On Spirituality and Planning

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guidance, planning, spiritual path, travel

I had the trip planned out perfectly, or so I thought. My mother-in-law, sister-in-law, my brand new wife of two days old, and me, were going to go on a day trip from New Delhi to Agra, to see the famous Taj Mahal. Tickets in hand, we took a taxi in the wee hours of the morning from our hotel to the train station. We had no luggage with us, so all we needed to do was to find the correct “platform” from which the train was departing, and board the train. Being the local, I was “in charge” and so I led them out of the taxi into the “grand central station” like foyer. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “Hey coolie (porter). What platform number does Taj Express leave from?”

He looked at me with a look that I will never forget. He probably didn’t know how to say it, but what he did say still resonates. 

Coolie: “Taj Express? That train doesn’t go from here! It goes from Nizamuddin station!”

I used to live near Nizamuddin station. It was at least thirty minutes away from where we were standing. With the clock showing 525, it meant we had forty minutes to make it there before the train left at 605. I could see my meticulously laid plans vanishing like the early morning fog dissipates with the heat of the rising sun. But there was no going back – this was our only chance to see the Taj, because we were all leaving back for the USA the next day. I “led” the ladies out of the train station, through the throng of touts of taxi drivers offering to drive us all the way to Agra, two and a half hours away. No way I was going to admit “defeat” that easily!

Thirty five minutes later, after a taxi ride through Delhi’s early morning fog and traffic, we landed outside Nizamuddin station. Of course, the train was not on platform one, which would have meant a simple walk on to the train. We had to walk up a long set of stairs, then take another walk over multiple train tracks, and then descend to platform number nine. By the time we found which compartment we were supposed to board, the train had started to move. Twenty five years later, my mother-in-law still hasn’t forgiven me for literally dragging her, half-running in her high heels, to get on that train. I don’t think that the beauty of the Taj was enough for her to forget my immaculate “trip planning”. 

So, I have learnt that I am not much of a planner. I was never much into planning. In fact, I might be the poster child who contradicts the whole “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” adage. I have accepted the fact that my “lack of planning” isn’t setting myself up for failure. It is simply an acceptance of an alternate path through life for me. I would like to believe that I am not alone in this acceptance of life’s flow. I cannot think of a single significant “life event” in my life that was “planned out” by me. Engineering school, coming to the USA for graduate studies, meeting my spouse, buying my first home, getting a dog, starting #SpiritChat on twitter, and so many other events – all seem to have “just happened” to me. Maybe I am the poster child for “life happens to us when we are busy making plans”. Or the poster child for “delegation of planning” for many of life’s trips – in my case, to my wonderful wife. 

I am not advocating that we ought not to make plans. I am simply sharing with you that good things can happen to us and through us, even if we don’t plan meticulously. The decade of the 2020’s is upon us with great spiritual opportunity, just like the 2010’s and 2000’s were upon us ten and twenty years ago. Yes, as we embrace the new decade, it is a good time to pause and reflect on how far we have traveled this year, and in this past decade. Are we on the correct train station, the correct train? What is the journey we are taking, and does it have a purpose? What are the “constants” and the “variables” on our path? Who are our traveling companions? What are the resources that we have, and who will we ask for help or guidance when we need it? 

Yes. These questions may be worth considering as we step into the spiritual symmetry of 2020 and the decade ahead. The spiritual journey does require some commitment, and even a bit of planning on our part. Perhaps it begins with the simple commitment of buying a train ticket. Then, we can commit to be flexible, to accept change, to be the change. Then we commit to get to the train station on time — the correct train station!

And then, when the conductor blows the whistle, waves the green flag to announce “all aboard”, we can all travel together and see some of the most beautiful places in our hearts. Let’s plan the trip, shall we?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for a planning session for the next decade – Sunday, December 29 at 9amET / 730pm India – in #SpiritChat on twitter. I will bring some tea and cookies for the train ride – we can take a trip together as we ask some questions, share some answers. Namaste – @AjmaniK

From one of my travels…

The Spirit of Mentoring

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guidance, guides, mentoring, mentors, spirituality

I miss my mentors. All of those who have passed…

My Dad was perhaps my first real mentor. Long before there were those outside the home, and they were few and far between because good mentors are hard to find, Dad was there. Even though he had an inclination towards silence and stillness, it was his carefully measured, softly uttered, frugally spoken words that still linger with me.

