On Life’s Possibilities

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decisions, needs, possibilities, purpose, spirituality

One of the many landscaping decisions we had to make after moving into the newly built home a few years ago was – what flower bushes should we plant outside the two windows of the main bedroom on the first (ground) floor? I don’t remember the details of the decision-making process, but the result was one small hydrangea bush next to each window. We had no idea of all the learnings and experiences that the small decision held for us in the ensuing years.

Fast forward five years, and I am spending a lot of time on the deck during my July 4th weekend mini-retreat. Both the hydrangeas are in full bloom after going through what often appears to be certain death during the winter months when all the leaves fall off, the flowers turn to dried out shells of their summer selves, and my mind wonders if there will ever be fragrance from them in the air again.

As if to make my mind look foolish yet again, the breeze picks up a bit in the late afternoon, and I have to put down the Osho book I’ve been reading, because the fragrance comes around the bend onto the deck and demands the full attention of all the senses. It is a reminder that the hydrangea, at its own level of awareness, knows who it is, knows it’s nature is to bloom in the summer and spread its fragrance, knows that it can support the fireflies, the yellow-jackets, the bees, the butterflies for nourishment and more. The hydrangea seemingly knows the domain of its life’s possibilities, and makes the best use of them.

The question that the hydrangea bushes seem to ask of me is – do I know who I am? What is the level of my awareness about what I truly want from my journey? Do I know that my winters are temporary, even necessary for renewal? Do I know the domain of my life’s possibilities, and how my decisions affect the ecosystems that I am part of and may even be supporting?

Yes. A mini-retreat can often bring you face to face with the present and the possibilities that it presents. As you decide on which of life’s varied possibilities to pursue, an answer to ‘who am I’ can clarify ‘what do I want’ — which in turn can present the courage and confidence needed to be in motion like the bee, or be in stillness like the flower.

The distance traveled by the soul is often the same.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering and twitter chat in #SpiritChat, Sunday July 10 at 9amET / 1pm GMT / 630pm India. We will talk about life and its possibilities, or maybe about hydrangeas 😉 Namaste – @AjmaniK

A part of one of the hydrangeas in full bloom… so many possibilities to sustain life around it…

Tradeoffs in Spiritual Practice

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decisions, living well, practice, tradeoffs

Our daily lives are often filled with seemingly invisible “tradeoffs” or micro-decisions that we make. These decisions are partly affected by the mental and emotional state that we may be in, in the moment that we make the decision.

Do we hit the snooze button once or twice and sleep the extra few minutes, or do we decide to wake up and invest those few extra minutes ‘gained’ by setting the proper tone for our day ahead?

Do we choose to continue to add to our theretical database and knowledge of a particular field, or do we say that we now ‘know enough’ to focus more on actual practice and ‘work experience’?

Do we tend to focus more on the ‘short term’ affects of our daily decisions (do what makes us feel good NOW) or do we give more weight to the ‘long term’ impact of our choices?

Do we pay more attendtion to the means, the ways, our paths – or do we ignore the means because “the means justify the ends’, so any path is adequate?

The above are just some of the tradeoffs we often make. Depth versus breadth. Change versus tradition. Chance versus control. Community versus individual. Quality versus quantity. And there are many more that I am sure that you can think of.

It should come as no surprise that we tend to make a lot of these tradeoffs without even giving them much thought. Our habits, beliefs, values, finances and the amount of time and space available to us may determine the tradeoff. A tradeoff that we were willing ot make a decade, or even a year ago, may be unacceptable to us today.

Perhaps the same is true of our spiritual practice(s). As we (hopefully) grow through our chosen path (by paying attention to the means), our practice(s) evolve too. It isn’t that one way or means is ‘better’ than another. It is more that we may outgrow certain practices because we graduate to the next grade of practice. We may have loved kindergarten, and our teachers there, but we end up trading time and our comfort space in kindergarten for a higher grade – a bigger challenge, an oportunity to learn and practice more, to be challenged to climb to the next plateau.

Consider and evaluate. What tradeoffs have you made in your (spiritual) life over the past year that have made you, and those around you, ‘better’? Are there any tradeoffs that have had the opposite effect of ‘betterment’? What are a few habits and beliefs that you could change so that you would ascend to the next plateau? Or are you choosing the tradeoff of holding on to ‘tradition’ in favor of change?

As Swami Vivekananda once said – “We do not evolve from error to truth. We evolve from (lower) truth to (higher) truth”. The corollary is that no matter the tradeoff we choose, we are not in error. We are simply evolving from one truth to another.

And so what if one evolves more slowly than another? “The more we keep engagingwith the flowers of spiritual practice, the more fragrance shall remain in our hands…”

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us Sunday, August 13th at 9amET / 1pm UTC for our weekly twitter chat in #SpiritChat – we will talk about the tradeoffs between cookies and fruit, tea and coffee, and more 🙂