The Heart of Bliss

Tags

bliss, heart, heart matters, heartmonth, joy

There is a certain clarity about those winter mornings where the sun finally breaks through the grey gloom which has been seemingly hanging around for weeks. You look out at the sprinkling of snow that has turned into a film of scattered ice on the driveway, crystals shining in the sunlight cresting over the homes across the street. You want to take a walk, but you know that it is better to wait because the brilliance is deceptive. The temperature is still in the single digits and there won’t be enough layers to keep you warm. 

Such is the majesty of a winter morning where the sun is now fully streaming onto your face as you have pulled back the last bit of curtain from the front window where the puppy has claimed the one warm spot on the bench along the split windows. You sit cross legged on the divan, just as you had sat on the floor a bit earlier for morning meditation where the waves of light from your connection to the earth and sky had filled you with the same warmth that you had felt when you last walked the beach at sunset on a Caribbean island.

Your heart is quieting as you keep writing, taking an occasional sip from the coffee mug which has “baby it’s cold outside” inscribed in a half circle around a snowflake. You can taste that special taste of fresh ground beans from a freshly opened bag of coffee seeping through your tongue, combining with your next breath, as it sends a unique sense of aliveness into the deeper layers of your awareness. More sunshine, more stillness comes your way as the puppy is now transitioned into an early morning snooze while she waits with me for the rest of the household to come awake.

Oy. Stop already. When are you going to talk about the heart of bliss? Ahem. What do you imagine I’ve been doing in the last three paragraphs? I’ve been trying to put my stream of thoughts into words. You can’t really plan this stuff, can you? You can practice to move your heart and its awareness towards silence, stillness, and warmth. You can practice to quieten the noise and filter out more of the daily perturbations. You can practice to be open to the remembrance that you have been through the glooms and storms  before.

What does the practice yield? You wake up to days like this when the Universe and its energy transports you from the walk along the shore to a deep dive into the ocean and whispers to you…

You are truth. You are awareness. And above all. You are the heart of Bliss. You belong. 

Remember That. 

Kumud

P.S. February is “heart” month. We will celebrate the heart every Sunday this month. Please join our kickoff celebration by joining our weekly chat with the #SpiritChat community on twitter, Sunday Feb 7 at 9am ET / 730pm India. Bring some #MomentsOfBliss to share. Namaste. ~ @AjmaniK

The heart of a rose, no matter its name is defined by bliss…

A Spiritual Homecoming

Tags

awareness, heart, home, homecoming, journey, travel

When he pushed his two suitcases through the sliding glass doors after the security guard had lazily glanced at his passport and matched the name on it with his Lufthansa paper ticket, he had no idea what kind of welcome, if any, awaited him on the other side of the Atlantic. He had just said goodbye – a very long goodbye as goodbyes in India on airports where a family member is headed into unknown and uncharted tend to be – to about two dozen friends and family. Some of them managed to smile, while others made valiant but unsuccessful attempts to hold back tears. 

They stood outside the glass wall which encased the terminal, cheeks pressed against the window, hands raised in goodbye and blessings for as long as they could see him as he finally passed out of sight through the Customs check-point (yes, there is a Customs check on departure in India). He had no idea how long it would be before he would see any of them again, so he waited till the final call for departing passengers to leave their sight. There was no way for him to know how long it was going to be between departure and the homecoming, because when you leave the safety of the shore and surrender to the flow, life happens. 

He landed in New York city’s JFK on a crisp autumn morning, took a bus to switch airports to catch a Piedmont flight to Roanoke, where he was received by some volunteers of the Indian Students’ Association. What a wonderful act of kindness that was, which brought much relief to a weary traveler after thirty six hours of traveling. It felt like a bit of a homecoming, to be surrounded by people who spoke your language. During orientation, half of which he had missed because he was late getting to the USA because of a visa delay, he ran into a very good friend who he had known since third grade! Another mini homecoming. And then, another friend from Delhi, who spoke his grandmother’s native tongue. An even bigger homecoming. 

Fast forward. 

