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…

On Revisiting Joy

Tags

celebration, healing, journey, joy, spirituality

As late as last Tuesday, it appeared that we were drifting towards “skipping Christmas” this year. For whatever reason, and I can probably rattle off a lot of them, the family, including me, just didn’t seem to have caught the spirit of the season. We all seemed to be in silent agreement about the skipping and sleep-walking towards 2021. Some things are not meant to be, I thought.

And then came the snow on Wednesday evening. It wasn’t the violent snowstorm that had come a couple of weeks ago and dumped more than a foot of snow on us in the span of twenty four hours. No. This was the gentle, quiet, languid snow where every flake takes its own sewer time drifting towards the earth. There is a haze that sets up at sunset and it’s almost as if the overcast sky holds the last light of the day in its arms such that the radiance makes the night as bright as the day. The lights around the neighborhood come to life and their reflection against the water and the falling and fallen snow creates a sort of magic that extends the silent invitation.

Come play, it says. Come revisit. Come and remember. Find a single reason for Joy. You look at the new puppy sitting by the patio door with wide eyed pleading, waiting for you to open the door to the deck so she can go out and roll around in the fluffy white, even feast on it. Silently, the tide turns and my daughter announces that mid-Thursday that she is done with all her finals. My wife decides that enough is enough. She goes to the basement, and while I am on a work telecon, single-handledly digs out the eight-foot high tree that has been wondering if it will get to see the lights this year.

I am still wondering about reason, but the snow falling and the water swirling around me has other ideas. My daughter has decided that she is going to play with the gingerbread cookie kit sitting in the box. With that, the tide has fully turned. Cookies, my friends!

I am transported to a time where the heart feels like it is bobbing for waves in the ocean, where you have waded in just far enough and deep enough that your feet can still feel the earth. As you hold ground with the tips of your toes, every so often, a wave comes and lifts you clean off of the ocean floor into moments of joy and exhilaration. Every time you think you’ve had enough of the waves and try and return to the shore, the slightest of undercurrents invites you to stay a bit longer.

Revisiting Joy doesn’t happen like a flash of lightning during the middle of a late summer thunderstorm. It happens with the slow drift and soft lullaby of the peacefulness of every snow flake that is grateful that their falling has been cradled by grace and give brilliance to a single heart on some of the darkest nights of the year.

My hope is that you get to revisit too. We can only resist the invitation of nature for so long. We can resist our intrinsic nature even less, and our intrinsic nature is Joy. That is what we were built for. To remember, experience and share it.

Joy to our world. Let us revisit and soar again.

Kumud

P.S. The house keeps filling up. Lettered stockings have now appeared on the fireplace. Santa is getting his delivery ‘truck’ ready… Come join us and share your story of Joy. I hope you can find a reason. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Learning to fly by revisiting Joy

Rediscovering Joy and Wonder by @AwakeningTrue

Tags

discovery, joy, spirituality, wonder

Rediscovering Joy and Wonder

I was about 5 years old, staring into a bassinet where a newborn baby was sound asleep.  She was lying on her back and I was as mesmerized by her stillness as I was by her tiny hands.  Soon, I became aware of someone standing behind me.  It was not my Mom or one of my aunts because I knew that if it were, I would feel a hand on my shoulder or hear a familiar voice speaking to me.  I continued to stare at the sleeping baby, and then she made a small sound and she smiled.  I was totally amazed,  but not by the baby.  It was these words, “She is talking with the angels,” that amazed me.  The woman standing behind me spoke these words so softly – not to me but to herself.  Even at 5, I understood when someone was speaking to me and when she was not.  It was not the woman’s words that amazed me – they seemed true enough to me – it was the way she spoke them.  It was, I realized many years later, a tone that was full of wonder.

Joy and wonder!  I link these two words because there seems to be something magical when we experience joy and wonder in the same moment.  So, how do we rediscover joy and wonder when we are not watching a newborn talk with the angels?  Times when you have experienced joy and wonder may have just immediately come to mind.  When we are prompted, that often happens.  We think about a gorgeous sunrise after a storm, or the first fireflies of summer, or splashing in the ocean, or some moment when we felt sheer, unbridled joy AND a sense of awe and wonder.  A more important question is this – how do we rediscover joy and wonder in our day-to-day lives even as we live in these very challenging times?  How do we experience joy and wonder every day?  Every day.

I believe in the magic of everyday life, and believe we can choose to notice the magic within us and around us.  We can pause for a few moments to notice the glistening dew on the grass, the way the light seemed to flash just as our eyes rested on those sparkles.  We can drink in the beauty of the light reflected in the dew, knowing that it will shift and disappear in a few moments, and realizing that if we had not glanced in this direction in this exact moment, we would have missed this light entirely.  Joy in the beauty, wonder in the timing, gratitude for the magic of the moment.

