Ingredients for Happiness

Tags

connection, fun, happiness, joy, purpose, satisfaction, volunteering

Every single muscle in my body seemed to be hurting. In addition, I was made aware of muscles that I didn’t even know I had. That’s what the better part of a day spent hauling mulch and power-washing does to a body used to sitting in front of a computer most days.

And yet, I was brimming with a feeling of happiness. Why? I had just spent an entire, beautiful autumn day working the annual ‘Day of Service’ at my daughter’s school. I wasn’t happy simply because i had spent the day volunteering. It was a combination of a few key ingredients.

According to Arthur Brooks in ‘how to build a life’, most people experience happiness when three ingredients come together. The first ingredient is Fun! Was volunteering fun for me? Absolutely! The entire school, including students, faculty and staff was out and about doing various service projects. It was fun watching them in action, and it was even more fun working alongside my wife as we got covered in dirt and grime and water fairly quickly. And who doesn’t have fun with power tools that make work easy?

Do you remember the last time you had Fun? When was it, and what were you doing?

The second ingredient is Satisfaction. Is volunteering satisfactory? Absolutely yes! After a full week of not-so-satisfying intellectual gymnastics at ‘work’, a day of manual labor was immensely satisfying. It was a sort of ‘deep cleansing’ that the brainbox appreciated greatly by the middle of the day. By the end of the day, my brain was so deeply flushed that I had forgotten how to spell my name. Not really, but you get the idea. I was thoroughly satisfied with the results of the work done, even though I knew that it would have to be done again in a year. The satisfying feeling would pass, like water through a colander, and yet, it felt good to experience it in the moment. It was like a cup of good tea!

When was the last time you felt deeply satisfied? What brought on the feeling?

The third ingredient for happiness is Purpose. We often ask the big questions like what is our life’s purpose, why are we here and so on. These are good questions to ask because they give us a framework with which to align our actions. I hadn’t imagined that a day of manual labor would feed my sense of purpose, but the fact that there were so many other folks on campus working together towards a common goal, made it so. At the end of the day, it surely felt like I had done something meaningful and purposeful. The years of black grime on the concrete walls of the auditorium had been forever banished!

The combination of the three ingredients of fun, satisfaction and purpose created happiness. I think there was a fourth ingredient that was the cherry on the happiness cake – connection. I got to see and chat with so many teachers from previous grades, staff I hadn’t seen in a while due to the pandemic, and more. I heard wedding stories, birth and death stories, college graduation stories, and much more. It all felt good and my heart was smiling by the end of the day.

I didn’t go to seek happiness today at the ‘Day of Service’. It went thinking I would ‘serve’ in the hours before lunch and then ‘work work’ after lunch. I ended up staying the whole day because I could feel my happiness tank getting filled, even as my physical tank was getting drained. The result? One of the happiest days of the week.

I encourage you to reflect on your happiness creators. When is the last time you were having fun, feeling satisfied, doing something purposeful and creating connections, all at the same time? Was that when you felt you were face-to-face with happiness? Or are there other, different ingredients that create happiness for you?

Kumud

P. S. Join us for our weekly community gathering, Sunday Sep 26 at 9amET / 630pm India in #spiritchat on Twitter. Share your keys to happiness with us. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

Autumn Mums changing color… spreading happiness

Why Spirituality – I Wonder

Tags

awakening, awareness, happiness, joy, spirituality, wonder

For those of us who have been in and around the weekly conversations with the #spiritchat community on topics related to spirituality and spiritual practice, the answer to “why spirituality” may be plain as daylight. Many of us may even think the question to be irrelevant, or take the answer for granted.

Yet, I have been wondering about this question over the past few days, with a sense of wonder, with a sense and spirit of inquisitive, curious, scientific examination.

So, let me share my sense of wonder with you, and ask the short question – “why spirituality”? What is it about your ‘spiritual practice(s)’ that sets them apart from the rest of your daily life? How do you integrate the results and outcomes of your spirituality into solving the challenges of life and living? Has your approach to ‘spirituality’ changed as your life situation(s) have changed? If yes, how so?

I have often found that the answer to the question, particularly the question that is borne of wonder instead of being borne out of doubt, is already present in our awareness. Over the past few weeks, in preparation for spring, I have been doing some ‘house cleaning’ of my books, media, music and notebooks. During one such episode this week, I came across a few books that were given to be by my mother over my past few visits to India.