In his excellent TED talk titled “Where is Home”, Pico Iyer says that “Home is where you Stand”. By that measure, I have had a lot of homes across the world. From the easternmost parts of Assam to some of the northernmost parts of Kashmir, I have stood and felt a connection to people who have extended great love with a welcoming heart. Criss-crossing the Northern states of India several times on multi-day train trips, I made an attempt to get off the train at every single station. Now that I think about it, it was as if I was trying to feel at home at every single pause of the journey as I felt my feet touch the platform. It was as if I was feeling the flow of the earth under my feet at every opportunity I would get. 

So, what does all this story-telling have to do with homecoming and spirituality? I had never heard of the word until I first came across it in the context of alumni returning ‘home’ to Virginia Tech during football Saturdays in the fall. Such a beautiful word. Homecoming. It creates a vision of those who have graduated from a station in life and traveled on to explore new frontiers returning home. A bit like the splashdown of the two American astronauts a few weeks ago after they had spent a few weeks on the Space Station. Or a bit like those who spend weeks preparing for, and then climbing some of the highest mountain peaks, returning home weary and falling into the arms of their beloveds and getting some well-deserved rest. Homecoming is thus a time for renewal, of sharing stories about our travels, and then setting out again on another new journey.

In a spiritual context, homecoming can be viewed as a return to source. It isn’t connected to a particular age or a particular physical place. It is connected to a return to the source that resides in our heart – not just the physical heart, by the spiritual heart that is our consciousness beyond the mind-matter complex. In fact, one could posit that in the spiritual context, there is actually no Homecoming, because we never really left. We may spend our entire life being unaware of who we are, and yet, the consciousness, the spiritual heart is always with us. At any given moment, when our awareness shifts to It, we are aware that we are home.

Home is where we stand in awareness.

Fast rewind.

It was twenty seven months before he returned. In the interim, there were short phone calls (they had to be short at almost two dollars a minute), long hand-written letters, bouts of home-sickness, regular instances of culture shock, many new friendships formed with Virginia natives, and an awareness that it was beginning to feel a little bit like a new home. He was beginning to enjoy the New River, the new flow, the new awareness of floating and letting be. 

Present moment.

What is your story of homecoming? What does the word mean to you, remind you of? What emotions or memories or awareness does it invite? Do reflect, and then share if you are so led to do so. 

Kumud

P.S. Join us in our weekly gathering with the #SpiritChat community on twitter to share some thoughts on Homecoming. We will meet Sunday September 6 at 9amET (almost to the day when I first landed in JFK all those years back). I will bring some questions that will act as place holders for the real conversation that will happen in the many tributaries of the main flow. Namaste – @AjmaniK

 

One of my favorite bridges — I instantly feel welcomed, at home, a sense of Homecoming every time I stand on it…

On Time and Heart Space

Tags

family, heart, letting go, patience, reason, space, time

A few months ago, I started hearing the word in fragments of mother-daughter conversations in my home. She had been physically out of school since spring break this year, and we had been mostly self-quarantined for several months until school officially ended towards the end of May. No summer camp. No meeting up with friends. No getting together with cousins. I guess, somewhere along the line, she decided that the home – or rather she, wanted another dog to give her and our seven year old puppy some company.

And so her search started with online portals, spreading the word among her friends, calling local shelters and so on. Her  requirements were fairly stringent and that shortened the list of possibilities considerably. Almost every other day, Mom would help her put in adoption applications when there was a “match” online. A few days later the email would come, saying that the “match” had already been adopted. Week after week, I could see her getting more and more disheartened. 

“Give it some time, honey. Be patient, and it will happen. The puppy you are supposed to get will show up.” Supposedly comforting words from a Dad who had tried to discourage her from the idea from the very beginning. I wasn’t sure that she was “ready” for another dog in the house. More like I was the one who wasn’t ready. So, after eight weeks of this roller coaster of applying and being denied, it seemed like she let the idea go for a few weeks. Mom kept making phone calls, leaving messages for folks.

Then, one lady from Indiana called back on July 1st afternoon and said – yes, there is availability. Possibility. Hope. 

