Celebrating the Divine Feminine

Tags

energy, feminine, spiritchat, spirituality

The energy of the divine feminine is celebrated over nine days and nights in the Indian festival calendar every year, twice a year, in spring and autumn. The autumn celebration is more popular in the cultural ethos as it crosses many ethnic and regional boundaries, and informally kicks off the ‘festival season’ which reaches its peak with the ‘celebration of lights’ (Diwali).

So, what is this energy of the divine feminine, and in what ways can we invoke, honor and celebrate it in our spiritual practice(s) over these nine days? One invocation is by following the ‘rule of threes’. There are three forms of energy that govern our inner and outer aptitude. They are called tamas, rajas and sattva ~ tamas is the heavy, static, often lackadaisical form ~ rajas is the dynamic, passionate, desire-driven form ~ sattva is the serene, balanced, even-handed form of Life energy. If you have ever eaten Indian food, tamas is like the deep-fried, heavy breads and curries, rajas is the spicy, make you sweat flavors and sauces, sattva is the balancing yogurt and neutralizing rice-based dishes…

Applying the rule of threes to the nine days, each of the three energy forms may be reflected upon, in sets of three days each. One way of looking at the three energies is that the masculine energy predominates in us as tamas (the heavier, static form). The feminine energy, the ‘getting things done’ aptitude, predominates in us as rajas, and is often necessary to overcome our tamas based energy. The ideal mix of tamas and rajas, and the ideal is different for every person, depending on their intrinsic nature, moves our Life engine forward. The role of sattva can be viewed as a moderator or modulator of the net voltage across our life circuit. It restores us, reminds us, cajoles us towards That balance which produces harmony, joy, awareness of higher consciousness within us.

It is apparent that all three forms of energy are necessary, and none of them are sufficient by themselves to provide us with the Life current that can help us operate at our truthful optimum. So, we celebrate all three aspects of the energy, all three aspects of the divine feminine, in walking and in sitting, in inhaling and in exhaling, in happiness and in sadness, in health and in sickness, in taking care of others and in being taken care of others, in giving and in receiving ~ because they are all manifestations of the singular, primary energy, that unified force field that creates, destroys and sustains all of Life.

For those of you who are ‘regulars’ in our weekly #SpiritChat conversations on twitter, you are well familiar with the demographic – a majority of the participants are women! However, this does not necessarily mean that all of us, including the women participants, are of the different aspects of, or the influence of the energies of the divine feminine in their lives. It is to this purpose, that I invite all of you to visit us in #SpiritChat on twitter on Sunday, October 18th at 9amET, and share your perspective on this topic with all present. Do you have a cultural parallel of the ‘rule of threes’? Do you have a specific celebration of the divine feminine? Which of the three energies seems to predominate in your life, and how does it affect your spiritual practice(s)?

Till we meet and visit with each other again, I thank you for spending some time here and reading. May the divine feminine protect you and provide for you the energy to live a Life of fullness,

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

Energy Of The Divine Feminine in Nature from Kumud Ajmani on Vimeo.

As I walked the reservation, signs of the divine feminine were everywhere – the static energy of the earth, the dynamic energy of the sun, the serene energy of the water – and their interplay to create a glowing energy current of Life!

P.S. The nine days/nights of celebration, also known as Navaratri (nava = nine, ratri = nights), are observed from October 13th to 20th 2015. Enjoy!

Dynamic Energy of Stress

Tags

energy, spiritchat, spirituality, stress, vitality

‘Dad, I know how to do the Math – but I don’t know why I get all stressed under time pressure…’

I was just getting ready for the morning dropoff at school, when this sentence grabbed my attention. I gently suggested that we would talk about ‘stress’ – later, after school. Later that evening, headed home from work, I started wondering – how am I going to discuss this topic with her? The evening went by, and I was graced with some more time to think about it, as she ‘forgot’ to bring it up. This extra time was most valuable, because it gave me a chance to re-read up on the subject of stress in my morning visit with my favorite Yoga book 🙂

Before I say more about stress, let me step back a little. In the month of August, three of the four #SpiritChat Sunday conversations were on topics related to our “mental body”, including the “mind”. These conversations were about Inner Workings of the Mind, Inner Conditioning and Habits and ’Memory, Ego and Awareness’. Our mental body is influenced by our “physical body” and our “energetic body”, which represents our intrinsic vitality. In the month of September, some of our topics will focus on the “energetic body” – its health, its healing, and its restoration to vitality.

