Messengers of Equity

Tags

equinox, equity, harmony, spirituality, spring

The onset of spring often means that I get an opportunity to align my annual “work break” with my daughters “spring break” at school. This rhythm was fortunately restored this week, after the disruption last year due to the pandemic.

The rhythm’s restoration was accompanied by the opportunity to spend a whole week filled with twelve-hour long days and nights as the equinox approached and allowed for day-dreaming and natural observation. What emerged from simple observation without agenda? It was how nature tends to do such a wonderful job of being a messenger of equity in so many of her daily rhythms.

One such messenger that I got closely acquainted with this week was the sun rise over deep blue Caribbean waters every morning. The acts of waking up early to complete my morning meditation, followed by watching the sunrises became my new natural rhythm. I could literally set my watch to the song of the bird that would start singing while the dawn was still dark. Her faith in the new light that was imminent, was as unwavering as it was uplifting.

The sunrises were far from perfect, though. On most mornings, clouds of various width, depth and height would hug the sea, obscuring a direct view of the sun. And yet, every sunrise viewing was spectacular because every one of them started out unpredictably different. However, the conclusion and the Sun’s message was always the same.

Just before 7am, silvery linings would form on the edges of the clouds. Shortly after, the sun’s orb would ascend high enough in the sky to subsume the clouds with its golden brilliance. It seemed as if the Sun, in its rising, was messaging equity to all beings, regardless of their size, status or situation in the natural order of life.

How was this daily message received by the world? One example was seen in the appearance of the pelicans, who had a predictable rhythm along the shoreline while the sunrise’s drama was unfolding. Their timing seemed to based on a synergy between the sun’s emergence and the state of the tide. They often seemed to arrive peacefully, in groups ranging from three to maybe a dozen. With grace and peace, they fearlessly and repeatedly plunged headfirst into the waters for their morning catch. Their morning ballet was a pleasant, soothing contrast to that of the raucous crows and blackbirds!

The response to the Sun’s message of peace, harmony, abundance and yes, equity, is often received and acted upon differently by many of us, isn’t it? Why is this so? Does the messaging need to be improved? Is nature using the wrong messenger?

I don’t have the answers. All I can do is relay to you the message of equity that was delivered loudly and clearly to me on this vernal equinox. Our future depends on our investment into working towards equity for all. Will we choose to listen to the messenger and act accordingly, or will we close our eyes to the light?

I hope we choose well in this new season of healing and wellness for all.

Kumud

P. S. Join us in our weekly chat, Sunday March 21 at 9am EDT / 730pm India as we celebrate the Sun’s passage through equity. I look forward to seeing you after my ‘break’. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Sunrise on the Caribbean…
March 20 2021, Vernal Equinox

P.P.S. My ‘break’ this year was made possible by being fully vaccinated relatively early (the 2nd dose was completed on Feb 6… ), and the invitation to a remote location #gratitude

On Spiritual Common Ground

Tags

battle ground, common ground, common sense, harmony, oneness, transformation

At the beginning of the month of October, I decided to step onto the “battleground”. Up until then, I had decided that I would stay on the sidelines and watch, and not get involved in any of the election action. I had already decided who I was going to vote for a while back, and I had never been really engaged in political activity in any US election. I truly believed that even if I wanted to get engaged in the action, my actions wouldn’t amount to much anyway. In addition, I didn’t even know how or where to get engaged, even if I wanted to.

It was all going ‘according to plan’ until a few things happened, almost simultaneously, on a single day. Driving my daughter to school one morning, she saw a few yard signs pop up on the main road, and softly asked – “Dad – what will happen if they get elected again?” To put her heart and mind at ease, I quickly said – “don’t worry honey, good people are doing their best, fighting the good fight to make sure that that doesn’t happen”.

On my way back after dropping her off at school, the question was asked to me – “who are these ‘good people’ that you mentioned to her, Kumud?” That was the first whisper. In the afternoon, my cousin from Michigan, who now lives in California and is very engaged politically, asked me on Messenger – “so, how are you folks doing in Ohio?” That was the second whisper. Later that evening, as I was out for a quick grocery run, a text message popped up on my phone. “Will you be voting in this upcoming election?” It was an outreach effort by a group of ‘South Asians reaching out to fellow Asians’, asking for my intent and support. I said, “yes, of course”. That was the third whisper. 

