The Heart’s Mystical Music

Tags

freedom, healing, music, spirituality

My very first deep friendship on Twitter was with Wayne Mcevilly. A fascinating gentleman who was as comfortable talking about Sanskrit and chanting SamaVeda shlokas, as he was fluid in playing Bach and Beethoven. It was his direct, honest, authentic as it gets approach to life that kept me around on Twitter when I was barely sure about what I was even doing on the medium. I finally got a hold of his “Bach Preludes and Fugues” on piano, and classical music entered my awareness. Among many phone conversations, I have learnt much from the journey of this musical mystic. (my interview with Wayne)

In his own unique way, Wayne taught me that we are all have a bit of the musical mystic within us. From the very dawn of our awareness in our mother’s wombs, sound is an integral part of our being. When sound find arrangement in pitch, tone, meter and such, it can become music. What are some of your earliest memories of sound or music?

The line between music and noise is often as fine as the tuning of our ears, the state of our mind, and the station of our heart. Indian classical music thus has different classes of musical compositions (called ragas), each of which are best suited to a particular time of the day, or even a particular season. Are there particular genres of music that you tune into, are attuned towards, depending on your mood or the state of your life?

One gift of music that has words attached to it is that we can be influenced by the words as much as we can be moved by the instruments. Some of the earliest mantras and shlokas (Sanskrit collections of syllables, words and hymns) were set to music in the form of meters – the most famous being the eight-step Gayatri. The rhythm of meters enabled for smriti (memorization) , and hence the ancient ‘scriptures’ were preserved through generations. What are some songs, prayers or hymns that were ‘passed on’ to you and have perhaps become an integral part of your life?

Beyond the external sound of music, of nature and the noise of our daily living, there is the incessant internal rhythm within us.

“Within ourselves is this eternal voice speaking of eternal freedom; its music is always going on!” – Vivekananda in ‘Practical Vedanta’

Our spiritual work, if we so choose to do it, is perhaps to take time, make time, to create a space of silence and stillness so that we can hear the musical rhythm that leads us to freedom. It is often in the company of fellow seekers (satsang) that we can find this space where we can do a ‘group sing-along’ (kirtan) in the presence of sound and light, embracing joy and bliss in our harmonious energies that contribute to the orchestra of community.

And who knows, someday, we may even learn, through sustained (inner) musical practice, we may discover anew some music, and even learn to sing some of the most difficult songs of life. And in the singing, we shall laugh and love life deeply again, as the healing spreads through our heart, and radiates to all who connect with us, in new radiant connections.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat – Sunday Aug 4 at 9amET in #SpiritChat – bring your favorite music to the kirtan and I will bring the tea and questions – Namaste – Kumud

A location, where my heart often tunes into its inner music…

Celebrating Our Spiritual Cores

Tags

beliefs, celebration, healing, practices, renewal, values

Summer is often a season of travel, of new explorations and discoveries that often lead to further explorations. It is a season of days with long hours of sunlight, of watching fireflies and sunsets and moonrise. Summer brings heat and sweat and thunderstorms and awareness of climate change. It is often in the early morning coolness and long, late evening twilights that I find opportunities to reflect on, to review and renew my cores.

The core components that I find myself focusing on are the physical, the mental, the emotional and the spiritual. While they are all distinct cores, they are also all connected like the members of a multi-dimensional honeycomb. Our mental core affects our psychological core, which in turn affects our physical core, and so on. When the state of any of our cores is less than optimal, all our states suffer, and pain in one core begets in in another.

Self awareness teaches us that it takes a bit of (self) discipline to develop and maintain sustainable, holistic practice for the best health of our cores. Our practices are influenced by our core beliefs, our core values, our core inputs and our core connections. These can be viewed as our four core quadrants. They are like the four legs of the lunar lander – if any of the legs were to be unduly compromised, it could lead to a failure of our spiritual core, our journey and our mission.

Inertia is often what stands between us and the adoption of new disciplines and practices. Our unexamined state of idleness, or even our accepted state of motion, takes a certain amount of ‘force’ to effect internal change of speed or direction. It often takes an (unanticipated) life event to shake us out of our inertia or reverie to ask – what are my core values, beliefs, connections and inputs? How do they influence my daily core practices? How do they affect my spiritual core?