So, we decided that we were going to make an eight hour roundtrip to see if things would work out. A few hours later, another phone call. A lady whom my wife had called six weeks ago was on the phone. She said that one of her puppies was ready to be re-homed. In the course of the conversation, we came to know that our current seven year old had the same bloodline as the one that she was trying to get re-homed. Not only that, she lived two hours away and she could bring the puppy to our home the next day as she was going to be passing through Cleveland on a road-trip to north-west Ohio. 

Too good to be true, yes? If I hadn’t been witness to all of it myself, I would have said “no way” too. The combination of yielding time and space to a heart set on a love-driven desire can allow for the universe to work in our favor. On July 3rd 2020, virtually seven years to the day that we adopted “Tucker” ( who was renamed “Bubbles”), we received his sister “Flower” (who was renamed “Bindi”). Unfettered joy, some tears, a lot of broken sleep patterns, and a huge rearranging of our lives has happened in the past week. 

In the small, last minute Zoom meeting on Friday, I asked Lucille – so, what’s new with you? I hadn’t told them any of this story yet. She said, “I just got finished reading the book – ‘When the Heart Waits’ – by Sue Monk Kidd. She talks about giving yourself the ‘chrysalis time’ in your life – time to let the caterpillar develop into the butterfly (of creativity).” How appropriate, I thought. Giving yourself time, allowing the universe to work in harmony with you when you sometimes feel as if the whole world is conspiring against you, your heart and your goals and dreams…

Chrysalis time for the heart and its space, the heartspace that is our constant companion. I dug up an Osho essay where he spoke about time, reason (the mind), and the heart:

Time exists only for the mind, for reason. For the heart there is no time; the heart exists in timelessness. So, the mind insists on haste, hurry, urgency – and the mind becomes tense. Things should happen instantly – such is the insistence of reason. But the heart knows no time, there are no clocks for it. That is why the heart exists timelessly and it can wait — infinitely. — Osho in Vedanta – The Art of Dying

So, here we are. Life teaches us so many lessons. It invites us to listen with the heart, to allow for our heartspace to simply be timeless. Timelessness invites us to disengage from the daily conflict of opposites. In timelessness, the heart of the caterpillar learns to rest in, allow for chrysalis time.

Kumud

P.S. After a few days, Bubbles and Bindi are starting to play together. His heart has accepted that Bindi is here to stay, that she is part of the family. All of us look forward to their football-like scrimmages at all hours of the day. He may outweigh here by a factor of five (that won’t last long!), but that doesn’t deter her from taking him on with the youthful heart and dynamic energy of one who knows not much about reason, time or space. 

P.P.S I invite you to join our weekly twitter conversation on Sunday, July 12 at 9amET in #SpiritChat. I may share a puppy photo or two with you, and give you the daily update of puppy mayhem. Yes, there will be questions and tea and cookies. It will be good to see some of you after a week’s hiatus… – @AjmaniK

Bubbles – the result, so far, of seven years of all-heart

The Heart of Truth

Tags

celebration, conversation, heart, truth

She was sitting on the bathroom floor in the basement, cleaning the concrete in preparation to replace the flooring which had been damaged by a water leak. As is often the case, she is really good at “walking and chewing gum”, and so she was listening to an NPR podcast on her phone. “This is a really good one”, she said as I came downstairs to check on her progress. “They are having a really good conversation about truth”, she added in a matter-of-fact way. I wanted to listen, but her “guard dog” knew that Dad was home from work, which meant it was time to be walked.

I picked up a broom to help out a bit by sweeping the work area and to delay the walk, so that I could listen to a bit of the stream. I heard them talking about the history of truth, how it used to be communicated in the past (hint: poetry!), and the attempts of truth seekers and truth tellers in answering the seminal question – what IS truth? I only swept the floor for a few minutes before the puppy sensed my delay tactics and rushed me upstairs and straight to the front door. 