The universe had different plans for me. Three strikes within twelve hours and I was out of my inaction. It was time to step onto the battleground. At the end of the text outreach conversation, I found myself asking the lady, “How do I do what you are doing – text other people about their voting plan?” She said, “let me check and I’ll get back to you.” I waited. There was no reply for a few hours. I figured, oh well, I tried. It isn’t meant to be. Then around 11pm, I got a text with a link to sign up for “text banking”. The floodgates were now opened. 

For those of you who are not familiar with US elections, certain states are “battleground states” because unlike a lot of states which are “safe bets” to be “Red” or “Blue”, these six or seven states are a “toss up”. Ohio, the state that I live in, is one of them. In a tight election, the outcome in a single “battleground” state or few can decide the outcome of an entire election. I will spare you all the details, but once I stepped into action, I drank from a firehose. I learnt how to “text bank”, “phone bank”, started posting about “martial arts” analogies on twitter, joined a FB group of fellow action-takers, and much more. Every waking hour outside of work and spiritual hours, I was immersed in thought and action.

A few days ago, I started hearing and reading about the doubt, fear, anxiety and concerns of that mirrored my daughter’s original question and concern. I found myself asking – does only “our” side have these feelings and concerns, or does “their” side have some of them too?  The more I asked this question, the more I found myself trying to find “common ground” while being on the “battle ground”. The logical answer was that if “they” are human like “us”, they also feel the same emotions as us.

They also fell the loss of loved ones, and the joy of a newborn. They also feel thirst and hunger, heat and cold, fear of death and anxiety of loss. They also get up at sunrise and go to work, and need sleep after a hard day’s labor at home or outside the home. They also look upon the changing of colors in autumn with delight, marvel at the flight of the bumblebee in the spring, and wonder about the magic of the blue moon on Halloween.

There is “common ground” enough, even in the midst of the battle in the “battle ground”, if we are willing to look beneath the surface. As spiritual practitioners, would we not be well served, even in the heat of the battle in the battle-ground, to remember to adhere to our foundations of oneness, awareness, kindness, empathy, decency, integrity, compassion, truth and love? If so, then the common ground lies beneath us. All of US.

Let us not poison our common ground with hate, for we will need the same ground, after the current battle, to re-seed it with the seeds of hope for healing, unity, equality, respect, harmony, integration and transformation, as we move onward to create “a more perfect union”. 

Kumud

P.S. Join our weekly conversation on twitter in #SpiritChat – Sunday, Nov 1 at 9am EDT / 7:30pm India. We have been meeting every Sunday, in our “common ground” of #SpiritChat for many years. We will continue to do so. ALL of you are welcome. Namaste – @AjmaniK

P.P.S Note that the US switches to Daylight Savings on Nov 1, and the chat will (most likely) be an hour later than usual in your time-zone. 

Nature is filled with examples of common ground, common waters, common skies and more – may we watch, listen, learn and integrate into our lives

Harmony and Color

Tags

color, discovery, diversity, harmony

Dear Kumud,

   I was in a school band concert yesterday attending my step-son’s Spring band conert. The auditorium was filled with the music of clarinets, flutes, trumpets, saxophones, drums, xylophones, and probably a few more instruments that I missed. Today I am reminded that beautiful symphonic music cannot happen by chance. I recall the quote by Carl Sagan, “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, first you must invent the universe.” Applied to the concert last night: “If you want to invent a symphony, first you must invent the universe, and then human beings to communicate and create culture and art, and then instruments, a composer and so on …”

   The music depends on the composer, who is depends on instruments. Music that sounds “just so” here in the States would sound different if it were imagined in Tibet or Madagascar or Southeast Asia. I spent some time in Indonesia and there is nothing in the world like the sound of gamalan, with anywhere between five and fifty circular gongs of various sizes played by five to fifty performers. Put together, gamelan is symphony with essentially one instrument and a wide array of tones.