For me, it all began with a simple question – how do I get out of the state of my spiritual inertia? I made small changes in my physical core (waking up rested, walking in nature, eating better), my mental core (guarding my input gates, meditating) and my emotional core (friend and family connections, my reactions, my judgements). Over time and space, every meditation hour, every small nature walk, every new association with fellow travelers, has added up to a perceptible change in my spiritual core.

The result of a renewed spiritual core? I have good quality fuel and oxidant, guidance, and company for the journey ahead. I have appreciation and gratitude for all those who have inspired me, walked with me, celebrated with me, and continue to do so. Awareness, joy, silence, solitude and stillness have become my reservoirs. ‘Thou art That’ has become my internal engine. ‘For the benefit of All’ has become my charioteer. All the quadrants have become focused on the center, where the heart flows love and light abundant, which empowers me to share freely, without hesitation, and with a core spirit of celebration.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us as we gather for our weekly chat, Sunday July 28 at 9amET on Twitter in #SpiritChat – we will celebrate our cores, all of them, as we complete eight years of our journey together – Kumud.

A return to the core space – where the five elements meet for renewal…

Common Sense Spirituality

Tags

awareness, common sense, healing, practicality, spirituality

While preparing for last week’s chat on freedom, I had come across a reference to Thomas Paine’s essay titled “Common Sense” – an essay, written by an Englishman, published anonymously in early 1776, that is said to have greatly influenced and inspired the writers of the American Declaration of Independence. I was intrigued enough to get an electronic copy, and have been reading it this week.

Towards the end of the week, my reading of “Common Sense” was complemented by my (re)reading of “Practical Spirituality” by Swami Vivekananda. I couldn’t help but be struck by the common threads in the two writings, by two people who were so far separated by time, space, and causation. However, as often happens, when East meets West, and the waters of thought and action meet in Oneness, harmony is the result.

So, I paused to consider. What is the message of harmony that I could take away from these two treatises, for the cause of “Common Sense Spirituality”? Let me share with you the four quadrants of the message – I invite you to play in the template of four quadrants and arrive at your own interpretations of “Common Sense”.

Identify, focus on, and devote your best energies to the “big rocks”. How often do we begin the day, the week, the month or the year with good goals and intentions, but tend to “lose our way” among the little pebbles of life? For me, some of the the big rocks are morning meditation, tea and coffee conversations, walking in nature, sitting in evening reflection, and such. What are your “big rocks” and what quality of time, space and energy do you invest in them?

Feeding is important. It sounds simple, but the quality of what we feed our mind, body and spirit greatly influences the quality of creative energy that becomes available to us. Common Sense invites us to evaluate our feeding, our intake through all our senses, and develop awareness of our output. Are we emulating GiGo Garbage in Garbage out) because we are led by FoMo (Fear of Missing our)? If so, we are spirit-bound to course correct and improve the quality of our intake.

Weeding is directly connected to feeding, and the two combine to influence growth. As a gardener, I am well aware that no matter how hard I try, weeds have the propensity to appear “out of the blue” with alacrity and regularity. In order to prevent the mind garden from being overrun by weeds of fear, hate, judgement and the like, regular weeding is common sense. Regular weeding also ensures that our spiritual feeding has the maximum nutritional effect on our subtle body.

In the fourth quadrant, is breathing. Although breathing is an autonomous function, which is a good thing, we do have the ability to develop control over its rhythm. Beyond the purely physical benefits of breath awareness, the art of breathing directly influences our nervous system, its currents and its energies. The common sense way to regulate the perturbations in our emotional state is to watch the state of our breath. Emotions feed our thoughts, which often feed our focus and the actions that we take in the first quadrant of “big rocks”. Harmonize the flow of life-force provided by the breath, develop flexibility and resilience, and all the four quadrants can come into harmony by returning us to the center of wellness.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. I am sure that you can think of many different “common sense” ways to fill the four quadrants… share with us your ideas in our weekly gathering, Sunday July 14 at 9amET in #SpiritChat on Twitter. Namaste – Kumud

The “four quadrants” of Common Sense

Spiritual Summer Camp

Tags

camping, healing, retreat, spirituality, summer

The outage started at about 10pm on Thursday evening. It was at about that time when we pulled into the parking lot of the camp ‘in the middle of nowhere” where the eastern and western branches of the historic Delaware river meet. The seven hour drive across rivers, valleys and through the mountains of the lower tier of upstate New York had been scenic and educational.

