The Heart of Freedom

Tags

celebration, freedom, imperfection, spirituality, summer

I’m feeling a little bit disappointed that I didn’t get to the umbrella on the deck in time during the last storm. As I try to open it, I notice that the middle of the three tiers won’t fully open because one one of the supporting tines has broken in half and gone missing. The puppy is standing beside me, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind as I raise and lower the cranking mechanism in vain, hoping that it will somehow fix itself.

No such luck. As I am about to give up, I look down onto the garden, and there, sticking out of the red flowering bush, is the other half of the broken support. Hope. I retrieve it and jerry-rig the two pieces together, and walla, I have a semi-functional shade from the sun. It’s imperfectly perfect in its deformity, in that the tension has gone missing from the fabric that the broken tine now supports.

In retrospect, the storm has given me what I had wished the umbrella always had — a bit of flexibility in its undue tautness, so that it can better weather a bit more of the frequent wind gusts that tend to come off of the water. It looks a bit bent and articulated, and not so pretty any more, but it is actually more relaxed and functional and free-floating in its existence.

I go back to reading my book on Tao with the essay about being “easy and relaxed”. It speaks about harmony with the universe, about transcending both “being” and “doing’” and effortlessly switching from one to the other when necessary. It seems to bring home the message of choice, without which, it is hard to imagine any sense of true freedom.

Some will not rest until they have achieved or restored perfection, while others are at peace with their ‘brokenness’ and their imperfections. Some use their freedom to choose to walk the hard, challenging, twisted paths of life, while others are content in choosing the ‘easy’ roads. We are often judged, even defined by the world by the choices we make, and yet that is all moot, for only our heart knows the inner peace that comes from choosing what is in alignment with the call of our soul.

The willingness to choose our own path, the courage to be answerable to the heart, the ability to keep growing in connection to the divine, the rising up to be in service to others, the releasing of our inner fragrance of love — and to do all of these in a relaxed harmony with the universe — are perhaps our true freedoms. And for us to practice them, our hearts’ freedoms need not be perfect, do they?

As I finish writing this, the creaking of the sunbrella tells me that the wind is picking up and another summer evening thunderstorm approaches. This time, I am ready and present to act before I lose any more tines. I hope to have shade for a few more weeks, for summer has just begun!

Kumud

P.S. What are your thoughts on the heart of freedom? Are we really as free as we think we are? What is it that binds us, often without our awareness? I invite you to share in our weekly chat with the #SpiritChat community on Sunday July 4 (Independence Day in The USA) at 9am ET / 630pm India. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Summer flowers bloom, revealing hearts of Freedom

On the Raising of Fathers

Tags

children, fatherhood, Fathers Day, imperfection, spiritual fathers

Let’s get this out of the way at the very beginning. There are no perfect fathers, just like there are no perfect children. That could be the end of the blog post right here. In fact for some of you, “father’s day” doesn’t exactly fill your heart with warmth. It may even bring back pain, anger, grief and hurtful memories. And yet, allow me share a bit of my personal story with you.

I was fortunate to be raised, and influenced, by three wonderful men who played tremendous father figures in my life. My birth Dad, my Uncle whose family I spent fourteen wonderful years from third grade on, and my Uncle’s brother in the USA whose family pretty much adopted me from the moment I landed in the USA for graduate studies. All three of these men played roles in my life, most of which I did not understand until I became a Dad myself. 

All my Dads taught me more about sacrifice and grace in motion, than I could possibly hope to learn by myself. And this was all before I had ever read a single word of my ’spiritual guides’ like Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Yogananda, Ramakrishna, and more. Perhaps I was too busy taking notes in my heart about what my ‘real Dads’ were trying to teach me with their lives. Over the years, one by one, they all went to the eternal flame, as all mortals do. In their passage, they each left me with a hidden challenge —  to keep their flame in motion in the world around me. 

I became aware of the challenge when I was presented with the gift to raise my own. In the process, In raising her, I gained greater understanding that I was really raising myself in small ways every day. Could my daughter be raising me through direct experience of empathy, kindness and listening? Could it also be that the tough challenge of raising me had helped raised my Dads in some way? 

Psychologists stress upon the critical role of ‘fathers’ in their children’s lives, but what if the ‘fathers’ are resentful or afraid of the role presented to them? It is hard enough for willing and dedicated Dads to ‘do raising right’, so one can imagine the challenges of those who feel unprepared or unwilling.  In such cases, could the role of ‘raising’ be done more effectively by teachers, mentors, willing relatives, spiritual guides and more? 

There are no easy answers, because no matter how much we talk about ‘simplicity’, life is messy and complicated. The best advice that I got from my Dads was that they gave very little advice, if any at all. They left the door open for me to figure it out on my own  because they had no way of forecasting what I would be facing when doing my own ‘raising’. If anything, my Dads’ best ‘advice’ was in the kindness with which they all treated their family, friends, guests, and those who asked them for help.

The older I get, the wiser my Dads’ life lessons seem to get. I have a ways to go on my journey, and yet I know that they, and my guides, are raising me up every time I stumble and fall. I also know that there is a loving energy in the universe that raises you too. I hope you believe the same. 

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. Join our #SpiritChat community in our weekly twitter chat, Sunday June 20 at 9amET / 630pm India. We will talk about Fathers, imperfections, and raising each other on our path. I will bring the usual goodies and questions. I hope you join us – @AjmaniK

 

The three who raised me… they show up often in nature…