On Spiritual Shifts

Tags

change, habits, heart, shift, transition

Brilliant sunshine. It is a welcome and wonderful start to the day, after days of waking up to overcast skies. I have slept in a bit, and the slight shift on this Saturday means that the sun is already streaming its golden rays on the light dusting of snow on the roofs in the distance, as I finish my morning meditation. I crack open the window a bit and the morning song of the birds comes flooding in with the rush of really cold air and the light of the moon that hasn’t set yet.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem like much, and yet, the combination of small shifts in external light and sounds from a mere twenty four hours ago, seems to have a significant effect on me in this waking hour. As I absorb it all, I ask if the small shift in one single aspect of my daily evening practices is having an outsized impact on my inner state the following morning?

From experimentation and observation, the answer seems to be an unqualified yes. My meditation journal tells me that I am currently on an ‘eight day streak’ of ‘evening cleaning’. It is a simple, fifteen minute practice of a ‘wholesale cleaning’ of the accumulated inner detritus of the day, every day. It is akin to brushing your teeth before going to bed at night, so the bacteria doesn’t grow in the warm petri-dish of your mouth while you sleep.

A small shift. Imagine ‘brushing out’ all the thoughts, words and actions that leave ‘crud’ within your heart, during the daily flow of normal life. Imagine doing this every single night, before you got to bed. What would the state of your heart be, when you wake up the next day? A bit cleaner, just like your cleaner teeth, I imagine?

It has taken be the better part of five years, to make this small shift. I have read and heard about the benefits of ‘cleaning’, over and over again, for five long years — and I am finally putting it into some kind of regular practice. And the shift within is noticeable!

Is there some small shift that you have been meaning or planning to make in your life, but for whatever reason, haven’t made yet? What is it that will inspire you to take action, make that change? For me, it was the realization that I had perhaps ‘plateaued’ in my inner growth, that made me ask – what is missing in my practice? It was sitting there, staring at me, right in front of my face. Evening cleaning – yes, of the teeth and if the heart.

I invite you to find your small shift within, whatever it may be, and then take action. Know that there is no such thing as a ‘small action’. Let not another evening (or year) go by, without making the shift that whispers to you. Start today, build up a streak, keep track of the effects, and observe how the small shift is creating big course corrections for you.

Who knows. You may discover that it doesn’t take much of a shift for the heart to open just a bit wider and the light to flow brighter.

Kumud

P. S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat, Sunday Jan 23 at 9amET / 730pm India with the #SpiritChat community. We will share about our inner and outer shifts. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

A small shift in light helps bloom this flower (Brazil)

On Developing Forgetfulness

Tags

forgetfulness, habits, lightness, remembrance

Forgetfulness can be a funny thing. We often joke and laugh about our forgetfulness as we grow older. What did I walk into this room for? Where did I put my keys? What did I eat for lunch yesterday? And so on. There are also things (events) that we would like to forget. However, that is easier said than done. The things we want to forget tend to stick to us like algae on rocks. The river of time flows over the rocks, trying to dislodge the algae, but often to no avail. The harder the river tries, the faster the algae seems to want to cling. Such can be the nature of our attempts at developing “voluntary” forgetfulness.

From a mental health perspective, forgetfulness isn’t funny at all. The growth of memory related diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia, poses serious challenges to our health systems, to families and to communities as a whole. The financial costs related to the treatments of these disease is conservatively estimated in the billions of dollars in the USA alone. The nature of “involuntary” forgetfulness is that it leads to memory and cognitive loss, which, in most cases, is irreversible.

The classification of forgetfulness as “voluntary” and “involuntary” is perhaps arbitrary. From a spiritual health perspective, what is perhaps important to ask is – how skilled are we at forgetting what we need to forget? Once we have learnt what we needed to learn from a particular event, how long do we keep it around in our awareness? In many instances, our brain helps us out by deciding what to immediately discard. The rest of the ‘life-stuff’ then gets filed into short-term, medium-term or long-term storage. The challenge is that we forget what got filed where.

When I moved into my previous home, I brought boxes full of stuff with me that ended up in the basement. There must have been at least two or three dozen of them, of various sizes. I had attempted to label them as best I could, so that I would know what was in them without having to open them. Fourteen years later, at least half of those unopened boxes ended up in a storage unit, in preparation for my next move. I had forgotten that I had filed away my “life-stuff”. My rationale was – maybe, someday, I may need what’s in them.

Some memories are like that. Their impression on us, our clinging to them, runs deep. The deeper the impressions, whether from pain or happiness, the harder it is for us to forget. Their depths become our comfort spaces, the valleys in which we go to hide from the world. And the more we (re)visit those spaces, the deeper they become with our fresh treads. So, how do we break the cycle? How do we make sure that the unopened boxes don’t make it into the basement of our next home?

We may have to make a decision to lighten our load, to develop voluntary forgetfulness towards certain ‘things’. Our decision may create room for other ‘things’, preferably those which leave a lighter imprint than the ones they replace. How may we do this? Any current practice, which is ‘working’ for us, can help us. For example, in meditation, we can decide to ‘forget’ the outer world and our river of ‘problems’. If we can commit to this for even for a few (tens of) minutes a day, we can create space — for remembrance in our inner world.

