees in the distance.

The sunrise tomorrow (November 4th) will herald a new moon, a new fortnight, and will set off celebrations of the “Festival of Lights” (Diwali) for hundreds of millions in India and those of Indian origin across the world. It is perhaps apropos to note that this year’s Diwali festival comes after a year of particularly deep pain, darkness and suffering in India, due to the ravages of COVID-19 earlier this year.

However, as is light’s wont, it cannot be hidden for long by even the deepest of darknesses. Spiritual teachers and texts often remind us that we have the capacity to accept whatever comes our way with grace, as divine grace. We also have the infinite capacity to learn to lean into the permanence of light, even though we tend to forget the Infinite when we get caught up the impermanence of darkness. Light is often merely a word away.

Joy, Love, Hope, Grace, Peace, Truth, Giving, Health, Purity, Kindness, Gratitude, Lightness, Simplicity, Equanimity. How do you feel when you read any of these words, or speak any of them? I posit that every single one of these words elevates your heart, mind and spirit in some way, however small. If it elevates you, then every single word like say, JOY, becomes a bearer of the energy that can transform this moment for you into LIGHT.

Try it some time. When darkness tends to weigh on you, first say to yourself, ‘this is impermanent’. Then, say out loud (or within your heart) a single word like JOY. Repeat. What if you could create a regular practice that engages you in light-filling actions and leads you to light-fulness? What if the next time you go for a walk, or watch the sunset or sunrise, or drink a cup of tea, or are folding the laundry, or washing the dishes… you were to repeatedly say to yourself… JOY, LOVE, PEACE. Joy, Love, Peace. joy, love, peace.

Imagine that every moment were to become an awareness of the permanence of the light within you, and a celebration of the source of that light. You would then celebrate the sunsets for the stars that they reveal, and life’s dark turns for the grace of light that awaits. Like a fish in the ocean that knows no separation from the water, you would then know no separation from light.

It’s time for me to return to my tea and watch the fireworks that the sunset is surely going to set off among the clouds. It’s time to light the evening lamp to welcome the year of light arriving with tomorrow’s sunrise.

Joy. Love. Peace.

Kumud

P. S. Join us for our weekly Twitter chat, Sunday November 7 at 9am EST / 730pm India (time change in India due to shift to Standard Time in the USA). We will celebrate the light in our lives, and bring some light to those who may need it. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Joy. Love. Peace. A celebration of Light…

Messengers of Peace

Tags

celebration, peace, remembrance, spirituality

I decided to change course, and return to one of my favorite birding trails for my weekly Friday morning walk. Although it is less than ten minutes from my home, I hadn’t been there since spring. Now, with autumn at our doorstep and the migratory season underway, I figured it would have some new gifts of peace for me.

Two things typically happen when I step into the walking and birding trails in the various reservations around my town. First, and almost instantly, a sense of peace embraces me for it feels like I’m transported back into a cocoon of grace. Second, and this can take a few minutes, the poetry and prose muse returns and gets me writing. As I walk, I do my best to gather the messages that the messengers send my way in my memory, so that none may get lost.

Today’s first message was from the bridge spannning the pond covered with thick green algae. The excessive rain this summer has created such dense foliage and shrubbery everywhere that the bridge was barely visible from the trail. And yet, its welcome was as warm as always. And so, I did the ritual that I often do midway through every bridge crossing. I chanted an invocation, a mantra, asking for peace to radiate to all of humanity. Sarve bhavantu sukhinah. May all be at peace.

The bridge led me to the major section of the trail which winds its way through a canopy of woods. The sun was rising slowly and there was plenty of opportunity to simply stand and stare every so often for a few minutes at the play of orange and yellow streaks backlighting the leaves. Another peace chant. Bhumi mangalam, Vayu mangalam, Gagan mangalam. May the earth, wind and skies be filled with peace and prosperity.

The half or so mile under the canopy opens up into a trail that is flanked by two huge bodies of marshy water. Giant egrets, standing as still as the Sun in the sky, dotted the waterscape on both sides. Parts of the marsh had been taken over by natural fields filled with yellow flowers. Another peace chant followed. May the peace of the fauna and the flora find its way to us.

