Life’s Silver Linings

Tags

focus, holidays, hope, new year, perspective

As early as last week, I started hearing and reading references to how much 2020 “sucked”, and that folks couldn’t wait for the year to be over — so that we could all march into 2021 and forget about this year. It made me ask two questions —

• was there anything good that we could take from 2020 as we welcome 2021?
• how was 2021 going to become ‘magically’ different for us at the stroke of midnight on December 31?

I guess I wasn’t alone in noticing the emerging negative tone towards 2020. On Monday, my long-time twitter friend, @VegyPower messaged me to say that she had an “idea for the #SpiritChat conversation on Dec 27”. We talked over the phone, and sure enough, she was thinking about the “silver linings” amid all the storms that we experienced in 2020. Hence, this week’s topic was seeded. 

After my phone conversation with her, and as the week progressed, I did not have to think too much or too deeply about my own silver linings from 2020. For that matter, perhaps you won’t have to look too far to find them either. To begin, it may be helpful to ask some questions that invite us to reframe, refocus and revisit our perspective of 2020. For example, if you could take three positive ‘things’ forward from this year, what would they be? My suggestion would be to pick one ‘thing’ or ‘set of things’ each — for mind, body and spirit. Write the ‘things’ down on three sheets of paper. Add some bits of poetry, some doodles, or some photos, and maybe even create a “2020 Silver Linings” board. If you feel like it, now share your board with friends and family — who knows, it may inspire them to do the same. 

It is easy for the human mind to forget, to want to forget pain, and painful times. I often hear and read that most of us are attracted much more to pleasure than to pain. Hence, we tend to want to fill our lives with experiences that bring smiles, laughter and Joy. And yet, it is pain, suffering and death on an unprecedented scale that brought the best minds of Science together in 2020 to design, test, manufacture and distribute, not just one, but multiple vaccines, in record time, to fight the pandemic. In my mind, this  ‘coming together for a common goal’ is surely one silver lining from 2020. I am sure you can think of many more. 

Now, about the second question —  how will we use the silver linings, and even the dark clouds that we experienced in 2020 to continue to create better versions of ourselves in 2021? I haven’t seen my Aunt, with whom I have spent many a Diwali, Thanksgiving and Christmas in the past, at all this year. I picked up the phone and called her in the evening on Christmas Day. The phone rang a few times, and I was composing my voice mail in my head, when she answered. She had just returned from Christmas dinner from her son’s home and some wonderful family time with her three grand-daughters. We talked about the year, and about the year to come, and she was all excited about the second vaccine dose that is she is to receive in mid-January. But that wasn’t all. 

As we talked about 2020 and 2021, she said that she had spent a lot of time doing ‘spring cleaning’ in November and December. She had found a “folder” full of something, which had items that went back to 1967 – fifty three years ago. She asked me to guess what may have been in that folder? The best I could come up with was — “maybe they’re some kind of letters.” Close enough, she said. For the next hour or so, she then proceeded to tell me the story of the ‘long-distance romance through letters’ that happened  between her husband-to-be and her while she was in India and he was in Canada. It was quite a story, which I had heard for the first time — and I’ve known her for 34 years. 

Why do I tell you the story of this conversation? After I hung up the phone with her, it made me think of silver linings and the remarkable story that I had just heard. It also made me ask – what are the stories that 2020 has uncovered for us, from which we can learn and remember, so that 2021 can benefit from them. Will we remember stories of pain, of love, of joy, of suffering, of hope, of giving, of receiving, of tears, of laughter, and treat them all alike? Or will we choose to forget them, only to re-discover them in our heart’s folder many years, if not decades hence? 

The lesson of 2020, for me to remember, is that every moment of a fully lived life is a silver lining unto itself. What will you remember?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for a special conversation with the #SpiritChat community on 9amET / 730pm India, Sunday, Dec 27 2020 on twitter. My gratitude to @VegyPower for the inspiration for the topic (and some questions!). If you cannot join us in the hour, I wish you the best for the New Year. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

 

If we look closely enough, there are silver linings everywhere…

On Spiritual Essentials

Tags

essence, essentials, focus, spiritual practice

What is essential to life?

This question came to the forefront over the past few days. I was able to put together a string of walks in the local metro-parks this week, on many of my favorite trails. As I walked, this question came more and more into my heart’s front. What is essential for us to thrive? How do we separate the essential wheat from the seemingly inessential chaff?

One thing became clear. The sun is essential. There is no growth in nature without sunlight. The easiest way to kill growth is to shut off their supply of sun. No sun, no synthesis. Such is the truth of terrestrial plants. As humans, we often tend to shrivel, if not perish without the warmth that the energy of the Sun provides to us. This is not to say that solitude is inessential, for even in solitude, we are often seeking the light and warmth of our inner Sun.