   The symphonic band I heard last night, here in the States, consisted of brass, wind instruments, percussion, and strings. The conductor stood at the front, animated and dressed in black, and we were even fortunate to have a student teacher conductor lead one of the songs.

   Every composer is ideologically, culturally, unquestionably trapped by the instruments that swirl around in their heads and sometimes around their studio. They can be exposed to instruments and music from other cultures (and even compose in that style, as did Paul Simon in Graceland), but they are predominately influenced by their home base. Their schema.

   Schema refers to the structures in our brain that classify how we perceive concepts, especially new concepts.

   And yet the metaphor of the day isn’t simply to say that a symphony is a collection of various instruments that make beautiful music. Or that beautiful music is the result of the structures fixed in the composer’s brain. This isn’t what I was thinking yesterday when I sat in the school band concert. Rather than thinking about specific instruments, I was thinking about the kids playing instruments. Their make-up. Their color. Their background, identity, orientation, gender, and the tone of their skin.

   This was not a diverse band. I am remarried and at this event, I observed 3 bands and at least 180 performers who, in terms of the tone of their skin, look predominantly like me. I can observe but I can’t judge. This is just where we live.

   My son goes to school 30 miles to the south and I’ll be attending his band concert next week. I’ll sit next to a diverse collection of parents – at least in terms of the tone of their skin – and the band members will look like they are painted with a different brush. Hues of white and brown and shades in between. Along with diverse colors comes diverse family background, diverse heritage, diverse religion. Again, I can’t judge. This is just where he lives.

   Symphony and color. Instruments and skin. My son goes to a relatively diverse school and I appreciate that he sits next to kids who look different and who come to class with different heritage, different religious backgrounds, and ultimately different perspectives.

   We live in a diverse world. The spiritchat community spreads across the states and across the globe. Call me crazy, but I believe we should seek out and embrace differences – skin, culture, background, and every difference that makes someone unique. A mosaic. A symphony.

   I am going to challenge myself during the next week to have one meaningful conversation with someone culturally different than myself. During the next 7 days, I want to encounter someone who is culturally different than myself and with a healthy dose of empathy, risk being changed. Feel free to share with me in this small challenge. Bring new color to your life. Create a mosaic. Create a symphony.

   One thing we know: the spirit is happy with color. Or rather, the spirit is happy with colors.

   It is in differences that we grow our perspective, our schema. And this is not just a good thing, it is a necessary thing.

David

Today, listening to Tambazako and Tsy Ferana.

David Tumbarello is a technical communicator with over 50 years in the growth industry, with 49 of those years communicative and on two feet. When he is not technically communicating, he enjoys hiking, biking, and writing. Feel free to connect with David on LinkedIn.

Our Attitudes to Freedom

Tags

attitude, balance, freedom, harmony, spirituality

There is an Indian dessert called the gulab jamun. It is like a donut hole of a very soft consistency, that is deep fried, and then immersed in a vat of sugar solution. It is ideally eaten warm, so that the sweetness of the solution thoroughly pervades the senses. In the ideal gulab jamun, there is very little to distinguish the solidity of the “donut” from the liquidity of the solution that it is immersed in.

Our lives are a little bit like the gulab jamun. We are immersed in the sweetness of our attachments and desires. And yet, we claim “freedom”, even celebrate it on an annual basis, while we continue to get more and more entangled in the web of our own creation. Our social and work commitments, our hobbies, our networks seem to keep expanding. The result is that we keep finding ourselves starved for time and energy for (inner) growth that can lead us to real freedom.

So, perhaps this Independence Day (July 4th in the USA), we can choose to re-examine our attitudes towards real freedom. We are all born with certain attitudes, qualities (gunas) and energies. These are the attitudes (or aptitudes) of activity or aggression (rajas), of lethargy and heaviness (tamas), and of purity or lightness (sattva). Our overall attitude in life at any given time, can be said to be a dynamic mixture of the proportion of these three energies within us.