It was only Tuesday, and yet, the seed for Sunday’s conversation had been planted. As most weeks go, this was a welcome early start for me, because I usually don’t figure out the week’s #SpiritChat topic until Friday or Saturday. Over the next few days, I mulled upon the topic of “truth” and the role that it plays in our lives. It wasn’t until Friday night that I had a chance to search for the complete podcast, and to my delight, I found that NPR’s ‘On Point’ has recorded a four-part series on truth (starting Feb 24) – I even found the ‘study notes’ for their first conversation. 

History has a way of returning us to the beginning. If we choose to learn from history, we have an opportunity to not repeat it. History can inform individuals, communities and nations about the pathways that can move them to a higher level of awareness about the truth. History has some definitions of truth for us…

Truth is evidence-based knowledge

Knowledge can come to us through various sources, our senses being one of them. And yet, our senses can often lead us us astray, can they not? Senses can misinform us when only one of the many are engaged in information gathering and processing. Sensory information and facts need to be able to be independently validated and verified, so that they can lead us to the truth. Revelation and reason, just like spirituality and science, both have great value in defining the truth for us – what do your heart-mind think about that? How can we engage multiple senses at the same time, through multiple sources, to arrive at evidence-based knowledge?

Truth is often based on our narrative – we ignore that which does not fit our narrative because our brains understand causality (cause and effect)…

There is ring of truth to that, isn’t there? In our often busy lives, amid a pandemic of mis-trust, it is so much easier for our heart-mind complex to stay engaged with the sources that feed our current narrative. We dig deeper and deeper trenches with our rhetoric as we cherry-pick from among the truth-based facts, to stay safe within our stories. How do we get back to reason and create a new narrative based on some eternal truths? 

One way to return to some eternal (truths) is to ask questions of our biased narratives. How can we engage in dialogue with those who have a diagonally opposite narrative from our our own? Further yet, how can be bring together people with diverse heart-views and mind-sets to have a fair and balanced conversation about the facts to arrive at some common truths? Maybe it is too much to ask. Maybe not. And yet, let us not stop from engaging in dialogue, regardless of what we believe in.

We can ask — what is the permanence that we we truly believe in? The answer to that question can inform our heart’s truth, guide us to the heart of truth, inspire us in our personal practice. It is in the heart’s search for permanence that the truth is often brought to light — and, like the sun, That is a light which we can freely share — even with the ones who choose to walk a different path than ours. 

Kumud

P.S. The basement project is currently on hold, as we try to decide on the type of flooring amid our celebrations. Meanwhile, our search for the heart of truth continues, individually and as a family. Join us on Sunday, March 1st 2020, as we celebrate some of each others’ truths in our weekly twitter chat at 9am ET / 7:30pm India. We will multilogue in #SpiritChat over tea and cookies, and maybe even some cake! Namaste – @AjmaniK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I walk the path, sit on this bench, I see, hear, smell, feel, sometimes even taste something different – I view it as gathering new evidence of the truth… or is it?

The Heart’s Quadrants

Tags

agape, heart, heart matters, love

I am not much of a sport’s watcher any more, perhaps because I’m not much of a TV watcher any more. However, this year, I found myself tuning into the Super Bowl because – actually, I’m not quite sure why, but it just happened. More than the game itself, I was actually paying a bit of attention to the ads. I have to admit, I was totally taken by the story told by the ad that talked about the four types of love… 

While thinking about the topic for this week’s #SpiritChat conversation, I knew that I would end up talking about something heart-related. February is heart-health month, and this year has that extra-special day at the end, for which I have a  special affinity (more about that in two weeks). And then, this morning, reflecting on the heart, I was reminded of the four quadrants of the heart. This made me wonder – is there a connection between the four types of love and the four quadrants of the heart?

What about love? The four types of love are deemed to be philia (love that grows out of friendships), storge (love that is founded on family relationships), eros (the romantic love) and agape (love that comes from acts of service and selfless actions). And what about the heart? The heart’s upper quadrants are the two atriums or atria  – the right, which collects the impure blood through the venous system, and the left, which collects the purified blood from the lungs. The lower quadrants are the two ventricles or the pumps. The right ventricle receives the impure blood from the right atrium, and then pumps it to the lungs for purification. The left receives the purified blood from the left atrium, and pumps it to the organs through the arterial system. 