On my way back through the canopy, I asked myself the question – does nature instill new peace within me or does it serve to remove the clouds that often form the canopy that block my view of the peace within me? Perhaps nature is the mirror that reflects, maybe amplifies the level of peace that we bring to her. Our perceived lack of peace is perhaps merely our heart looking for someone to listen to us with love, and make us aware of all the prose and poetry that we already carry within us.

No matter the medium, the messengers and messages often repeat themselves. Truth. Kindness. Silence. Stillness. Joy. Consciousness. All the messages are simply reminders that all of the Peace that we need or desire is already within us.

May we remember.

Kumud

Join us on International Day of Peace, Sunday Sep 19 at 9amET / 630pm India for our weekly gathering on Twitter. Bring your message of Peace to share with the #SpiritChat community. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

Nature’s Messengers… radiating peace…

Designing our Spiritual Futures

Tags

celebration, design, future, present, spirituality

The house is still asleep as I slip out of bed to go upstairs and begin my day with meditation. Bindi, the younger puppy, stirs as I walk by, gives me a glance and goes back to sleep. She knows that I will be back in an hour so, and playtime will then begin.

The rain has been falling hard all night, but I want to hear more of it, so I half-open the windows in the living room on my return downstairs. Ah. The soothing sounds of birds intermingled with the rain filtering through the leaves on the trees. The sight of raindrops holding on to the edges of the shrubs with skinny, pine-needle like leaves, that grow taller by the summer outside the living room windows.

I sip on my cup of tea and wonder. How far have we come? How much further do we have to go? Are we still making a difference? Should we continue on the path or take a diversion? How engaged are we in designing our own spiritual futures?

In the context of the age of the universe, ten years is a minuscule amount of time. In the context of a human lifetime, ten years can be a significant number. To put it in context, pause and consider. What are some significant (spiritual) events in your life over the past ten years? The answer to this question can reveal much about why we are on our spiritual path, our companions, and the quality of our journey.

If we sit deeply with the question from a spiritual perspective, the answer can reveal some truths too. The purpose of our inquiry isn’t necessarily to create a ‘progress report’. It is more like we are visiting with ourselves in loving kindness, observing our inner state, and being grateful for our present gifts. It is acknowledging that no amount of effort, however small, in the journey towards divine connection is ever wasted. Every action counts and everything is counted.

Our individual progress may seem slow and yet, when many slow moving waves merge together in harmony and resonance, they can move entire masses of land over time. What can we learn from nature and her design prowess?

We can design our own spiritual future if we are willing to acquire the tools we need, harmonize with like-hearted companions, and do the daily work that connects our consciousness to the joy, truth and awareness of our own manifest destiny.

As the rain starts to taper off and the heat begins to rise again, I realize that I need to refill my cup and grab another cookie. It is time to look forward to the weekly gathering of travelers, celebrate the present, and look forward to growing into a brighter future.

Kumud

Join the #SpiritChat community for our weekly virtual gathering on Twitter, Sunday July 25 at 9am ET / 630pm India. We will celebrate ten years of traveling with tea, cookies, and maybe more… Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

Nature designs beautiful presents in togetherness. We can learn from her…

The Heart of Freedom

Tags

celebration, freedom, imperfection, spirituality, summer

I’m feeling a little bit disappointed that I didn’t get to the umbrella on the deck in time during the last storm. As I try to open it, I notice that the middle of the three tiers won’t fully open because one one of the supporting tines has broken in half and gone missing. The puppy is standing beside me, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind as I raise and lower the cranking mechanism in vain, hoping that it will somehow fix itself.

No such luck. As I am about to give up, I look down onto the garden, and there, sticking out of the red flowering bush, is the other half of the broken support. Hope. I retrieve it and jerry-rig the two pieces together, and walla, I have a semi-functional shade from the sun. It’s imperfectly perfect in its deformity, in that the tension has gone missing from the fabric that the broken tine now supports.

In retrospect, the storm has given me what I had wished the umbrella always had — a bit of flexibility in its undue tautness, so that it can better weather a bit more of the frequent wind gusts that tend to come off of the water. It looks a bit bent and articulated, and not so pretty any more, but it is actually more relaxed and functional and free-floating in its existence.