Words uttered on a railway platform as the train was departing and I had come to bid him farewell till the next school break – “I expect nothing but the best of effort from you”. When you are in middle school, that stuff somehow stays with you for a while. In my case, it’s been a few decades and I still remember that message from my mentor. The home was always stocked with all kind of books (mostly from American fiction authors!) and music (Indian and western). It was his way of creating an environment for me to ‘learn’ outside of my education. And there was much more. That was Dad’s mentorship.

My mother’s sister’s husband, my second Dad, was pretty much cut from the same mold of silence. I got to know him well because I spent fourteen years (from age seven) growing up in his household. His mentorship to me came through his relentless devotion to providing for his family. He worked long, long hours working the family business, and you did not want to be ‘talked to’ by him after he got home after a twelve hour day. His reverence and dedication in celebrating the major Indian festivals was also a great lesson in ‘slowing down’ for me. And when it came time for me to leave his home and come to the USA for graduate studies, he was instrumental in convincing my parents that it would be okay. He was my biggest cheerleader, and that gave me tremendous belief in myself. That was Uncle’s mentorship.

When I moved to the US, his youngest brother here became my ‘American Dad’ and mentor. He and his family provided a sense of ‘home away from home’ that was vital for someone whose nearest family was on the other side of the world. An electrical engineer for Ford, he always kept a keen eye on me all through graduate school. I looked forward to meeting up with every Thanksgiving and Christmas, so that I could learn from him about how to raise a family with a blend of American and Indian values. A lot of his wonderful advice about faith, career and family, continues to linger with me. That was my Ann Arbor uncle.

And while all three of them have physically departed, I can honestly say that I often find myself asking – what would Dad (or my Uncles) do in such and such situation? I can also say that I have had a very tough time replacing them as mentors. The closest ‘replacement’ was my NASA mentor – I am greatly indebted for his decision to take me under his wing when I was first starting my career.

All this talk about ‘male’ mentors doesn’t mean that I did not have any ‘female’ role models. I have talked about them (my Mother, my Aunts, my maternal grandmother) extensively in many previous #spiritchat blog posts. For some reason, as I sat in morning #meditation this past Sunday, I was asked these questions – Who are your mentors? Who are you mentoring? How are mentors different from role models? And what about our (spiritual) guides? How do I go about identifying some new mentors in my life? What effect is the (apparent) lack of influential mentors in my life having on me and my growth?

I share these questions that were asked of me with you, with the intent that perhaps you can relate to (some of) them. Yes, we have all the power within us to do great things, but a lot of that potential lies latent – like fuel needing a spark. What if the heart-based guidance of a good mentor could ‘raise us to that stage’, and help us manifest our power, so that we may expand our experience of truth, awareness and joy?

Kumud @AjmaniK

Share your stories about mentors and mentoring in our weekly twitter conversation – Sunday, January 27 at 9amET / 730pm India in #SpiritChat. Who knows – maybe you will find a new mentor, or have an opportunity to mentor someone you haven’t even met yet? Namaste – Kumud

Swami Vivekananda – A mentor whom I met through his books, poetry, lectures and essays…

Your Spiritual Guidance System

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discernment, emotions, guidance, intuition, spirituality

Your Spiritual Guidance System (by Christy Johnson)

Our guest host for #SpiritChat this week (Sunday, September 30th) is Christy Johnson (@intuitiveheal) – I hope you will join her for what promises to be an excellent chat. Please enjoy Christy’s blog post below. – Kumud

We humans receive information almost continuously, be it from our five senses, our intuition, our dreams, our desires, or via introception, the awareness of the inner state of our bodies. Plus we have the potential to communicate with angels, guides, God, animals, trees, the Akashic Records, and so forth. Since the beginning of human time, we’ve been surrounded by information and the quantity has increased dramatically with digital information, worldwide travel, and humanity’s deepening spiritual awareness. So how do we recognize and honor our own internal spiritual guidance system? How do we make spiritual sense of the world that may seem overwhelming or meaningless at times?