We arrived to pitch-black darkness under crystal-clear skies with the sliver of a new-moon slowly rising into wispy clouds and the brightest carpet of star-studded diamonds I had seen in a long time. My daughter announced – “there’s no signal, Dad” – a sign that cellular coverage had been reduced to zero. “I am sure they have Wi-Fi” was my palliative response, to instill some hope, even though I knew fully well that that was not to be the case (at for her).

Ten weeks of ‘summer break’ from school usually include at least a few weeks of ‘camp’ for most families, and ours is no different. This year, she decided that she was ready to try ‘sleepaway camp’. So, here we were, to begin three weeks of a journey into a new paradigm without internet, to be (hopefully) replaced with all kinds of activities including outdoor activities and water sports, theater, magic, music, art, and much more. Her ‘device’ is loaded with music and books, but I have a feeling that she will be hard-pressed to find time for any of that.

During the drive out, I couldn’t help but wonder – what were my ‘summer breaks’ like growing up? They were mostly spent visiting family, and traveling around in the areas where my Dad was stationed. Multiple summers were spent in Kashmir, Assam, Arunachal – the far North and Northeastern states of India were my playgrounds. And how about you – what were your ‘summer breaks’ like? Did they include any ‘summer camps’? If so, how did they influence your ‘education’ outside of formal schooling?

As adults, it is perhaps in summer-time that we feel a little bit of extra freedom to take time out for ourselves. As a society, it is a season where it is ‘acceptable’ to take time to be on family vacations, retreats and related travel. ‘Summer-camps’ for adults may look a bit different than those for kids, but the intent is perhaps the same – disconnect from the everyday routine, experience a new (unfamiliar) environment, try some new activities, learn some new skills, make some new friends, and emerge with energy, enthusiasm, and excitement about ‘back to school’ at summer’s end.

So, what would ‘Spiritual summer-camp’ look like for you? Have you ever been to one in the form of a ‘spiritual retreat’ away from home? If so, would you do it again? Have you ever experimented with an ‘in-home’ spiritual summer-camp which involved a new routine, new skills, new connections, internet disconnect, and more?

The outage (for me) lasted well after lunch on the next day. In the morning, it did feel a bit strange to pick up the phone, only to find out that I was still ‘lost’ to the outside world. I will admit that I suddenly ‘found’ a lot more hours in the day… to take a long walk by the lake after breakfast, to sit in an adirondack chair in the sunshine after lunch and doze off into day-dreams, to sit on the hill before dinner and watch the sunlight filtering through the tall trees creating musical patterns on the water…

Total disconnection from the internet, forced upon me as it was, even though it lasted less than a day, allowed me to get a wonderful glimpse of what I had been missing by not ‘going to camp’ as an adult. I was glad to ‘return’, but I secretly wished that my camping adventure had lasted a bit longer…

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.A. Join us Sunday, June 9th at 9amET and share some of your “summer camp” experiences. I will bring some questions, some lemonade and watermelon. You can bring a camp chair and some marshmallows – Kumud

A ‘slice of heaven’ in the Catskills

On Mothers and Struggles

Tags

celebration, healing, mothers, mothersday, spirituality

Towards the end of my daughter’s middle-school’s performance of the Lion King, Simba (the heir apparent to his deceased father’s throne) is asked the question by his Mother: “Are you responsible for your father’s death? Did you murder him?”

Simba struggles to answer, as he was indeed present when his father was killed in an “accident” as a result of a plot hatched by his father’s brother. Simba, who was a young child at the time, has just returned from years in self-imposed exile, because he felt guilty about causing his father’s death.