On the surface, it doesn’t seem like there is any correlation between the four types of love and the heart’s quadrants, is there? Delving a bit deeper, I thought of people whose love resembles the quadrants of the hearts. There are the “receivers” or the atriums – always available and open to us, helping us to lighten our load in any way they can. They do not judge whether our output is “pure” or “impure” – their role is to simply be receivers. “Atrium people” are perhaps primarily engaged in the practice of philia or agape love by their actions of presence and active listening, aren’t they?

Then, there are the “givers” or the ventricles – the ones who “feed” us continuously, whether we are asleep or awake, regardless of our mental and emotional state. The “givers” help us absorb the goodness that every breath brings into our  hearts, and remind us to share that goodness with every cell in our bodies. Our heart’s two ventricles are essential to life and living. The same is true of those who are the ‘givers of love’ in our lives, isn’t it?

What would our lives be without the magic of friendships, the special bonds of family, the incorrigible romantics, or those who are ever-eager to give? Who are our heart’s atriums and ventricles, the ones who teach us about philia, storge, eros and agape? Do we not live our best life when all of the heart’s quadrants work as a unified whole for a single purpose – which is to flow higher love?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly chat, Sunday February 16 at 9am ET / 2pm GMT / 7:30pm India. We will talk about the heart and its giving and receiving of love through all its quadrants. Join us to tea and cookies. Namaste – @AjmaniK

 

The Heart of Holding Space

Tags

community, freedom, heart, space

“Have we ever had a #SpiritChat on the idea of ‘holding space’?”

The minute Lucille asked this question as we were close to wrapping up the hour of the #SpiritChat monthly video get-together, I knew that she had brought forth the topic for the weekly chat. My immediate answer was to say, “no, we haven’t ever discussed that as a topic — but, it is one of my favorite phrases and ideas to practice!”. In fact, I had benefitted from practicing it just the previous day. 

A few weeks ago, I had received an invite to attend a meeting at 8:30am on Thursday morning. My first reaction was to respond  that I wouldn’t be able to attend because of another scheduled meeting. However, when I read the agenda, it was to review the by-laws of the Parents’ Association of my daughter’s school. I thought, this is really important, and maybe the other meeting will get moved. So, I found myself responding with — “I am not sure, but please hold space for me as I am going to do my best to attend”.

Unbeknownst to me, the organizers must have done just that. Thursday morning came and I was running behind because my daughter woke up with a nasty cold. I hadn’t even showered or shaved yet, and it was time to leave, if I was going to make it in time. As I got ready to text the organizer that I wasn’t going to be able to make it, a thought passed across my heart. What if they are actually ‘holding space’ for me, just like I asked them to?

So, I put my phone away, brushed my teeth (yes, this was an IRL meeting, not a twitter chat :)), put some clothes on and drove the short distance through the sleet that was falling quickly and icing up the roads. Four smiling faces, including the broadest of smiles of a little baby girl that one of the Mom’s had brought with her, greeted me with the words – “we are so glad you are here”. 

In that instant, I knew that they were not looking at my unshaven face or my uncoordinated clothes that I had thrown together. It reminded me of something my maternal grandmother used to say and practice — “ बेटा जी, जगह इंसान के लिए दिल में होनी चाहिए – फिर सभी अपने होते हैं, कोई मेहमान नहीं होता।” My dear one, when we learn to make space in the heart for others, then there are no guests — the whole world becomes our family. 

So much truth wisdom in Grandma’s words, don’t you think? How often do we forsake the opportunity of ‘holding space’ or ‘creating space’ for others because of how we think we may be perceived by them? How often do we forsake ‘holding space’ for own selves because of how we think about ourself? And yet, if we take our eyes off of ourselves, we can then embrace the attitude of ‘holding space’.  Our heart can open to the idea that ‘we need to take care of each other, be kind to each other’.

So, here we are. We have some decisions to make, some questions to ponder. What is it that prevents us from ‘holding space’ in our hearts for some, but not for ‘others’? Despite filling ourselves with so much, why do we occasionally feel ‘empty’? What is the spiritual benefit of holding space (and time) for each other and for our own selves?

