Our Spiritual Stress-Test

Tags

covid19, modeling, science, spiritual practice, stress

Most of you may not know that my day-to-day engineering work involves computational modeling and testing of aircraft engine systems, in particular the combustion system or the combustor. As the name suggests, it is the system where fuel and air is mixed in varying ratios to create the desired amount of heat for takeoff, cruising, landing, and so on. In short, the goal of our models is to predict and improve, as best as we can, the efficiency of the engine, and the emissions created by it. The models are constantly improved and tweaked based on data from actual hardware tests. The models help in preliminary design of new hardware, and reduce the costs and time required to build a new, better combustor. 

The average time to design, build, test, re-test, certify and eventually put a new system on an airplane, particularly a combustor, is about ten years. Computer modeling is helping to reduce the ten-year cycle, but we aren’t quite there yet. The reason is that the modeling of the mixing of air and fuel and the subsequent fire that is created, is more complex than it looks. It can often take three to four weeks for thousands of computers working in tandem to produce a single answer for a single setting of the engine (say, takeoff).

Still with me? You can now understand why I have been fascinated by all the attempts of scientists to try and predict the growth, the spread and the mortality rate of the Covid-19 virus.  The modeling is being done with limited real-world data, and with limited understanding of how the virus affects different populations and how fast it is being spread by those who don’t show any symptoms. The result is that is a large amount of uncertainty in the various models’ predictions of when the infections are going to peak in a particular city or state, and what the corresponding death rate is going to be.

In short, the modeling is less than perfect. However, the early modeling was very useful giving hospital systems in cities and states a rough estimate of the number of cases that could happen if no action was takien. This early-warning system is what prompted the calls to “flatten the curve” so that the healthcare systems would not get overwhelmed and fail their stress-test. Some states passed “stay at home” orders, and hoped that citizens would heed their plea and actually comply. In my state of Ohio, the vast majority of citizens did comply,  and the result was that we have collectively put the state and our frontline healthcare workforce in a good position to deal with the peak of the stress-test that is coming in a few weeks. 

And yet, we know that, as of this writing, our preparation is not enough to avoid the stress-test that is coming our way. The very first time I heard of the possibility of one hundred thousand deaths in the early part of the week, I went into a bit of shock. Even though I had been following the modeling closely, I had a very difficult time accepting this number. Over the next few days, my emotions ranged between anger, angst, anguish, acrimony, animosity, and even a bit of anxiety. It felt like my emotional and spiritual systems were facing a stress-test of their own. 

How did my spiritual training and practices respond to the stress-test? How well did they withstand the shock of the emotional waves that came ashore like a raging storm? I would say that the jury is still out. The initial shock and stress-test did expose the cracks in my individual preparedness. I came face-to-face with the awareness that the practices I have developed over the past few years, while useful, need to be shored up. Yes, there was perhaps no way to design my spiritual practices to pass a stress-test of this once-in-a-generation magnitude. What spiritual practices has the current stress-test reminded me of?

The current stress-test has reminded me of the daily habit of returning to the healing voice within, of taking time to limit the voices that influence my mind from the without. It has brought the practices of ’empathy for the suffering’ and ‘gratitude for grace’ to the forefront of my awareness. It has led me to reconnect with nature and ask the question – how do nature’s flora and fauna deal with the stress-tests that they are given?

Late Friday afternoon, it occurred to me that the local bird reservation must have undergone quite a transformation since the two weeks that I had last visited there. When I arrived there, the parking lot was much more full than I could ever remember. In a small patch of grass at the beginning of the trail, a young couple was having a picnic with their toddler and their puppy. The bridge that spans the pond at the entrance had a mother with her two teenage daughters admiring the ducks that were floating around peacefully. The wooded part of the trail sported a wide range of parents with their kids sporting binoculars and cameras, taking in the sights and sounds of the forest. The sun was playing hide and seek with the tall trees and starting to cast long reflections on the trail. Along the stretch that runs between two lakes on either side of it, several pairs of geese had staked out small patches of territory (with proper physical distancing) for nesting. There was a baby turtle sunning itself on a small island in the middle of a swathe of blue. The half-moon had already risen high into the early evening sky, ready to bid the sun a good night. 