I did not pay attention to Simba’s answer (because I already knew that he was innocent). However, what caught my awareness was the angst that his Mother must have felt when even asking that question of her son whom she hadn’t seen in many years. It is difficult to imagine the struggle of a mother grieving the loss of her husband (who was dead) and her son (who was presumed dead), now wondering if the son killed his father…

The very word “Mother” evokes strong emotions in many of us – whether we are in that role ourselves, or whether we have relationships with those in that role. No matter our response to that word, it can rarely be denied that the struggles of Mothers have always been, and continue to be real. As children, we often tend to be unaware of their struggles, the juggling acts of the many roles performed by our Mothers (or those who played those roles in our lives).

Over the past few years, I have often asked some questions about the potential challenges that my many Mothers may have faced in their lives. What were their dreams when they were in middle-school? What kind of encouragement (or lack of it) did they face when they shared their dreams with their parents? Were they treated fairly at home and at school and after their marriage? What became of their aspirations and what are the real stories of their lives? How has technology changed the struggles of today’s mothers and children? How do the dreams and struggles of our Mothers affect our (spiritual) identity?

The answers to many of these questions about my Mothers’ struggles are lost to time. Fragments of these questions were answered in my Mothers’ many past letters to me, and in the stories that my Mothers’ mothers told me about them. However, many of the answers are revealed in the very current struggles of those who are being Mothers to others, right in front of our eyes. The generations may be new, but, as it has been said – a Mother’s work (and struggle) is rarely finished.

Mother’s Day can be a call to raising awareness – to be empathetic to Mothers’ (and childrens’) struggles, to listen to their dreams and aspirations, to encourage them to tell their stories, and to give them time to celebrate their victories. Mother’s Day can also be a celebration to allow our Universal Mother to ask the toughest of questions of us, her beloved children – we can answer by sharing our struggles, our dreams, our aspirations, with her.

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. Join us Sunday May 12 at 9amET / 630pm India for our weekly twitter chat. I will bring fresh brewed tea and flowers… you can bring some stories and recipes to share – Namaste. Kumud

Spring – when the trees spread their flowers in welcome to every passer-by…

On Celebrating Nothing(ness)

Tags

action, celebration, healing, lightness, nothingness

The daily nightsong that begins in the pre-dusk hour with great earnest, has been particularly persistent this season. Over the past few days, I have found myself trying to identify the player(s) of this orchestra through online searches of bird songs, Audubon societies, and more. Truth be told, I have not yielded much, if anything. It is more like a whole lot of nothing.

And then, one night last week, after another round of futile googling of the source(s), I was reminded of Winnie the Pooh…

My favorite thing is to do a whole lot of nothing – for something good often comes out of nothing.

I paused, and asked myself – what is so wrong with not knowing the source(s) of the nightsongs? How about I simply do nothing more than embrace the beauty of the orchestra, without trying to assign name, cause or reason to the sounds and harmonies? What if I were to simply choose to enjoy, even celebrate the gift of spring’s songs, without trying to analyze them?

And so, for the past few nights, the night’s songs that last from dusk to dawn, have taken on new tones, new rhythms, new colors for me. It is as if they have been reborn. I have been opening the windows a bit more, drinking a bit more tea, and simply been sitting in open surrender to the all and the nothing.

The result? The allness and the nothingness have often flooded me, occasionally stopped my breath, flitted a not-knowing smile across my face, and filled me with the very same orange-peach glow that sunset often spreads across the sky at spring’s twilight. I have stopped my wandering and wondering in those few moments, to allow for something good to happen as a result of my celebration of nothing(ness).