Let’s begin by exploring intuition. This amazing tool provides us with a knowing beyond brain-based intelligence. What we believe and use to navigate our lives may begin in the mind with exposure to a new spiritual concept or practice but it either gets absorbed or ejected by our intuitive knowing. Spiritual resonance occurs below our heads and with intuition we just know what we know. To honor this gift expands and hones it, allowing you to inhabit your spiritual life with more vibrancy and aliveness.

Discernment partners with intuition. As we move along the spiritual path, we learn that judgment stops flow because it creates a resistance to life. Even judging something as good creates a dichotomy of good and bad where certain aspects of life, which exist regardless of our opinions about them, get relegated as unacceptable. Spiritual discernment allows you to differentiate between what’s true and false for you personally. Discernment, like intuition, grows and evolves as we do. I, for example, did not believe in past lives but today work in the Akashic Records, a soul database containing information from every lifetime of every soul. In my experience, our evolving spiritual discernment tends to either open more possibilities or deepen our understanding and knowing of what we already believe.

Although we sometimes discount them, our emotions can also bring us spiritual information. Emotions can provide feedback as to how our intuition and discernment currently serve us. While most of us prefer to feel the so-called positive emotions like joy, less comfortable ones like resentment, anger, and shame, inform us how we need to tend and befriend ourselves. Neither relentlessly repeating affirmations nor pushing ourselves back to a positive mindset can shift a pattern as efficiently as tuning into our emotional reactions and exploring the messages they contain for us.

Spiritual development deepens our love and compassion for all beings, including ourselves. In other words, our spiritual evolution leads us to fall in love with our soul-level perfection, as well as with everyone else’s. That doesn’t mean we condone harmful behaviors from people who aren’t acting with responsible awareness, instead we return to the collective and personal need to evolve our consciousness while paying appropriate attention of our wants, needs, and feelings. At times on our journey we may need to excavate our true selves from our masks before we can love ourselves or we may need practice accepting what we already know. This evolutionary path toward love and compassion also depends upon our internal spiritual guidance system.

Please join us this Sunday, September 30th, 2018 at 9 A.M. EDT/6:30 P.M. India, as we explore Your Spiritual Guidance System. Please come to connect, learn, and share around how we receive, process, and act on guidance in its many forms.

Dr. Christy Johnson quit her decades-long engineering career in 2010 to open her own integrative energy healing practice. She has a passion for helping clients evolve the relationships with themselves and others via soul level information and energy tools. You can connect with her via her website http://www.intuitiveheal.com or on Twitter @IntuitiveHeal .

Dr Christy Johnson (@IntuitiveHeal)

Celebrating Guides and Guidance

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celebration, guidance, guides, guru

We celebrate a lot of occasions in our lives. Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings, national holidays, international days, and much more. There is one annual celebration that is perhaps unique to Indian (vedic) tradition – it is the celebration of our spiritual guide(s) and the guidance that they provide to us. As it is with most Indian spiritual traditions, this celebration is also connected to the lunar calendar.

This year, the celebration of our guide(s), referred to as “Guru” in India, is marked for July 9th 2017. In modern times, the term “Guru” has expanded much beyond its original usage to refer to an ‘influential teacher’ or ‘subject matter expert’. The original use of the term referred to a highly revered ‘spiritual teacher’ who was trusted by royalty to provide advice, and to impart guidance to those who ‘qualified’ to be guided. And what made one ‘qualified’ to be taught or guided? Consider this:

“To him (or her) who has thus approached reverently, whose heart is tranquil, and whose senses are under control, let the wise Guru teach the real knowledge, by which the true and immortal Being is known” – Mundaka Upanishad

The Upanishad(s) are a series of wisdom “books” that distilled the essence of the ancient Vedas, which themselves contained the wisdom and traditions of ancient India. The word Upanishad literally means, “to sit near the sphere of influence of” (the radiance of the guide or Guru). There are many stories and parables about how the guide would test the student, before agreeing to accept them as a student. Think of it as an entrance examination or a college application – one had to be accepted in order to enter the “sphere of the guide”!