Here are some possibilities. In ‘holding space’ in our heart, the whole world can become ‘us’, not ‘them’. When there is no separation of us and them, we are in fact creating true freedom, aren’t we? In this freedom, real exploration of the vastness of inner space can truly begin — we may yet discover that the infinite has been forever holding loving space for us.

Kumud

P.S. Thank you, Lucille Fisher (@sageandsavvy) for this week’s grand question, and inspiration for our Sunday Feb 9 twitter chat in #SpiritChat at 9amET / 2pm GMT / 730pm India. I invite all of you to join us in this community that has been holding space for each other for many years. Namaste – @AjmaniK

 

Flowers, in various stages of flowering, held by Nature’s loving space… 

Spiritual Amateurs

Tags

amateur, creativity, heart, spirituality

The final question that was asked by Sharon (@AwakeningTrue) at the end of Friday’s Zoom meeting was: what are some things that you really love doing or would like to do? A lot of answers came forth and every answer gave a glimpse into the folks giving the answers.

The answers ranged from “I’m going to to take an improv class” to “I love laughing and infusing laughter into life” to “I love giving hugs” to “I love creating special hand-made gifts for people” to “I love drinking tea and reading” to “I love eating dark chocolate squares” and more. The question made me reflect on my own amateur activities outside of my professional work as an engineer.

I am a rank amateur at walking in nature in every season. I walk for the love of walking, and I bring back photos as visual memories of my walks. On last check, my phone tells me that I have 9486 photos tagged “Fall” from the past seven years – 4022 from “Rocky River Reservation” alone. Yikes. That’s a lot of photos and a lot of standing around, isn’t it?! I am also a lover of simply sitting and watching and wondering, weeding and planting, walking the dog, making and drinking tea, dabbling in poetry on twitter, and writing my weekly blog posts.

Over the past three years, I have become a lover of waking up early and starting my day with meditation. This practice has slowly taught me that inward focus on the heart creates the counter current to all the violence, vitriol, anger, acrimony, divisiveness, despair, disrespect and hate that seems to be endemic in the world. How does the heart do this?

Our heart-focus helps us to put a spotlight on the beauty, the goodness, the lightness and the positive traits of the ones that we are often the quickest to criticize, condemn and complain about. The heart helps us remember that our beloveds are so because of their good qualities and because they often do much more good in the world than otherwise.

It is when the heart reminds us of that sweet fragrance of theirs, we can release anger and open the door to forgiveness. We awaken to the realization that we are not spiritual amateurs any longer. We realize that being an amateur actually serves us well — for the root of that word is amore — a lover of life.

What are some things that you are an amateur at?

Kumud

P.S. Join us amateurs for our weekly twitter chat on Sunday, November 3rd at 9amET in #SpiritChat ~ share your love of… Namaste – @AjmaniK

Streaming the Heart’s Light

Tags

heart, heart matters, light, lightness, streaming

 

We have come a long way from the time when our televisions and radios had rabbit ears and antennas that reached out to receive their signals. In this always-connected age of WiFi and cellular service, where cell phones, tablets and laptops can ‘stream’ almost any type of audio and video at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse, our works is inundated with the concept of “streaming.” Corporations like NetFlix, YouTube, Disney and Apple are all in competition for our audio and visual awareness and our dollars.

What does all this “streaming” mean for our spiritual practices and awareness? How are we to develop, maintain and sustain the health of our mind and our heart when we are seemingly immersed in this Alphabet soup of marketing, advertising and ‘news cycles’? What are we to learn and teach from this upheaval that is causing many of us to question our values and beliefs in things like trust, honesty, integrity, service and the like?

One possible solution to the unknown of massive change created by digital “streaming” is to apply it to what we already know. We know our heart is the repository of love and light. We know our heart is the seedbed of softness and kindness. We know our heart is the source of silence and stillness. What if we were to condition and train our heart to constantly stream love, light, softness, kindness, silence and stillness?