One unopened box at a time, we can choose to develop forgetfulness and empty our storage unit. Our new home’s basement will be grateful.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat in #SpiritChat – Sunday, July 8th at 9amET / 630pm India. I will make sure not to forget the tea and snacks, and questions. Looking forward to ‘seeing’ you. Namaste.

The hydrangea finally blooms… when it has (perhaps) finally forgotten about what winter was like…

Inner Conditioning and Habits

Tags

conditioning, habits, practices

In last week’s discussion on Inner Workings of the Mind, we had started an exploration of the mind and its multifarious ways. We asked some questions, got some answers, and, like any good research project, created more questions in the process. One aspect of the working of the mind is its conditioning and one of the consequences of this, which is the formation of our habits.

Let us go back to the analogy of a calm mind, a possible container for consciousness, and its similarity to that of the surface of a still lake. As a part of our daily life, the stillness is disturbed by inputs which create ‘surface waves’ of disappointment, irritability, anger and such. These ‘surface waves’ are visible on the outside, as they form expression in our interaction with our near and dear ones, or even complete strangers. In addition to the visible ‘surface waves’, every disturbance also creates a cumulative effect in our mind. This cumulative effect of inputs becomes our “inner conditioning”, and can create triggers points in our mind.

What is the effect of such trigger points? They become activators of conditioned reflexes – any encounter with the trigger, however innocuous, will set off a distorted, exaggerated, reactive, inappropriate response… of disappointment, irritability, anger and such. For instance, there is an irritation in the response that isn’t warranted. Your spouse or sibling or child may say something totally innocuous, and it create a disproportionate response from you – because your ‘disappointment’ with them is just waiting to be triggered. This is true of physical responses too – you have a bad day at work, and you come home and eat a gallon of ice-cream… the food trigger.

We have talked so far of triggers which set off ‘negative’ inner conditioning reactions. One role of our spiritual practice can be to attain freedom from this negative inner conditioning, our ‘negative’ habits. As we replace our negative triggers with positive ones, we can move from a default response state of ‘things just make me so angry’ to a response of ‘things just fill me with joy’. However, it takes inner work, and in most cases, inner work done with self-discipline over a period of time to reverse our habits. If you have ever tried to make a lifestyle change – say, give up smoking, or give up too much coffee, or eat healthier – you know what I am alluding too. Positive change which brings long-term positive effects, takes time, work, and patience.

Good habits, triggering positive inner reactions, are a reward of practice, cleanliness, contentment and process of self-reform. The payoff of moving towards positive inner conditioning is tremendous. As BKS Iyengar says in his “Light on Life” book –

“Those with good habits of Life are agreeable, able to make their way in Life.

We need tools. Tools that will help us move towards freedom, by liberating us from the unwanted ingrained patterns. Tools that will help us identify, acknowledge and progressively change our patterns, our habits. Yoga is one of these tools, that is all the rage these days. Meditation is a component of Yoga, and there are many ways of doing meditation and Yoga. We have to find what works for us! Some use writing and journaling as a tool – ingrained patterns emerge as we write – and we can identify the ones that we want to get rid of. And the list goes on.

What conditioning-reform tools are on your list? What habits are you trying to change and replace with better ones? What are your triggers, which set off negative reactions within your ‘lake’? Is freedom from negative habits enough? Is it possible that we may be equally ‘bound’ by our positive habits?

Join us in #SpiritChat Sunday August 24th 2014 at 9am ET / 2pm GMT / 6:30pm India, as we discuss the subject of inner conditioning and habits. I hope you will give some thoughts to the ideas suggested here, and share openly with the community. We can all grow towards unconditioned freedom in the process!

Namaste, and Be Well.

Kumud

P.S. This topic was inspired by, and dedicated to the Yoga Master, BKS Iyengar, who ascended the physical plane on August 19th 2014. Though I never met him personally, his writing strikes a unique chord with me. Peace.

Ready? Q1. Inner conditioning - what idea does that phrase convey to you? #SpiritChat

Q2. How does our inner conditioning develop? How does it impact our Life? #SpiritChat 

Q3. If inner conditioning creates #habits, what are some that have served you well? Not so well? #SpiritChat 

Q4. Disappointment, irritability, anger. How would we identify the trigger? Is there a common trigger?  #SpiritChat 

Q5. If you could, what would you replace disappointment, irritability and anger with? Why? #SpiritChat

Q6. Imagine that you only had 'life-affirming' habits. What would your life look like then? #SpiritChat 

Q7. "Good habits may be as (spiritually) binding as bad ones" - Agree or disagree? Why or why not? #SpiritChat 

Q8. Habits, serendipity, spontaneity. Is there a conflict? What is/are the connection(s)? #SpiritChat 

Q9. What are some 'tools' that have worked for you in changing your conditioning, your habits? #SpiritChat 

Final Q10. This question belongs to you. What would you like to ask the community about #habits? #SpiritChat 

Full transcript link: http://bit.ly/sc-tr-0824

Storify summary link: http://sfy.co/hqzf