As I headed back from my visit, it struck me that all seemed well with the world of nature. There was no sign of stress, let alone any sign of a stress-test. The reservation was in the process of embracing spring with an open, joyous heart. I felt immersed in nature’s joy, internalizing it. I felt nature reminding me that in the midst of perhaps the greatest stress-test of our times, our best spiritual practices are those which return us to our intrinsic nature of love and joy. 

No matter what the projections and models say, we are all in this together. There is no computer model that can predict the strength of human resilience. With cooperation, integration and harmony, we can pass this stress-test. Of that, I am sure. 

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering on twitter on Sunday April 5 at 9amET / 630pm India. How are you coping with the current stress-test? What practices are helping you most in these times? How can the #SpiritChat community be of help to you in these times? Do share with us. We look forward to connecting and listening. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Resources: IHME Covid-19 Modeling (US State-by-State Data) / State of Ohio Covid-19 Modeling / American Medical Association Podcast: Vaccines and Immunity

A goose takes a rest from nesting… yoga on the trail! 

Our Spiritual Reserves

Tags

covid19, preparedness, reserves, resilience, resolve

The sound of distant rolling thunder woke me up from my deep sleep. It felt like a freight train was headed in our direction, and I tried to go back to sleep but to no avail. The storm grew louder and louder until it was close enough to pelt the windows with a driving downpour. It was determined to be heard, demanding an awakening. And then, just like that (or so it seemed), there was silence as it must have quickly moved east. Even though the eye of the storm had passed, I could hear the distant rumblings, but from a different direction.

And yet, using my relaxation technique, I managed to go back to sleep again.But this felt like a different kind of sleep. Thunderstorms are known to charge the atmosphere with ions as they pass through. The severity of this one in the pre-dawn hour must have done the same. This new sleep felt like I had one eye open in uncertainty, in a kind of raised awareness. An awareness of a low intensity electric current running through the heart. A current that was asking questions like — what is truly essential in my life, what am I certain of amid this uncertainty, what is my readiness level for the next storm?

My Isshin-ryū sensei often used to say, a large part of preparedness is about knowing your strengths. He was also a proponent of practicing the basics, over and over and over again — even for, and particularly for, the black belts. “If you forget the basics, your foundation will weaken, and your mental reserves will eventually dwindle to the point where even a weak storm (opponent) will knock you over.” Good self-defense is a combination of awareness of our strengths, of the potential and intensity of the threat(s), and of our reserves.

Some storms come our way without warning or grow quickly upon us. They are like the hit that we don’t expect and they  hurts the most. There are other storms which can be seen coming our way from a distance. The early warning systems are flashing yellow, and the ones who have had their sleep broken before, know that it’s time to awaken. They know that this isn’t time to choose to ignore the warnings or to believe that they are somehow immune. They take action to check on their preparedness, to build up their physical, mental and spiritual reserves. 

What may our spiritual reserves look, sound and feel like? They may look like select passages of our faith’s texts or the essays and writings of spiritual luminaries who inspire and enlighten us. They may sound like the saying of our childhood prayers, the singing of our favorite soothing songs, the poetry recitations of hope, or the re-reading of stories read to us by our parents and teachers. They may feel like the remembrance of moments that gave us courage when we felt that we were deeply loved.

How do we build up our spiritual reserves? We build our reserves every time that we read a little bit more of the inspirational, sing a little bit more of the devotional, share a little bit more of the emotional. We can also build our reserves when we do regular check-ins with how we’re feeling, become more aware about how we let others’ actions influence our feelings, and clean our receptivity filters. Engaging the mundane can help us build our reserves too.

As I was walking the dog yesterday evening with my daughter, we got into a conversation about who expends more energy per body weight in a walk around the block – dogs or humans? Does it make a difference that humans have to only use two legs and dogs have to use four? This led to other mundane questions. How is it that the dog, in the middle of a deep sleep on a couch in the back of the house, can spring awake and bolt to the front of the house because he has sensed another dog walking by?  

Yes. Sometimes, asking the mundane questions of life is a good distraction because it shifts our awareness from the impending storm to the present moment. It gives us time to pause, to breathe, to let our guard down and let the nervous system resume its normal flow.