I go back to reading my book on Tao with the essay about being “easy and relaxed”. It speaks about harmony with the universe, about transcending both “being” and “doing’” and effortlessly switching from one to the other when necessary. It seems to bring home the message of choice, without which, it is hard to imagine any sense of true freedom.

Some will not rest until they have achieved or restored perfection, while others are at peace with their ‘brokenness’ and their imperfections. Some use their freedom to choose to walk the hard, challenging, twisted paths of life, while others are content in choosing the ‘easy’ roads. We are often judged, even defined by the world by the choices we make, and yet that is all moot, for only our heart knows the inner peace that comes from choosing what is in alignment with the call of our soul.

The willingness to choose our own path, the courage to be answerable to the heart, the ability to keep growing in connection to the divine, the rising up to be in service to others, the releasing of our inner fragrance of love — and to do all of these in a relaxed harmony with the universe — are perhaps our true freedoms. And for us to practice them, our hearts’ freedoms need not be perfect, do they?

As I finish writing this, the creaking of the sunbrella tells me that the wind is picking up and another summer evening thunderstorm approaches. This time, I am ready and present to act before I lose any more tines. I hope to have shade for a few more weeks, for summer has just begun!

Kumud

P.S. What are your thoughts on the heart of freedom? Are we really as free as we think we are? What is it that binds us, often without our awareness? I invite you to share in our weekly chat with the #SpiritChat community on Sunday July 4 (Independence Day in The USA) at 9am ET / 630pm India. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Summer flowers bloom, revealing hearts of Freedom

The Heart’s Fullness

Tags

celebration, easter, emptiness, fullness, spirituality

For most of the years that the weekly #SpiritChat has been around, we take a break from our Sunday morning Twitter gathering on Easter Sunday. It has become a bit of a tradition, if you will.

This Easter Sunday, we are going to ‘break with tradition’ because my heart has invited me to do so. Let me elaborate.

I usually wait until after my Saturday morning meditation hour to choose a topic for our Sunday chat. Clarity usually comes to the heart after meditation. As I sat for today’s hour, I didn’t even ‘ask for a topic’ because I wasn’t planning to do the chat anyway.

And yet, the universe had different plans. As my thoughts receded and the noise was replaced by a fullness of warmth and light that first came as a trickle, then a flood, and then a stillness that just sat there, my heart’s master said — “hold space for them like I am holding space for you.”

Who are these them, I asked? They are those who want someone to celebrate with, but can’t. Or they are those who want to simply share with someone about their week. Or they just want to see a friendly face, like your friend, the veteran who stands under a tree outside the local post office holding a “be kind” cardboard sign – the one you stop and chat with every single time you see him, inquire about his health issues, share some prepackaged food or a mask, and more. Yes him, who often reminds you of the fullness and richness of your life, as he says “God loves you” at the end of every one of your street conversations.

Yes. Hold space for them, because them includes you. Be the vessel that can be filled with potential. That was this morning’s invitation, and I accepted.

What is fullness or emptiness? It’s relative, isn’t it? To paraphrase Lao Tse, “we focus on the beauty of the vessel, but its usefulness, its potential is in its emptiness”. When the heart’s vessel is full, we feel led to empty it, to share what is held within, whether it be joy or sorrow. When the heart feels empty, we want to fill it up again.

Back and forth, the pendulum swings, and a time comes when our heart’s fullness is permanent. We are home again to love. We can all celebrate that, can’t we?

Kumud

P. S. Join us for our weekly chat, Sunday April 4 at 9amET / 630pm India in #SpiritChat. Bring some goodies to share, and we will celebrate fullness. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Flowers fill the heart… Happy Easter!

On Life’s Diverse Colors

Tags

celebration, colors, diversity, spirituality, unity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kumud

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

What colors can your eye see in Spring?

On Revisiting Joy

Tags

celebration, healing, journey, joy, spirituality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kumud

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

Learning to fly by revisiting Joy

Spirituality, unity and union

Tags

celebration, fathers, solstice, spirituality, union, unity, yoga

The longer I wait to write this post on Saturday morning, the shorter the shadows get in the back of the house which faces west. The Sun, slowly ascending towards its peaking of the day, on this day when daylight reach its ascendancy over darkness in the northern hemisphere, I contemplate union and unity.