So, let us return to the subject of stress. One straightforward definition of stress is pressure or tension exerted on a material object. This is a useful description, as we are all familiar with pressure – in fact, some of us take pride in thriving under pressure as we have evolved to perform better when we are put under some kind of pressure. In the physical realm, an object can only withstand so much pressure, before it will bend or break. This also happens in the emotional realm – our nerves may bend, exhibit resilience, and absorb a certain amount of pressure. However, if the pressure is applied persistently over time, without intermediate temporal relief, our nervous energy continues to get dissipated, and we may end up with a nervous breakdown or an emotional collapse.

In the book Light on Life, Iyengar says that “…there has always been stress in the getting and spending of life – today, we suffer much more due to culturally and personally created stress..”. If our bodies and minds are being pulled in opposite directions, the resulting tension is bound to create stress. This tension, if left unattended to, dissipates our vital energy. We are all familiar with the cumulative effects of stress ~ in a physical material, it is called fatigue, and prolonged fatigue makes the material brittle. Sound familiar? Are not our nervous and energy systems also made of such (very delicate) physical material? No wonder that fatigue is an oft-detected precursor of disease in pressure-driven, over-worked societies.

The practitioners of Yoga have identified some universal causes which create negative stress within our “energetic body”. The primary causes are “anger, fear, speed, greed, unhealthy ambition, and over-competition.” As I look at these six causes, I know that I have owned a few of them over time, and am working to disown the remaining few. How about you? It is unreasonable to expect that we will be able to discard any or all of these causes overnight. Speed cannot be the answer, because it is one of the listed causes of negative stress! So, what can we do to overcome them? Could we try slowing down, for a few hours every day?

How do we slow down? Like a gentle rain which effectively moistens a parched land, we can choose to regularly “mist our nerves and muscles with the moisture of positive tension.” One effective way of creating positive tension is through physical exercise. I am sure that all of us have experienced the ‘nerve soothing’ benefits of physical exercise. In the right amount, and at the right time, physical exercise actually energizes us, rather than making us tired – doesn’t it? Some of you know that I refer to my martial arts practice as “walking meditation”. When we modulate the movements of the physical body, we modulate the nerves, the breath, and the mind. The result of modulating the nerves is that negative stress dissipates – it flows out of us like the river flows into the ocean in a warm embrace. Positive tension creating energy and vitality for us!

There are three other ways of dissipating negative stress and strain. “Works done with devoted practice” – those done by consecrating the results – where we dedicate the results to a higher cause or higher power. Secondly, “Wisdom that comes from understanding the self and the world” is a great relief valve for negative stress. And finally, “Worship in the form of surrender” – the knowing that there are many things out of our control – allows our mental, physical and energy bodies to relax.

All of this is well and good, and I hope you have derived some benefit from this ‘dynamic energy of stress’. If you would like to state your thoughts and views, I invite you to join us on twitter in our weekly chat in #SpiritChat on Sunday September 7th at 9am ET / 2pm UK / 6:30pm India. I look forward to hearing from you. I am holding off on having my conversation about stress, until I hear from some of you 🙂

Namaste, and be well – free of negative stress,

Kumud

P.S. All “quotes” in the text are from “Light on Life” by BKS Iyengar. Highly recommended. If you have any resources on this topic that you would like to share with us that have helped you overcome negative stress, please share in the comments below. Thank you!