As I was sorting through them, one of the ‘bookmarks’ that I came across was a trifold brochure called ‘why spirituality’! The brochure, published in 2011, contains a few quotes from the then leader (Chariji) of the ‘Sahaj Marg’ foundation (http://sahajmarg.org). It contained not one, but a few answers to my sense of wonder. Let me share some of them with you in the quotes below – maybe one or more of them will resonate with you.

“Spirituality is the need for an inner existence. The whole idea of spirituality is to revive in us that which is sleeping in us – the true inner being, the Self”

Why Spirituality? It is a path to an awakening within. It is a yearning for something more than the routine of daily, worldly life. In spirituality, life becomes a wondrous journey to uncover that inner Self. Wonder leads to a wondrous journey. Yes!

“As a bird needs two wings to fly, a human being needs the two wings of existence, the spiritual and the material, to lead a natural and harmonious life”

Why Spirituality? For harmony, for the restoration of balance. Balance is restored by integrating a spiritual practice into daily life. A practice that blends into our daily living like sugar dissolves into tea.

“Happiness is the natural inner condition that we will reach when we have removed all unnecessary things”

Why Spirituality? Spiritual practice leads us to find true happiness and love. Joy is the quality of the inner Self, and is nurtured in spirituality, along with other qualities of the heart – courage, hope, faith, wonder, compassion, tolerance and, most of all, universal love. By following a spiritual practice, we have the possibility to experience universal love, the divine essence, within our own heart.

The brochure holds more wondrous messages. I shared the thoughts above with you, so that perhaps, you too shall wonder with a sense of inquiry – why spirituality? What is this spiritual path that I walk in my practice? How does my spirituality grow my heart and its inherent qualities, and the sense of joy and love within it?

Let the wondering begin. Let us share our wonder, our heart, and our joy and universal love with each other. And I will keep cleaning, exploring, practicing, uncovering more wonder. Namaste.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join the #spiritchat community in our weekly twitter conversation – Sunday, Feb 10 at 9amET / 730pm India. Bring your sense of wonder with you, as we share the answers to ‘why spirituality’, over a cup of tea. Thank you!

After the storm, a double rainbow outside my door…

On Spiritual Flow

Tags

flow, happiness, spirituality

What is flow? For someone whose primary job description involves the words “fluid dynamics”, the concept and theory ought to be fairly straightforward. However, what is easily defined in engineering terms is not so straightforward in spiritual terms. Or is it?

In his 1990 book simply titled “Flow”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi subtitled the book – “the psychology of optimal experience”. The author’s research on what brought people a sense of joy and why, what was it that enhanced the quality of their lives, led him to develop o theory of optimal life flow:

it is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at a great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it – Mihaly C. Flow

So, what is it that makes one activity more enjoyable than another for you? What type of activities – sports, games, hobbies, and such – put you in a state of flow, of pure joy? How do we make our jobs, our businesses, and all the relationships that we are part of, flow better?

There is a certain level of awareness, of consciousness that is associated with our experience of being in a state of flow. World-class athletes are often said to be “in the zone” when they are performing at the peak of their abilities. The same can be said for a Carnegie hall violinist in full flight. One may imagine that some of the world’s greatest works of music, literature, art and sculpture were created in a state of full flow – a state where the work was creating an optimal experience for the creator.

Life is often a mix of optimal, joyous experiences and many sub-optimal experiences that bring adversity and tragedy, often accompanied by much pain. How may we maintain our inner state of flow in the midst of external adversity? The state of our inner flow is defined by our spiritual attitude and refined by adversity. It is a state in which there is “order in our consciousness”. When adversity disturbs our inner order, we get an opportunity to discover new states of flow.

The extent to which we can be in flow will depend on our state of inner preparation, which depends on our commitment to spiritual practice. When our heart is in a state of freedom from the mind’s random fluctuations, a dynamic inner flow is achieved. We can then feel in control of our inner life, its direction, and enjoy the flow. Is there a better way to enhance the quality of our life, to have an optimal experience?

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Please join us for our weekly twitter conversation in #SpiritChat – Sunday, June 10th at 9amET / 630pm India. We shall ask and answer some questions about Flow, and I am excited to see what unfolds. Namaste.

The Rocky River – in full flow…

On Gardening and Joy

Tags

Gardening, happiness, healing, joy

I was never much of a gardener or an active seeker of green space in my younger days. Growing up in the sprawling metro of Delhi (India), most of my encounters with ‘green spaces’ were on the dusty playgrounds at school and the postage-stamp sized front-lawn of my grandfather’s home. Watching the ‘Maali’ (hired  gardener) labor valiantly to keep my grandfather’s small garden green during the Indian summers wasn’t exactly a sight that filled one with Joy.