Impossible to do, you say? Well. Consider another Winnie the Pooh gem of living wisdom:

They say that nothing is impossible. But I do a bit of nothing every day…

Embrace the impossible moment. I invite you to create time and space, where you do a bit of nothing every day with loving effortlessness. Maybe something good will be created as a result. Maybe, in embracing nothingness, time and space will cease to exist, and be reborn as love. Maybe we will discover that our inner black holes are in fact filled with the allness of light, and that nothingness is simply a portal to That something, which is in fact, everything.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us Sunday April 14 at 9amET, as we embrace nothingness while listening to each others’ songs, drinking tea, and sharing light. Namaste – Kumud

Sunset and twilight – an invitation to celebrate nothing(ness)

On Spiritual Radiance

Tags

celebration, healing, radiance, spring, winter

There was no mistake about the invitation. The morning sun had finally made its way through the haze as is crested over the ridge, seemingly at the same moment that I reached the bottom of Cedar Point hill. The only question was whether I was going to turn left or right onto Valley Parkway, park in one of the alcoves, and accept the invitation to walk.

And walk into spring I surely did. Unlike the day before, when spring seemed imminent but wasn’t quite there yet because the river was firmly frozen and the wind that blew through the clearings was swift enough to crinkle your bones, today was different.

There was a certain radiance in the invitation today. A radiance that spoke through the ever so slightly higher pitch of the songs of the birds. A radiance that invited the fishermen to walk out to the middle of the river on the sheet of ice still thick with opacity. The radiance made the water flow briskly in channels between the ice floes, and also started to create pockets of water inside the thick sheets.

And so I walked, letting the radiance of it all warm me from head to heart, bathe me with the light breeze that flowed from under the bridge as I walked out on the rocks towards the middle of the river until my passage was blocked by sheets of ice laden like layers of lasagna. Right there, in that stillness amid all the music, I spontaneously started singing – a prayer that invokes health and wellness for the universe and all her beings.

An invocation for guidance in our paths, to prepare us well for our walk, to give us strength to endure winter and also give us lightness to welcome the radiance of spring. A prayer of gratitude to all those who are walking with us, have walked with us, and whose radiance continues to reach us from the wide yonder beyond. Right there, on the rock in the middle of the river, came the awareness of the beautiful, gentle energy of the divine feminine, and its influence in my life.

And so I walked some more, absorbing, healing, sending thank you notes to all the women – mothers, sisters, aunts, teachers, grandmothers, my wife and daughter, and all the ladies of #spiritchat. All of you have raised me up, and it is from you that I continually learn the singular fact that radiance requires no medium. It is an energy like love, like kindness, like the light streaming through the trees and making patterns on the melting snow, which gives your heart the distinct knowing that, yes, you too, are the spring to somebody’s winter.

There is great joy in acceptance – to accept the invitation to walk, to be That radiant spring.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P. S. Join us Sunday, March 10 at 9amET/ 630pm India (note that US shifts to daylight savings this Sunday!). We will celebrate and honor the radiance of spring, and share team and cookies for International Women’s Day. Namaste – Kumud

Witnessing radiance – standing on a rock ledge in the middle of the Rocky River, as the river melts around me…

The river flows North to Lake Erie, and small, frozen waterfalls serenade her passage

The play of light and shadows, spring radiates into winter

The halfway point… I walked out into winter… I paused… I returned with spring…

Common Ground Spirituality

Tags

action, awareness, healing, relationships, spirituality

Common ground, like common sense, is becoming increasingly difficult to find. It isn’t that common ground doesn’t exist any more – it is perhaps that it has become buried under the layers of our increasingly fragmented lives – like the bulbs we planted in autumn, biding their time waiting to spring from underneath the layers of snow and frozen earth.

When we may think we have reached the end of the line, and that we have nothing more left in common, perhaps we can dig a little wider. We can step back, take a walk, or even sit in morning meditation and ask – what is it that we may have ignored or overlooked? And the answers may surprise us…

Commonality of backgrounds (immigrants from different continents), forgotten common interests, overlap in family values, shared beliefs (in goodness and kindness), common celebratory practices (food!) – even agreement in things we disagree about, things that annoy us, our shared dislikes, and much more….

Such was the invitation this week… to (re)discover, uncover common ground. To (re)search for it and renew it yet again. And the more I stepped back and looked with fresh eyes of the heart’s light, the more I found it in my close and distant relationships, even some faded and forgotten friendships, and particularly among the few that are especially close to me.