Ready? Q1. Reflect on the phrase "energy of stress" ~ what does it mean, feel to you? #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508601791605637121

Q2. What are some signs that the energy of stress is working for us? Against us? #SpiritChat 
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508603297545355264

Q3. Do you believe that frequent stress is harmful to your (spiritual) health? Why or why not? #SpiritChat 
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508605080636243968

Q4. Can we get better at perceiving stress, having a healthier response to it? How so?  #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508607047718694912 

Q5. Which strategy works best for you - avoid stress, manage it, or try to eliminate it? Why? #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508608664950013952

Q6. We all experience the energy of stress - what is the opportunity that it presents to us? #SpiritChat 
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508610033907945472

Q7. Think on the most stressful situation you ever experienced. What helped you deal with it? #SpiritChat 
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508611339766751232

Q8. How do our social relationships/communities help us resolve our stress? Do they? #SpiritChat  
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508612328544534530

Q9. Stress can help us strengthen our 'dynamic inner energy', vitality. Agree or Disagree?  #SpiritChat 
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508613575343366145

Final Q10. What do you want to tell us about stress? What do you want to ask us about it? #SpiritChat 
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/508614270637330432

Full Transcript (with stats) and Storify summary

The Energies of Freedom

Tags

energies, energy, freedom, spiritchat, spirituality

Every year, towards the end of the month of March, the anticipation would begin to grow. We would look forward to the dreaded, year-end exams to be over, so we could be rid of those “finals”, and enjoy a little bit of freedom. Most of us had no idea about what we would actually do with that one or two weeks of freedom from school, freedom from exams, freedom from homework, freedom from having to wake up before the sun was up, freedom from… you get the idea.

The one or two weeks of freedom  would pass in a blur, and it would be time to return to school, to enter the next school year (school year in India begins in April). A surge of excitement would build up around the buying of new books and notebooks, brown paper covers for said books and notebooks, and we would forget all about our freedom from school. The one or two weeks away invariably taught us that structure without rigidity can bring tremendous energy to life and living, and that we could experience freedom within that energy that engaged us in the process of learning. 

I have been reading Iyengar’s Yoga Journey called “Light on Life” over the last few weeks. In the process, the notional connections between the various energies that make us whole, and their connection to ultimate freedom are coming into light. Iyengar takes the traditional route and connects our various energies to the five sheaths of our being. We can view them as layers of an onion, or as those traditional nesting dolls, and they can be described, from outer to inner as

• Physical sheath – energy of our physical body, connected to freedom experienced through stability
• Energy sheath – our energetic body, bringing freedom through vitality
• Mental sheath – our mental (mind) body, providing freedom through clarity
• Intellectual sheath – our body of intellect that brings freedom through wisdom
• Divine sheath – our divine body, bringing freedom through the experience of bliss

If you notionally accept these five energy layers as representing your wholeness, your holistic view of the body, some questions arise. How does your energy level – in any of the five areas – affect your sense and experience of ultimate freedom? Which of these five levels of freedom is the most challenging to you in your current life-state? How can you synchronize the energies of these five sheaths in a practical way, on a daily basis? 

 

If freedom comes from disciplined happiness, there is a possibility of true liberation – B.K.S. Iyengar in Light on Life

Freedom is a basis for progress. Einstein remarked in his “Out of my Later Years” that “it is the role of science to alleviate us from the mundane, so we have the freedom to explore…”.  I believe that Einstein is in sync with Iyengar and vice-versa. And so it is. The five levels of freedom, with their various energies, will be our topic of exploration in our weekly hour of conversation on twitter in hashtag #SpiritChat – please join us Sunday, July 6th at 9amET / 2pm UK / 6:30pm India. 

 

To Life, Happiness, and the Pursuit of Liberty!

 

Kumud

 

P.S. If you have any thoughts on energy and freedom, before or after the live chat, please share them in the comments below. Thank you, and Namaste!

Energizing the Spirit for Growth

Tags

energy, spirit, spiritchat

We all have high energy days and low energy days. Some days, we seem to wake up on the “right side of the bed”. On other days, we cannot seem to hit that snooze button on the alarm clock enough times. The high-energy days seem to go by too quickly – we want time to slow down so we can enjoy and savor each moment. The low-energy days seem to drag on and we can’t wait to see the back of such days.