But, every once in a while, while leaving that house on a summer evening, there was this heavenly perfume from the “raatrani” (night-blooming jasmine) flowers that would bid me a fond farewell at the main entrance. It was an impression that stayed with me till my next visit, an invitation to return and sit with my grandparents often. It was as if the garden was saying to me – your young eyes only see the labor involved in growing the grass, but there is a deeper vein of joy that runs through the flower beds.

And so, here I am. Three decades or so later. For the past fifteen years or so, twice I have gone through planting my own new lawn in new homes. Twice I have worked on building flower beds, planting shrubs and flowers, mulching, weeding, pruning, seeding, re-seeding, over-seeding, and much more.

Have I found any Joy in all of this work over the years? Satisfaction of a task well done? Yes. Happiness at watching the leaves burst through overnight on apparently “dead as a door nail” branches of perennials? Yes. But Joy?

For that, one has to dig a bit deeper. It is in that moment when you realize that all that work of weeding, pruning, dirt under the finger-nails and more is indeed preparation. It is a form of cleaning, of creating purity in the (heart) space, to allow for the light-filled seeds of Joy to take root. And then, a mixture of patience and love, of water and light, blooms forth Joy in the heart at the sight of the first flower (of meditation).

Yes. Joy, while not often seen, takes root within us when we adopt the attitude that the garden is not really for us. We are doing greater work in planting trees, shrubs and seeds  that will outlive our temporary feelings of satisfaction and happiness. We are planting reminders of love and joy.

And perhaps that is what my grandparents were trying to teach me with their garden. It is the sweet perfume of our love for our work that creates Joy. It is That perfume which outlasts and outlives us, and in its farewell,  provides us with the seeds of invitation to return.

So, excuse me as I take your leave. I have to go find a “raatrani” to plant by my front door. A reminder, an invitation to Joy, for my next guest.

Namaste,

Kumud

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cestrum_nocturnum#/media/File%3ANight_blooming_Jasmine_buds.jpg

P.A. Join us as we share some sweet perfume from the garden – in our weekly twitter chat – Sunday, May 6at 9am ET in #SpiritChat – Namaste.

On Purity and Joy

Tags

december, happiness, joy, purity

The theme and the idea of Joy seems to pervade our consciousness as the Holiday season comes upon us. There is something about the month of December that brings about a subtle transformation, a renewed focus on Joy. In their wonderful book, “The Book of Joy”, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama focus on this subject in their week long conversations with each other. How do we sustainably create Joy for ourselves in troubled and challenging times – this is a question that occupies the heart and mind of these two luminaries…

We often hear the adage – ‘do whatever makes you happy’. At face value, this indeed seems like a reasonably simple attitude with which to live our lives. The implication seems to be that if we are happy within, then we have a good chance at creating happiness for others. The corollary is that the converse is also true. Unhappy people tend to make others around them unhappy.

There is a certain purity in the internal energy of happy people. This purity comes about because they have made a continuous effort to attain, maintain and remain connected to a reservoir of elevated, pure energy – no matter what.
For them, Joy is not merely a December thing. It cannot be. If it were, it would be transient, like the weather, and their reaction to it. It’s warm and sunny, they are happy. It’s cold and rainy, they are unhappy. Their drive through order or online order is messed up – they are unhappy. Their team wins – they are happy. The team that they don’t want to win, wins – they are unhappy. Surely, when it changes from moment to moment, it cannot be Joy, can it?

So, how does one attain the purity and permanence of Joy? One way to answer the question is to imagine a state of Joy. Have you ever experienced it? Or observed it in another person? A pianist or violinist in full flight, an opera singer immersed in their song, a painter or sculptor covered from head to toe with paint and plaster, a chef in the midst of conjuring up a new creation… Joy can indeed be that simple.

Joy can be that moment where we are where we truly want to be, doing what we want to be doing, with the people that we want to be doing it with. There is a certain purity about that moment, yes?

What if we were to string together a few moments of pure Joy every day? What would our string of pure Joy look like in a week, a month, a year from now? Maybe we will discover that the choice to experience a more permament Joy has to be made by us alone. May it will be revealed to us that Joy is a personal journey of the heart. Maybe we will rediscover the purity of purpose that we were all born with.

I invite you to experience Joy through purity with the #SpiritChat community – Sunday, December 11th at 9amET/2pmUTC in our weekly twitter chat. Bring your pearls. We will bring the thread. Together we shall string…

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

On Empowerment and Equinox

Tags

empowerment, equinox, happiness, healing, joy, spirituality

May we not be so attached to “winter” so as to let slip the opportunity to experience the beauty of the transition to “spring”. May we experience the empowering invitation, to walk through the balancing portal called the Equinox.