A tiny baby dragonfly in resplendent blue with translucent wings lands in the center of the rainbow colored hula hoop encrusted with silvery highlights lying on the floor of the deck. An orange winged blackbird lands on the wrought iron post holding the bird feeder, squawks loudly as it departs without partaking, as if to say that I need to fill it again. The two boys on their swings across the lake have been going back and forth for the past half hour, unassisted, as they have surely mastered their art of Joy. The lake glistens and ripples as it often does in the harmony of the slight breeze and the low angle of the Sun’s light from the East. My cup of tea is empty but I am too enamored by it all to move off of the deck, lest I miss something vital.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Union and Unity. In the 5th century BC, the Indian sage Patanjali, compiled a treatise called The Yoga Sutras. It is said to be the collation of the knowledge and practices of the lives of the practitioners of Yoga of the time. Patanjali wrote about Yoga as a thread of aphorisms explaining the relationship between the natural world, the inner spirit of humans, and the unity between them.

The practice of Yoga can be simply described as any practice which leads to union between the external and the internal. Yoga is the manifestation of the unity that we often intrinsically seek in the paradox of living in the transient external world while seeking the permanent within.

Swami Vivekananda describes this striving for union in the form of four paths of Yoga, all emerging from One as we move outward on them, and then converging into One as we return home. These four paths are the path of work and action, the path of knowledge, the path of devotion and the royal path of meditation. Why do we need four paths? Why not just one?

Perhaps because all humans, like the colors of the rainbow, have different propensities and inclinations that they bring into their physical existence. So, the offering of four distinct and yet non-exclusive and equal paths of Yoga, invites the practitioners of love to practice love in the way that they may be most attracted towards in their current state of life. Very often, a human may practice all four paths simultaneously, with different levels of intensity at different times of the day and night.

The Yoga of action may dominate during the day, knowledge path may prevail during reading or observing nature, devotion may take over during prayer, meditation may subsume one at dawn or dusk or other times. Yes, we are all practitioners of multiple paths, whether we are aware or conscious of the particular path, or even the goal, for that matter.

And the goal? One goal is to manifest the unity of the four paths into the realization that our true state is where the states of permanence, knowledge, and bliss, unite us in our union with the One.

A sense of unity often precedes Union. However, we know that unity cannot be decreed by a constitution or any number of bills of rights or legislatures or courts or executives and their orders. It is just like a rainbow cannot be decreed to appear or be perceived — the sun and the rain drops and a number of other conditions have to come together to create it with harmony. The rainbow appears when human nature recognizes that the union of colors, while maintaining their independence and their right to individually exist as equals, can only enhance the beauty of the world for all who set their eyes upon such a union.

How does union and unity manifest? We can observe union in father-children relationships, in a bride and groom’s joyfulness on their wedding day, in a decision to be aware of and celebrate all the physical light steaming upon us during summer solstice. Perhaps the greatest manifestation of unity and union is in an individual’s decision to work towards their union with the divine through the path of Yoga of their choice.

To be friendly towards those friendly towards us, to be joyous for them in their joy, to be empathetic towards those suffering, and to be indifferent without attitude towards those with evil intent – these four practices of maitri, mudita, karuna and upeksha – are considered to central to Patanjali’s definition of Yoga.

As I finish writing this, a baby sparrow has arrived on the deck and is loudly tweeting in a sliver of shade by the bird feeder. It is as if she’s asking me to get off the couch stat and do my Dad Yoga of re-filling the feeder. Such is the life of a householder- to stay unified in the heart while performing the actions related to the feeding of the world around me.

Now where did I put away that 50 pound bag of bird seed anyway?

Kumud

P.S. Join me and the #SpiritChat community in our weekly twitter gathering on Sunday, June 21 at 9amET/ 630pm India. We will integrate Fathers Day (US), International Day of Yoga, Summer Solstice and the kickoff of four days of online and offline events for my niece’s wedding in India… Namaste – @AjmaniK