Where do these high and low energy days come from? As a matter of fact, where does energy come from anyway?

The physical law of the conservation of energy says that “energy can neither be destroyed nor created – it can only be transformed from one form to another”. In other words, the total energy of an isolated system remains constant over time. The key word here is isolated. This does open the door though, for energy to be added to an isolated system from the outside – by another system.

We can view ourselves as energy systems – full of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy. Within our internal, isolated system, we can transform energy between our various states of mind, body and spirit. However, we may sometimes need an energy infusion on our low-energy days. The good news is that, as sentient human beings, we are not truly isolated systems! If we believe that our individual spirits are connected to each other, then we can use the transfer of energy to energize each other. We see an example of this in the #SpiritChat conversations every week, don’t we?

If we take it one step further, one may believe that our individual spirit is also connected to the universal spirit – the powerhouse of all energy. The possibilities of energy exchange with the universal spirit are indeed unlimited.

So, how can we use these concepts of energy exchange and transfer for spiritual growth? Are you aware of your energy levels on a daily basis? How do you ensure a consistent level of energy, instead of the highs and lows? Are you sensitive to the energy of those around you? Can you think of times when we need to revert to being isolated energy systems? How do you recharge your spiritual energy?

I invite you to join us in our weekly #SpiritChat discussion to exchange energy and talk about “Energizing the Spirit for Growth”. Sunday, March 11th at 9am ET / 2pm GMT.

Bring your best energy with you!

Kumud

Update: Transcript from the live chat is at http://bit.ly/sc-tr-0311

Q1. How are your physical/mental/emotional energy levels at this hour?

Q2. How does physical energy level affect our mental and emotional energies?

Q3. Are there situations where an apparently low-energy level can be beneficial to us?

Q4. What is the source of your spiritual energy? Has it changed over the years?

Q5. How do we affect the spiritual energy level of those we connect with?

Q6. Is it easier to positively affect others' energy levels online as compared to offline?

Q7. What are some techniques for developing and maintaining a consistent energy level?
 
Takeaway Q8. How can we be more aware of our energy so we can renew ourselves and others? #SpiritChat   

Healing the Spirit

Tags

energy, healing, spiritchat

The spirit is a wonderful ally when it is in good health. It becomes our ‘bank account’ of positive energy ~ into which we can deposit the love that we receive from our friends, family and well-wishers. We also deposit into the account, the love that comes from higher sources of the universe.

However, as we go through our daily lives, we make continual withdrawals from this account. Every stressful situation that we encounter ~ whether big or small ~ depletes our spirit’s account of positive, life-enhancing energy.

Sometimes, major life events like a personal loss ~ of a long-term friendship, relationship, friend, relative, parent or child can make a major withdrawal from the account ~ the account may even get over-drawn. We have reached a ‘crisis of the spirit’.

One way to avoid a ‘spiritual crisis’ is to continually make small deposits of positive, life-sustaining energy ~ by communing with nature, by slowing down, by the joy that comes with serving others ~ and many more activities.

However, many folks are not mindful of the fact that their spirit’s ‘bank-account’ is in trouble. Their spirit has become used to living ‘crisis to crisis’.  They are not even aware that their spirit lacks the ‘reserve’ to absorb a large withdrawal caused by major life events.

Does your spiritual ‘bank-account’ feel like like it is close to being, or already is, overdrawn? If so, your spirit’s ‘account’ needs to be healed back to a healthy foundation.

Come learn how to ’Heal Your Spirit’ with #SpiritChat on Sunday, August 14th at 11am ET / 4pm GMT. The best way to join the chat is to use tweetchat.com or you can add the #SpiritChat hashtag to your tweets from your favorite twitter client.

Please join us. Namaste.

~ Kumud  @AjmaniK on twitter

P.S. If your spiritual bank-account is in excellent health, we need you in #SpiritChat even more ~ so you can help those whose spirit needs healing. Thank you for sharing.