What else? Water is essential. A clear flowing stream supplies a pure energy to everything that it touches, and inspires growth. Growth can and does happen in muddy, stagnant waters too, but it often requires much more energy than clean, clear waters. Water is known as the great cleanser, and many of us have a natural affinity to it. It is perhaps one reason why so many human civilizations tend to be located near rivers. Abundance flows in their vicinity.

Clean air is essential. Flora and fauna thrive better in the absence of pollution. The beauty of a flower that shines in the sun by the river, would surely be lot less joyful if it were covered with soot. Humans are the same way. The less ‘pollution’ that enters our mind, the less ‘cleaning’ we may have to do on a daily basis. Our heart’s filters are constantly being clogged by the soot of fear, anger, hate, and mistrust. We could all benefit from ‘clearing the air’.

I think you get the idea. The essential ‘things’ are those that keep the mind and the heart clear, so that we can absorb, grow and thrive in the supply of life-enriching air (thoughts), water (emotions) and sunshine (light). There are many other essentials, and we often only become aware of them when we feel their absence. Can you think of a few ‘essentials’ that have gone ‘missing’ in your life lately? When life’s ‘inessentials’ start to consume much more energy than the ‘essentials’, what is the result?

One result of forgetting what is essential is ‘conflict’. This message was delivered to me during a conversation with a respected elder this week. We were talking about the origin of ‘conflict’, and she said ~ “Conflict happens when we do everything but That which is essential”. It’s often easy to get mired in the inessential, for that is often the way of the ‘world’. It takes self-discipline, discernment and focus to stay true to, and act on the essentials of the ‘inner world’. The flower blooms, the flame burns, as long as it stays connected to the essentials.

May we stay connected to That essential, and thrive,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join our twitter community for our weekly conversation, Sunday September 23rd at 9amET / 630pm India. We will discuss the role of “essentials’ in our life, and how we can stay focused on them in our (spiritual) life. Namaste.

Life’s Essentials… Essence of Life

Directing our Senses

Tags

direction, focus, intellect, mind, senses

A road trip on our own is a good way to catch up with one’s thoughts. At least, that was my intent. On my way out the door, I grabbed a six-CD set that I had bought a few months ago at a Vedanta event. The CD set was like one of those many books that I buy, that sit unread in the bookshelves, till it is time for them to see the daylight of my eyes. I popped in the first CD, titled “why should we meditate” as I got on the highway.

Four hours later, as I pulled into the parking garage at the hotel, I was still listening to the fourth lecture. The conversation was about our senses – their direction, what directs them, if and how we can control them, their contribution to the minute by minute state of our mind, and much more. The sense of taste (tongue), sight (eyes), smell (nose), hearing (ears) and touch (skin). The speaker focused on the five senses, their physical seats of perception, and the bondage that they can create.

For the honey-bee, the attraction is to the taste of the honey. All its life, the honey-bee’s is bound by its seeking of the sources of honey. For the fish in the water, the attraction is to the smell of the bait. The extent of freedom of the fish depends on the sense of smell. The elephant loves the sense of touch – of dirt, of water, and of the thin rope around it’s foot. The deer’s attachment is to the sense of sound. And finally, the moth is entranced by the sense of sight, which feeds it’s irresistible attraction to light, to heat of the flame (Shankaracharya – Vivekachudamani, 76).

Such is the attraction and dependence to the physical world created in the bee, the fish, the elephant, the deer and the moth. And they each only have a single strong sense. So, what is to be the state of (mind of) us humans, who have all five senses present within us? If we were to pause and examine our daily lives, we indeed bound by all five of these senses. Our intake from the external world through the five seats of perception contribute directly to the mind, or our mental state.

And this is why, when we attempt to meditate, we very often get frustrated. The outward-directed mind has been fed all kinds of inputs by our senses all day along, and even during our dream-filled sleep. What chance does it have to be controlled, let alone be quietened without a change of direction of our senses? The probability for most of us, to control our mind as long as it retains an outward focus, is extremely low. The five horses are going to keep running our chariot amuck, unless we strengthen the charioteer (the intellect).

How is one to strengthen the intellect? One way, perhaps the only way, is to direct the senses inwards. What if we were to train our senses and their preceptors to direct their energy inwards, towards the divine? Can we direct ourselves to see with divine sight, hear the divine words, feel the divine’s touch, taste with divine purity, and smell the divine fragrance? If we were to direct our senses inwards, with strengthened intellect and power of discernment, could we become the charioteers of our inner, and hence outer lives?