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The pre-dawn symphony often begins with the call of a single lark – the one who feels the dawn coming for all of the others, and strikes the first chord of hope I the forest

And then, slowly, languidly, perhaps even reluctantly, one or two other dwellers rise and join in on support

But, in this really early hour where it is still more dark than light, and the stars are still out along with the almost full moon high in the sky, filtering her light through the tree branches laden with new buds, the symphony often dies after a minute or two, for the heaviness of sleep and the fog of winter weighs heavy….

The songbird bides her time… and waits… and stirs her lungs again after what seems a quarter of an hour… for I am waiting, lying in bed, mostly awake, for the sparks of sound to light up the forest again, and she duly obliges with a serenade which is, this time around, irresistible to the bird village…

A symphony worthy of welcoming the sunrise ensues and the distant church bells join in as if on cue to conjoin the opening of the human world with that of the natural world… and what had once seemed interminable has been yet again declared to be impermanent and transient…

Arise, Awake, declares the Equinox. It is time to transition.

To a season of your choosing. Whatever season calls to you.

To a healing of your choosing. Are not pain and suffering mere calls to healing?

To happiness and joy of your choosing. Will we hear their call in our stillness?

To walk, run, swim, travel… or any activity of our choosing. A call to action based in purpose.

To beliefs, values, and faith of your choosing. What is it that calls to you?

To a life of the living of your choosing. Will we hear the call to Life?

Will you walk through the portal? Will you choose empowerment offered by the Equinox? What will you choose? Will your new or renewed actions reflect your choices?

The time is now.
Choose with courage.
For it takes courage to choose love.
Life and light, hang in the balance.

Sound your call.
Your symphony awaits.
Fill the skies with your song prints…

The Equinox is here to listen. To Empower with love.

Kumud @AjmaniK

Join us Sunday, March 20th 2016 (Equinox – day of equal light), in our weekly conversation on twitter in #spiritchat – to celebrate a journey to empowerment. Hosted by @AjmaniK. Special greetings to all those observing Palm Sunday…

Beyond Happiness – The Spirit of Joy

Tags

happiness, joy, spirit, spiritchat

It is almost exactly one year to the date that we had a discussion in #spiritchat about the spirit of joy. The context of that discussion was the feeling that we somewhat tend to wait to express our sense of joy until the beginning of the holiday season –

As December dawns on us, large portions of the world move into a ‘Season of Joy’ as they celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and other related holidays. It seems like we ‘sleep-walk’ through the year, waiting for the holidays.. and then, like a dam that has been broken, the expressions of Joy break through into the landscape in the form of lights and decorations.

As we give ourselves permission to express Joy in our outward expression, our inner selves cannot be far behind in experiencing a little bit of Joy too. Or is it the other way around – that we need to experience it within, first, before the Joy manifests outwardly? And what happens if we wait too long to express Joy? –

one by-product of this collective ‘holding-in of our Joy’ is that it can produce stress. The stress of shopping for gifts, the stress of ‘what to buy for whom’, the stress of socializing at office, community and family get-togethers, and many others.

As we go through these cycles of withholding and expressing our Joy, I sometimes wonder – where does Joy really come from? Does it always exist – and we just cover it up in our busy lives full of activity, with the dust of living? Can we be in a perpetual state of Joy? And what is the difference between happiness and Joy anyway – is it just a matter of degree?

I invite you to join us in a discussion in #SpiritChat on Sunday, December 2nd 2012 at 9am ET / 2pm GMT.

Share with us – your approach to grow, manifest and spread Joy.

Kumud

Update: Here is the html Transcript for the chat. Here is the pdf version for download. Also see the questions asked during the live chat on our topic of Joy. Thank you – may you find Joy in all your moments!

Q1. For you, true Joy means...? #SpiritChat 

Q2. What are some signs that Joy is not flowing in your life?  #SpiritChat 

Q3. Where does Joy primarily come from? Within or without? Or... #SpiritChat

Q4. Happiness and Joy. Are they different for you? Why or why not? #SpiritChat 

Q5. How does creativity help us grow, manifest our Joy?  #SpiritChat

Q6. Can we develop a more or less consistent state of Joy - beyond happiness? How? #SpiritChat 

Q7. Is there a service/product that brings you Joy.. can bring others Joy? Do share... #SpiritChat
 
Q8. The best way to share our Joy in coming weeks is... #SpiritChat