It is when the attitudes of individuals (and societies) trend towards agression, overactivity, and heaviness, that we tend to move away from freedom. Our inner core of softness starts to melt away, and our attitude trends towards accepting less and less freedom. We rationalize to ourselves that this state must be the “new normal”. But it does not need to be so!

A true celebration of independence means that we make a decision to change our attitude towards freedom. We decide to balance our commitments, and discard those which further enslave us. We commit to those actions that tend to increase inner purity, lightness, softness and kindness, or sattva. It is in becoming receptacles for grace, by lowering the heart’s barriers to love, that freedom can come home to us.

Yes, warm gulab jamnun, like apple pie, is one of my favorite desserts. And I have discovered that it is particulary good when eaten over ice-cream, with moderation. This new attitude is unfolding the path of freedom dessert-sattva for me. How is your path unfolding?

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly chat, Sunday July 1st at 9amET / 630pm India in #SpiritChat ~ I will bring some gulab jamun and ice-cream to share, and we shall share some stories about real freedom… Namaste.

Attitudes to Freedom – Pausing and Celebrating on the Path

Towards a Spirit of Harmony

Tags

harmony, spirichat, spirit

The idea of harmony is well known in the field of music. It is perhaps best described as “the combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce chords and chord progressions having a pleasing effect”. According to many experts, harmony is referred to as the “vertical” aspect of music, as opposed to melody, which is the “horizontal” aspect of music.

Let us take this idea of harmony into our everyday lives. The combination of “simultaneously sounded thought processes”, which produce a current of harmonious thought to elevate our thinking, could be considered as harmony. However, if we do not have, or develop the patience, to listen to these diverse thought processes, we may fail to tune into the underlying harmony of the lessons that are being directed our way.

The philosopher, Lao Tzu, has stated the importance of harmony very elegantly:

When we live in complete integrity,
We will be innocent like newborn babies.
We will sing all day without being hoarse,
because we will be in full harmony.

To be in harmony is, is to live in the Great Integrity, the ultimate wisdom.

When harmony reigns, and we rule ourselves with felicity, everyone gains, and we will all live in simplicity.

– Lao Tzu ( Tao Te Ching)

The ideas of integrity, simplicity, innocence and wisdom – all of them seem to emanate from the elevating idea of harmony. So, whether it is listening to a piece of classical music, or paying attention, being fully present to the one who is communicating with us – we can seek and find harmony. My good friend, Wayne Mcevilly reminds me:

an ear need not be “trained” in order to distinguish harmony from its opposing forces – an infant has this capacity –

So, perhaps, we need a return to “infancy”, in order to rediscover harmony? Will we rise to the challenge? Will we find harmony within the discordant notes of our “life noise”? How will our concerted, conscious movement towards harmony uplift our spirit? What are some ways that we can find harmony within diversity?

I invite you to join the #SpiritChat community on Sunday May 19th at at 9amET. Let us share together with our thoughts on twitter, and create a spirit of harmony that will resonate in the great integrity… As always, your thoughts are welcome in the comments. Namaste.

Kumud

Update: Here is the html transcript for our twitter chat. Here are the questions asked during the live chat on Harmony. Thank you, and Enjoy! 🙂

Q1. Visualize #harmony ~ what does it sound and look like to you? #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/336105456659480576

Q2. What brings you closer to a sense of harmony? What takes you away from it? #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/336106917506187266

Q3. What is the connection between harmony and diversity? How do we honor it? #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/336109283445981186

Q4. “Aim at complete harmony of word, thought and deed” – Gandhi. Is this practicable? How? #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/336111143812730881

Q5. Forgiveness is one key to achieving inner harmony. Agree or disagree? Why? #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/336113072013975552

Q6. What can younger/older generations teach each other about harmony? #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/336114175237558272

Q7. How does harmony (or the lack of it) impact our relationships and communities? #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/336115297260032002

Q8. Let us send out a message… We can create more harmony of Spirit by… #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/336116263606702080

Bonus Q9. What action(s) will bring you closer to harmony this week? Reflect and/or share 🙂 #SpiritChat
http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/336117338808123392