Seeds of Harmony

Tags

autumn, balance, faith, harmony, integration, patience

Autumn is the season of planting and seeding grass in lawns. The cooler weather is an invitation to repair the damage done to the lawn by the heat of summer. You remove the old and dead grass, rake the soil below, add some new dirt, mix in new grass seeds, cover the seeded patches with hay or the like to provide warmth, water adequately.

And then you wait. If and when there is harmony of all the elements — warmth and light from the sun, sustenance and receptivity from the earth, moisture and coolness from the water, expression of life force from the seed, balance of stillness and movement in the air — the seeds eventually sprout when it’s there time.

In some re-seeded patches, it seems like nothing is going to ever germinate. You start to ask questions like — did I use enough of seed? Did I use the right mix of dirt and fertilizer? Did that unusually cold snap in the days right after I planted kill the seed? Should have I watered more? Did I water too much? On and on the questioning and self-doubting goes as the days go by without you seeing any sign of new life in the seeded patches.

Five or six or seven days after seeding, you start wondering how you ever successfully grew grass in every autumn before the current one? The lack of visible external growth makes you forget the belief and hope and faith and grace that you have experienced so many times before. It’s almost as if you forget how this story has ended in every single season in the past.

And then it happens. You wake up on the sixth or seventh or nth day and some seedlings have burst through in the small circular patch that sits in the shadow of where the hydrangea had bloomed into the summer. New grass! The tiniest of new green growth amid the wide expanse of existing green instantly erases all of your questions and doubts that had sprouted while you were waiting for nature’s harmony to do what it does best in your heart — germinate new faith to remind you of your existing faith.

As you watch the heavy dew evaporate off of the new grass-lets in the same way that it evaporates off of the tall grass blades next to them, your faith is somehow re-seeded. One new direct experience, the result of a perfect harmony of nature and nurture, reminds you of all the past experiences of grace in your life.

The simple beauty of every single blade of autumn’s new grass is perhaps a reminder of the harmony between the seeds, the water, the soil, the wind, the sun, and the source that integrates them all into life itself.

What’s your take on harmony? What kind of seeds can we plant in our heart to harness the powers that lies within us? When extended the invitation to do so, what seeds are we actually planting? How may we best harmonize our efforts towards spiritual growth with those of our earthly affairs?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat, Sunday Oct 9 at 9am ET / 1pmGMT/ 630pm India with the #SpiritChat community. We will share on harmony and its value in our lives. Namaste – AjmaniK

Autumn (or Fall) brings with it, ‘seeds’ of Harmony…

Spiritual Integration

Tags

integration, spirituality, unity

Spiritual Integration for #SpiritChat by Christy Johnson

 

Dictionary.com defines integration as an act or instance of combining into an integral whole. In Latin the word integer means untouched, meaning an undivided and whole number.

 

Each of us comes into life as a whole being, yet we may forget our inherent wholeness as we traverse our imperfect way through life interacting with other flawed, yet paradoxically whole, humans. Spiritual integration balances our human imperfection with our divine perfection.

 

To heal the internal split and integrate, we must learn to accept of all parts of ourselves, including any aspects we’d prefer to keep secret, especially any aspect that is violent or unforgiving in thought, word, or deed. This requires self-awareness, courage, and persistence.

 

The turbulence and violence in the world calls for integration of both our collective and personal shadows. As Carl Jung wrote in Modern Man in Search of a Soul, “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.” 

 

Unintegrated shadows may manifest as judgment or can extend further to discriminatory or even violent acts. To integrate our own shadows, we need to acknowledge all humans have the potential for darkness rather than deny that aspect of humanity in general and ourselves in particular. Being aware of our shared human frailties while consciously choosing not to be driven by them reflects our spiritual integration.

 

How do we make peace with our own shadow? How do we shine light on humanity’s collective shadow to support integration? 

 

Please join us as we explore how we might help ourselves and the rest of humanity heal the collective trauma of unintegrated shadows. Let’s shine a compassionate light on darkness and brainstorm about how to create a healthier, less shadow-driven, more integrated future for mankind.

 

Dr. Christy Johnson quit her decades-long engineering career in 2010 to open her integrative energy healing practice. She helps clients grow, evolve, and get empowered via soul level information and energy healing. You can connect with her via her website www.intuitiveheal.com or on Twitter @IntuitiveHeal .

P. S. Join our special guest host Dr Christy Johnson as she steps up to host our weekly twitter chat (Sunday Aug 25 at 9amET in #spiritchat) on this wonderful topic. Thank you – Kumud

 

On Making Work Play

Tags

creativity, integration, play, work

The first Sunday of September is ‘celebrated’ as the ‘Labor Day’ weekend in the USA. It was the first ‘long weekend’ that I encountered when I first here for graduate school. I was intrigued by a holiday that had the word ‘labor’ in it, and I also wondered why they did not spell it with a ‘u’. Over the years, I learnt a bit more about this classic American weekend that marks the passage from summer into autumn.

But, back to ‘labor’. The word itself seems to carry a sense of ‘heaviness’ about it for me. It conjures a vision of coolies carrying suitcases on their heads at railway stations in India, ascending and descending staircases with a seeming ease that defies their wiry frames. As a child, I was always impressed by their superhuman strength, and often felt a bit guilty about the tough negotiations we would do for hiring them. In their work, they seemed like Atlas carrying the weight of their shoulders on their back.

However, we all well know that not all ‘labor’ is manual. In this day and age of technology, our labor is often defined by our ‘finger dexterity’, ‘mental organization’, ‘oral delivery’ and ‘visual acuity’. The ‘gentler’ connotation of ‘labor’ is simply ‘work’. And the even ‘gentler’ connotation of ‘work’ is often ‘play. And some of us have mastered the niche and cultivated the art of ‘making work play’. They are perhaps the enlightened creatives.

So, what is it that defines those masters of ‘making work play’? I imagine that we would have to know what the words ‘work’ and ‘play’ mean to us at an individual level. For simplicity sake, let us assume that ‘work’ leans toward ‘labor’ and ‘play’ leans towards ‘fun and recreation’. When ‘work’ and ‘play’ tilt away from each other, like the two arms of the letter V, they tend to pull us apart. When they come together, as in the letter I, we feel a sense of integration, of wholeness, of wholesomeness.

And then, there is notion of ‘duty’. For me, the word connotes an even ‘heavier’ form of work than ‘labor’. When it first appears to do its bidding, ‘duty’ tends to invoke resistance. It is often inconvenient, and tends to be demanding of what we may be unable or unwilling to give of – which is our sense of freedom. Friction results, sparks fly, unfamiliar words and thoughts and feelings emerge. Play becomes the farthest thing from our hearts and minds when we approach the work of our duty as a burden that has befallen us.

We need not despair, though. It is time for evaluation of our (spiritual) practices. Do they feel like burdens, or like play? It is self-reflection that reminds us of our capacity to love, and it is that love which ‘greases the tracks of duty’. When approached with love, we take the first step on the path (towards doing our duty at hand) with a renewed lightness of heart. This leads to a sense of vairagya (non-attachment to the results), which leads us back to freedom, and to the joy of play!

Love of work. Freedom through love. Play through Freedom. This is our work.

The result? We find ourselves in That ocean where all of our work is a wave of divine play – Leela.

We have come full circle to the center, where ‘labor’ has become weightless. It’s time to celebrate!

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us Sunday, September 2nd at 9amET / 630pm India for our weekly community chat on twitter. We will work on ‘Making Work Play’ in #spiritchat – bring your game-boards and game-pieces!

Nature’s (handi)Work – or is it merely Play?!