I discovered that it is perhaps in retraversing that common ground that the heart can find new paths, and find reasons to do some (not so) random acts of kindness. It is beneath frozen lakes and lagoons that the lighted waters flow again from the spring thaw in the heart. It is tending to common ground that enables us to repair the bridges that have grown algae because they haven’t been tenderly paused on, gently walked on, lovingly talked to and softly sung to for so long…

But why would we bother to do the work to find common ground in the first place? To assuage our guilt? Or to save, heal, being back to thriving, that which is worth keeping? And why is it worth healing? Because we have invested so much in it and come so far? Or whether we still see the potential for future growth, success and expansion – the spark that can kindle a thousand more micro explosions of joy when given the proper conditions of pressure, temperature, timing and ideal mix of fuel and air in the combustion chamber that is called common ground?

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us in our weekly twitter chat, Sunday Feb 24 at 9amET / 730pm India – walk and share some common ground (over tea and cookies) with us. Namaste – Kumud.

Visiting some ‘common ground’ bridges and pathways… as spring broke through briefly (Friday, Feb 22 2019)

On Breathing Light

Tags

awareness, breathing, celebration, healing, light, remembrance

The journey began Monday evening, when the iPad which had gone dark over the past few weeks, and refused to start up inspite of my best attempts of geekery, decided to come to life. I went searching in the library app for something good to read, and an incredible journey into breath began when I downloaded, and read, that same evening, from cover to cover – WBBA – but more about that a bit later….

Breath has come into the forefront for me this week. There is a story in the Upanishads where the student asks the teacher – who among sight, speech, hearing, touch and breath, is the most powerful in life? The teacher says – ask each of them to leave, one at a time, and you shall know. When it comes the turn of breath to leave, the student’s question is answered…

I have been led to work with, observe it, and develop a greater awareness of the physical act of breathing this week. When the emotions rise, when I feel the stress level change, I have tried to pause and check my breathing pattern and cadence. The interesting thing about breath is that it is easy to observe, because it is always with us, even when it is temporarily is taken away. My observations have been quite a revelation. It is no surprise that I have discerned a direct correlation between feeling stressed and the disturbance in my breathing pattern.

So, how do I plan to use this breath awareness? I believe that, with practice, one could modulate, if not to some degree even consciously control, the autonomous breath and the nervous system connected to it. When our new breathing practice becomes habit, we shall find an emergence of new patterns, new pathways, new possibilities.

For when breath remains, all is possible in the field of possibilities, and then some… is it not?

What began on Monday evening, came to a head this morning. I share with you, my entry from my meditation journal:

There was a such a surge… a wave as high as me… in the final ten minutes… that it literally seemed to push me sideways… the intensity and breadth of the light was such as if it became like the air around me and that I was breathing it with every breath… it held no force, it’s nature was gentleness and pure being, and I was awash in its wholeness… it felt that the white light was energizing every single alveoli in the lungs… cleaning, cleansing, oxygenating, healing, liberating, and filling me with the life force that travels between every channel of the many layers of my being… it felt like the same way that I might have felt in my first awareness of being born into this physical world… the aggregated energy of all the prayers she might have said from the instant that the was aware of me, until her last… and with that breath of first new light, I felt such immense gratitude for the experience that I was led to celebrate the breath of light and life with you… and I hope… no, it’s more than hope… it is a knowing that every breath you breathe is also filled with light… and that you are enough light in this moment, and you will be enough in the next moment… and when the breath stops and leaves, the aggregate of the light you breathed and shared would also have been enough…

for when we add or subtract the infinite from the infinite, the infinite breath of love and light still remains… and that, breath, in life and what we call death, is worthy of celebration… so, let that celebration of love continue… even when breath becomes air….

Thank you. For awareness. For breath and light. For breathing light into me.

– Kumud

P. S. Join us Sunday, Feb 17 at 9am ET / 730 pm IST as we celebrate, breath, light and breathing light. Namaste – Kumud

Breathing light during one of my walks…

The one who took eternal breath, Feb 17 2016…

The Heart’s Revival and Revitalization

Tags

family, friendship, healing, heart, revitalization, revival

The Amazing Race

Five airports, four flights, three airlines and two days later, the heart that began its journey on a pre-dawn, cold, rainy morning in NorthEast Ohio reached its destination in a sunny, warm, humid, sleepy hamlet of Kumarakom, south of the city of Kochi, in the southernmost state, Kerala, of India.