But, I digress a bit. Let me briefly return to the three qualifications of a student as referred to in the quote. First, “one who has approached reverently”. This implies a sense of humility, a willingness to learn, and an “emptying of the vessel” by the student. Second, “whose heart is tranquil”. This suggests a state of harmony within the student’s heart. We stand to learn and absorb much more (in any environment) if our heart is at peace – don’t you think? Third, “whose senses are under control”. To me, this refers to the state of our mind, our power of discernment, and how well we have control of the same.

It may seem like all the qualities that ‘qualify’ us to be taught by a ‘spiritual guide’ are the very qualities that we are seeking help for from our guide in the first place! If we already had these three qualities developed within, why would we need the guide or Guru anyway? What more could the guide teach us? The answer is perhaps in the last part of the quote – “let the wise teach the real knowledge by which the true and immortal is known”.

We arrive with reverence, harmony and good discernment. We receive guidance towards truth and immortality. That is worthy of celebration, don’t you think?

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us on twitter for our weekly #SpiritChat conversation on Sunday, July 9th 2017 at 9amET (USA) / 1pm UTC / 630pm (India). We will celebrate our guides and share guidance over tea, cookies, and a guided, online meditation to follow at 8pmET (contact me directly for details on this). Namaste.

Celebrating Guides and Guidance that arrives through many mediums, from many directions…

Update: Storify Summary of Chat – https://storify.com/ajmanik/on-guides-and-guidance

On Spiritual Stability and GNC

Tags

guidance, spirituality, stability

One measure of the ‘health’ of man-made satellites that are orbiting the earth or on missions away from earth is their ability to communicate well with the home planet. When the satellites are communicating well with ground-stations, they are in a proper orientation and alignment. The technical term for this is called ‘attitude’.

There are many reasons that the satellite may lose its proper ‘attitude’. This loss of ‘attitude’ can happen slowly over time as the satellite’s energy producing mechanisms start to malfunction. When detected and diagnosed in time, this loss of ‘attitude’ is often easily corrected. Sometimes, a catastrophic failure in hardware or software can send the satellite spinning wildly. In such a scenario, ‘attitude’ correction to restore stability is much more difficult.

The primary way that stability is restored in satellites is by the GNC system. Guidance. Navigation. Control. One may posit that this makes for a good analogy for restoration of stability in human beings too! It is hard to imagine that any of us have the ‘perfectly positive attitude’ at all times towards other human beings, or even towards our own selves. Am I the only one who needs frequent attitude corrections to restore my inner, spiritual stability?

Maybe we can use the GNC analogy to help us restore stability. Let us consider the first tool, Guidance. When our attitude is declining slowly, we may choose to invoke ‘relaxation’ or ‘mindfulness’ to guide us back to inner stability. If we encounter a sudden, severe loss of attitude due to one of our triggers being pressed, we may need to invoke deeper guidance to recover. What are your ‘rapid spin’ triggers? Who catches you when you suddenly spin out of control? Do you have guidance or guides in place to help you in such situations?

The second tool in GNC is Navigation. Navigation may be internal (programmed into the satellite itself) or external (commands sent by ‘ground control’). Humans are much better than satellites at self-analysis and correcting their internal programming to restore their stability when necessary. Satellites are probably better at accepting and executing stability correction manoeuvers from ‘ground control’ (external sources) as they don’t have an ego (yet) that gets in the way! Our stability would be well served to check our internal navigation regularly. Is our mind, our intellect navigating us more ofthen than the heart? What path is our guidance and navigation leading us to? Is it congruent with our higher and deeper purpose in life?

Which brings us to Control – the third leg of the GNC tool. This is perhaps the toughest thing for us humans (this human anyway!), and our egos to get a good grasp and acceptance of. We often forget some things about control. How much control do we really have in a given situation. When to exert control and when to let go or yield. How to exert the right amount of control to restore and maintain stability. The good news is that we do have much greater control over our ‘inner’ or ‘spiritual’ state than we may realize.

We can get to a state of inner stability, of good alignment and attitude, when we gain mastery over controlling our inner state.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

Join me and the #SpiritChat community – Sunday, January 22nd 2017 at 9amET/2pmGMT on twitter. We will converse and share on the subject of ‘spiritual stability’ using some of the GNC ideas in this post. Namaste 🙂