On the return trip, I listened to four more lectures, for a total of eight hours of listening on the first CD. I have five more CDs to go. I cannot wait for the next road trip. In the meanwhile, I have a lot of inner re-direction to do.

The bridge awaits.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Come join me and the #SpiritChat community as we explore our sense of direction, and some (re)directing of our senses – Sunday, July 18th at 9amET / 6:30pm on twitter. Namaste.

Spiritual Focus and Spontaneity

Tags

focus, spiritual practice, spontaneity, vision

By the time you read this, we would have been past the first week of the new year that is 2017. In last Sunday’s conversation, we had touched upon the notion of new beginnings in the new year. For me, one aspect of ‘new beginnings’ is a commitment to a somewhat ‘regular’ evaluation of our Self. Maybe you will join me for a few minutes.

How was the first week of the New Year for you? Did you come ‘barging out the door’ after the holidays, full of energy to deep-dive into your action plans – to find that you were running on fumes by Thursday, and the shortened week left you a day short of what you thought you were going to be able to accomplish? If so, join my club. If not, you probably had a better focus, a better balance, and a better energy distribution than I did. Wonderful. You and I need to talk offline 🙂

Now that we have our quick self-evaluation behind us, we can move forward. In getting ready for the Sunday chat on twitter, I often pick up a book or two on Friday evening, and stack them on my bedside table. Last night, I openened up “The Way of Zen” by Alan Watts. This is the page that flowed out…

So long as the conscious intellect is frantically trying to clutch the world in its net of abstractions, and to inssiste that life be bound and fitted to its rigid categories, the intellect will wear itself out… Philosophy of Tao

This stirred my mind, and then my heart. What are some of us (including me) doing in the New Year? We are barely into the first week of January, and we are at risk of ‘wearing out our intellect’ by focusing on ‘frantically trying to clutch the world’ and fit it into our ‘rigid categories’. And the author went on…

The Tao is accessible only to the mind which can practice the simple and subtle art of wu-wei…

A ‘simple and subtle art’? OK. Now I am really paying attention and focused on what the author had to say. What is this art, this principle of wu-wei? Memories of my Karate Sensei’s lectures during class started filtering through my mind as I searched for this term. No. Nothing. So, I read on.

wu-wei is the experience where the mind arrives at decisions spontaneously… decisions which are effective to the degree that one knows how to let one’s mind alone, trusting it to work by itself…

Aha. There it is. Spontaneity. A sense of flow returns, to break us out of our ‘rigid categories’. I sense a return of and an embrace of freedom for the mind from the shackles of too much focus, by ‘letting one’s mind alone’. Trusting. Now, the literal meaning of wu-wei is further broken down…

wu means “not” or “non-” and wei means “action”, “striving”, “straining”…

Wait. Does this mean that if we adopt wu-wei that we are signing up for “non-action”? I look at it as signing up for “non-striving”… dialing back the mind’s hyper-focus on what we set out to ‘achieve’, to ‘strive’ towards. So, wu-wei can create time and space for flow and spontaneity. We relax our laser-life focus on our ‘goals’, and allow for “peripheral vision” to let us see out of the corners of our eyes.

The author uses the analogy of how a baby or infant actually sees the world. Their field of vision is wide, often even ‘blurry’. They do not focus on one particular thing, yet they manage to “see everything”. The world labels them as inarticulate, even “dumb” or “stupid”, but in their lack of cleverness, their innate spontaneity, is hidden a wonderful spiritual ability…

Cut out cleverness, and there are no anxieties!

So begins the poem that talks about the benefits of being ‘stupid’ in the world’s eyes. There is often great merit in being without ‘cleverness or ‘guile’ in the matters of the heart and soul. Consider this. When we act spontaneously to do something that brings a spark of Joy to our heart, we rarely do it from a position of stress or anxiety, do we? We trust the mind, we let go, and deep dive into spontaneity.

In summary, the message for me seems to be – keep focus, but don’t build the focus wall so high that you don’t allow time and space for spontaneity to enter your heart. I share the message with you, in the hope that it helps all of us relax into the week ahead.

As if to corroborate, I learnt in this week’s meditation MasterClass ~ Learn to let the mind relax. That is the first step, the beginning of meditation.

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. As I was finishing up this post, I recalled my Sensei often reminding me – ‘peripheral vision’ is one of your greatest assets… anybody can develop a keen, focused, ‘straight on’ vision, but the great warriors have great ‘peripheral vision’… and you develop that by relaxing, ‘not-striving’… there it is. Wu-Wei! Join us on twitter in #SpiritChat – Sunday, January 8th at 9amET. We will talk more about Focus and Spontaneity. Namaste.