So, what are we to do with all this preparedness? What is the best use our spiritual reserves? We can use them to support those who are leading community preparedness, to spread awareness about the need to prepare, to perform small acts of kindness, to dissipate our fear and to boost our spiritual immunity. We can use are reserves to create more empathy for the suffering, deepen our friendships and even form new ones, and learn anew to find joy in the small things.

We are all in this together. Now, more than ever, our connectedness is essential. Of that, I am certain.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly conversation on twitter in #SpiritChat – Sunday, March 29 at 9am ET / 1pm GMT / 630pm India. We will try and boost each other spiritual reserves through (mundane) questions over tea and cookies. It isn’t the end of the world, and yet it may be the beginning of the creation of a new, more empathetic one. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Sunrise on the beach in Riveria Maya (March 2016) 

Spiritual Acts of Solidarity

Tags

covid19, solidariy, solitude, spring, unity

At the end of my mid-afternoon walk through the local bird reservation, something remarkable happened. As I headed back to the trail that would lead me back, a wave of sound emanated from the forest — a wave the could be heard but not seen. It was if a million birds were raising the banner of spring in unison. I turned to my daughter and asked — is it just me or do you hear that too?

Later in the evening, in the golden hour after sunset, I could still hear them. As I sat on the front porch, watching some brilliant colors of light up the fringe an unusually dark and wide storm front, they were “filling the sky with songs”. I don’t know the reason (yet) for their behavior, for their beautiful act of solidarity. I do know that it brought a tremendous sense of joy and peace to me. In their unified wave of action, it seemed like the birds were affirming the recent actions of solidarity being taken by many families, communities, cities, states, and countries. 

If we are willing to listen to it and learn from it, Nature and her beings have many messages and lessons for us. Nature’s  latest message seems to be that our long-term viability as a human race depends on our ability to be present to each other, even when we are physically apart. Nature’s latest lesson seems to be that our health – spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, financial – is only as good as the health of some of the most vulnerable among us. 

We cannot ignore the wave of sound coming from the forest any more than we can ignore the voice of our elderly neighbors, the immune-compromise, or our healthcare workers. Every time we wash our hands, maintain adequate social distance, self-isolate if we feel sick, use our supplies frugally and buy only what we absolutely need, we are committing to an act of solidarity. Every human action of solidarity adds to the wave of sound of hope, caring and empathy that emanates from our human forest. 

What acts of spiritual solidarity can we perform as individuals and as a community? Over the past week, I have had a few phone conversations, and many online chats with folks to listen, learn and discern. As a result, the first action is that we  have started a new daily effort of getting together every evening (930pm EDT) and participate in a ‘group meditation’. I will be posting daily reminders in #SpiritChat, but no online ‘check-in’ is necessary. The intent is to ‘pause in place’, wherever we may be, and bring peace to our body, mind and heart, with our peace-evoking action of choice that works best for us. Let us hum (or listen) to our favorite prayer or mantra, read a piece of spiritual or inspirational literature or scripture, or anything else that we may consider to be a spiritual action of solidarity. 

I am also (re)starting our Zoom (video chat) meetings on a weekly basis. Our first attempt will be on Wednesday, March 25 at Noon ET (link to join the meeting will be posted on FB and twitter). These meetings will serve as quick ‘check ins’ on each other, and allow us to find opportunities to help out where we can. By keeping them to 30 minutes or less, we may be able to do them more frequently, if necessary.

So, it’s your turn to step up and let us know – what other actions of solidarity can we perform at this time in our history? What resources can you offer or share that could be helpful? We have been gathering online and supporting each other through weekly sharing for a quite a while. We have the experience, the willingness and the wisdom to create a viable, dynamic, empathic, sustainable response to this great challenge that faces us.

Every one of our voices counts. Every action of solidarity counts. Let us speak and act in solidarity so that we can evoke a wave of spring for the benefit of all. 

Kumud

Resources: Meditation Made Simple  and a Free Meditation App (by @heartful_ness)

P.S. Join us for our weekly chat, Sunday March 22 at 9am ET / 8am CT / 6am PT / 630pm India – we will gather and share in an act of solidarity. Namaste, and with deep gratitude – @AjmaniK

A turtle in the middle of the walking path… teaching me to slow down… (March 20, 2020)