In all of my forest walks this autumn, I am yet to undertake a journey that has not infused me with hope and elevation. The subtle changes of color, the falling of a leaf as it spins towards the earth, the rustling of the forest floor as I step gently, the sun emerging from behind clouds and streaming light from behind tall trees — I could go on and on. Observing and being in Nature is frequently my external antidote to the digital stream.

And yet, we need an internal antidote to the digital soup that we often find ourselves boiling in. A four-part practice has served me well in creating my own portable stream. It consists of cleaning the vessel of the day’s digital stream, universal prayer, physical relaxation, and sitting with a gentle focus on the source of light within the heart. It may seem like a lot of work, but I find these four actions harmonize the four quadrants of the heart. The heart’s light flows with clarity again, and the stream of joy and silence is available to immerse in wherever and whenever I need reconnecting to source.

No internet connection required.

 

Kumud

P.S. Join us in our weekly stream on Twitter in #SpiritChat — a gathering of folks “streaming their heart’s light” with enthusiasm — Sunday, Oct 20 at 9amET / 630pm India. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Growing the Heart’s Intelligence

Tags

celebration, heart, heart matters, intelligence, sisters, spirituality

There was a confluence of events which occurred over the past week that reminded me of “the heart’s intelligence”. Two back-to-back lectures by a visiting monk from the “Vedanta society of Houston”, two pieces of mail that arrived on Thursday, and my stumbling on a few personal notes from a book that I had read a few years ago.

The Vedanta lectures address some important questions – Who am I? What is real? What is the truth? What is awareness? And more. My one takeaway was that the mind is not real. From the physical plane, the ‘mind’ is fed inputs by our senses, and creates reactions, which we then respond to as actions. So, what is real? Our awareness that ‘we exist’, even when we are asleep, is a reality. Where does this awareness register? It is in the ‘heart’ – not the physical heart, but the ‘heart’ of every cell of our body. That is the “heart’s intelligence” fed by our spiritual practices.

Fast forward to Thursday morning, when I was “celebrating all my sisters, then and now”, on the day of annual “brother sister festival” called Rakhi. Phone conversations with my sisters in India are a must on this day for me – I actually get to hear their heart’s, share my heart, and there is much laughter and good-nature’s ribbing. They both always ask the question – “did you get my ‘Rakhi’?”

In both cases, I had to reluctantly say – no, not yet. In both cases, I said with a confident heart – “but I am sure that it will come, right on time, in today’s mail”. It is a festival of the heart – and yes, each piece of mail, after traveling 7500 miles, arrived that afternoon. The heart’s intelligence grew a bit more, with two shiny threads from my sisters this week. They’ve been sending me love-filled threads for many decades. I am in awe of them and their hearts.

“The Heart’s Code” was a wonderful book that explained the multiple dimensions of the “heart” and its importance, as I started a focused meditation practice a few years ago. Sorting through my electronic notes this week (getting ready for my “book”), I stumbled on some treasures. First, there was this reminder, to take time to receive.

Take time every day to be open to the energy those you love give off; let your heart receive that energy, store it, and recall it as often as you can. Look, listen, smell, touch, and feel with your heart those you love as profoundly and deeply as you can while the physical manifestation of their energy is still yours for the feeling.

Then, there was this reference to the heart’s role as a ‘memory-keeping’ intelligence portal.

The brain is very busy with its own memory system. It is less sensitive than the heart to the more subtle energetic memories. By putting our heart into remembering those we love every day, we are recovering cellular memories…

And finally, this note spoke to a special propensity of my mine, and perhaps yours too…

When poets describe love as “giving our heart away,” they are cardio-energetically correct.

All the events of this week were designed to remind me that there is perhaps no better return on investment than in growing the heart’s intelligence. I am thus inspired to focus on tearing down my walls of intransigence and prejudice, so that I can heart-connect more often with more of my brothers and sisters across the world. Join me in growing the world’s HeartIQ, will you?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering of brothers and sisters in #SpiritChat on Sunday, Aug 18 at 9amET. I will bring some sweets – we shall grow our hearts. Namaste – @AjmaniK

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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