It felt like we had been in an episode of “The Amazing Race” over the past forty eight hours of traveling. Except that this was a one-team episode, and so we were the first to arrive at the destination…

The Hole in the Heart

It had been over two years, actually closer to three, that I had been back to India. The passing of my Mom in February 2016, the last of my two sets of parents (birth and sustenance), had created a small hole in my heart that had grown slowly bigger as the weeks turned to months, quarters and then years. After the two year mark, I had begun to wonder, when the road back home would open up to my heart again. The longer I stayed away, the weaker the pull to go back became.

My wife must have felt my fading away. In mid July, the visionary that she is of great intuition, made the decision. It was time to return. In a whirlwind of messages between close family and friends on WhatsApp, a location was found, advance deposits were made, plane tickets were bought, and seven families committed to two separate reunions. The stage was set for the heart.

A Resurgence Story

After having read all the reports of the massive flooding which had happened in August, I had expected Kochi city and her surroundings to show signs of damage everywhere. I was to learn from the local cab drivers that the shiny, gleaming airport terminal we had arrived in had been three feet underwater, and had to be shut down for four weeks. Everywhere we went, whether by auto-rickshaw, car or boat – not a single person complained about what had befallen them. You could see and feel that they were happy that we were visiting and investing in their recovery.

As we took multiple boat trips through the backwaters and on the massive lake, more stories of overcoming and resurgence filtered through. I asked questions of everyone on the lake house that we were staying in – the cleaning lady Asha, the cooking lady Jinu, the manager Aarokya, the boat guides. I asked questions of a mix of Hindus, Muslims and Christians, for Kerala is a state where they all blend together.

All of them would speak of their beautiful families, how much they were grateful for what (little) they had, and of how the floods – and their subsequent recovery from them – had brought them closer as communities.

Family Foundation – Revival Begins

As the long languid days of sitting by the pool unfolded, entranced by the lake as boats of all shapes and sizes slowly slid by like a knife through slightly warmed butter, I felt a warm glow beginning to heal my heart’s hole. The heart started to feel a revival, an increase in functional and emotional capacity. The first reunion, with my brother and sister’s family, laid the foundation for the revival. The feelings of disconnection that had grown with time and distance after my Mother’s passing, were rearranged and reframed like the floating hyacinths that constantly reconfigure themselves on the lake surface.

The heart felt closure, it felt rooted and anchored again. It was a bit like the houseboats that anchor themselves overnight on the lake, and whose solitary lights could be seen like a string of pearls in the distance every night – an entourage of twinkling stars brought down from the heavens onto the waters.

Reunion with Friends – Heart Revival

And as if the revival with the family reunion wasn’t enough, what followed during the reunion with four friends from undergraduate engineering school (and their families) was an even greater closure of the heart’s hole. The five of us have a friendship, a kinship that goes back over thirty years. It has sustained the test of time and space, grown through our weddings, our children’s births, our travels across the world with our businesses and careers.

When you gather the energy of five families, in a five-bedroom lake house, where there is not much else to do but to sit around and swim in the energy of each other, a healing synergy surges through every heart. The five of us are like the five elements, and every time they come together, the limits to our creativity seem to be transcended.

For those of you who have read this far, I am grateful to you for coming along on this journey with me. I share with you with the intent that somewhere in this retelling of my personal revival, you find inspiration to be led to a heart’s revival of your own. I also hope, that when your heart’s hole does close, that you will share a bit of your revival journey with us.

For we shall all be grateful to draw inspiration from the resurgence of your submerged heart, your resilience, your heart’s revival.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter conversation with the #spiritchat community on twitter – Sunday, January 13th at 9amET / 730pm India. I will step up to host, and I look forward to hearing stories about your heart’s revival. I will bring the tea and the questions… your presence is much looked forward to 🙂 – Kumud

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