I hope you will join the #SpiritChat conversation this Sunday, and share your insights about rediscovering joy and wonder in our daily lives.  Has this ever seemed more important to us than it is now?

Sharon Kathryn D’Agostino — @SharonDAgostino, @AwakeningTrue and @SayItForwardNow 

Author’s bio: I believe in the power of love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and gratitude. And I believe that each of us has an important role in shaping a kinder, gentler, more compassionate world for all. 

Kumud’s note: I am delighted that Sharon will be hosting #SpiritChat for all of us on Sunday, October 4 at 9amET on twitter. I am so looking forward to “Joy and Wonder”, and all that emerge from our rediscovering them. Thank you, Sharon!

Fireflies evoke joy and wonder – photo by Dave Burwell

 

Our Spiritual Foundations

Tags

awareness, foundattion, friendship, joy, truth

Many a great structure can be built upon, if it has been built upon a strong foundation. Conversely, if the foundation is weak, many a great-looking structure can easily crumble when subject to even a small tremor.  One may posit that the long-term health and viability of families, friendships, communities, societies, countries and planets depends on the quality of their foundations.

From a spiritual perspective, the strength of our foundation can be equated to the sum (or product?) of our values, beliefs and practices.

Our foundational values are often formed by those actions which have ‘risen to the top’ of our attention pyramid over time. These are the actions that attract the best investments of our time and energy. We often look forward to opportunities to sharing time and space with those who strengthen our core values. Conversely, we may find ourselves walking or drifting away from those who negatively affect the health of our foundation. This concept forms the foundation of the idea of  sangha or togetherness. Commonality of values infuses joy in our walk together. We learn to find joy in their joy, and they in ours. 

The second basis of a strong foundation is an awareness of truth. Where does this awareness come from? It comes from (spiritual) practice. If I regularly walk a particular path in the forest and I see the same white flowers bloom in the same culvert at the same time every year, my direct experience would plant a seed of truth in me. My practice will have thus informed my awareness, which would in turn have established a foundational truth for me.

The beauty of the blooming flower of awareness is that it need not be unique to me. When someone else has the same direct experience of the flower blooming in the forest, it plants a seed of truth in them too. When their seed of truth grows, it attracts my truth, it becomes stronger, and begins to matter. When two people share an awareness that the truth matters, it becomes the foundation for friendship.  

Our shared values, beliefs and practices can thus create a basis for joy (ananda), and a shared awareness (chitta) of truth (satya). When we walk in truth, awareness and joy, we can have direct experience of the Oneness that is the foundation of the Universe. 

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering, Sunday January 26th at 9amET / 730pm India. We will share on foundations, friendships and the truths discovered on our walks. Namaste – @AjmaniK

On Joyous Surrender

Tags

empathy, journey, joy, solstice, surrender

The topic of “surrender” has been in and out of my brain box on several occasions as a possible subject for our weekly conversations. However, it wasn’t until this week, as I recorded and then reflected on the effects of “surrender immersed in joy” during one of my walks in the local reservation, that the subject moved from my brain to my heart. I share part of my “live recordings” in lieu of my weekly blog post… a long-form poetry, a gift wrapped and presented to all who are part of our wonderful community called #SpiritChat…

Where winter descends on water / and ice forms over the layered rocks of millennia / the slightest of warming forms cracks / like Thor’s hammer launched into a mirrored river

the river flows with a new urgency / to a different cadence and rhythm / her banks constricted by sheets of ice / floating floes create new meanderings

eddies near banks lay frozen / a slight shimmering off of their layers translucent / greeting the sun finally cresting low / over the tall trees mostly bereft of leaves

and the longest shadows of the year / draw me closer to the solstice / from whence the northern days shall only grow longer / and the lights shall only grow stronger / and the hearts shall only grow lighter

slowly, gently, softly – glowing warmth rises / rescuing my freezing fingers on the screen / welcoming the parting of the clouds / for relief to seep through them / from the late-morning sun’s emergence …

Silly me – I should have brought gloves / but it was perhaps for the best / for how else would I have felt the floe / in my fingers freezing and thawing

how else would I have written mundane poetry / while ascending the steep hill by the lagoon / as the winter wind blew from the other shore / over the thin layer of ice on waters stilled

how else would I have witnessed live / the last of autumn’s leaves fallen / chasing each other in play over the ice / driven by the very wind / that melted the waters in my sinuses

That shrill cold gave breath to empathy / for those who brave entire winters / huddling on street corners — waiting for grace / for they have no gloves to bring

Who knows where the sky begins / or where their earth ends / where their water begins / or where the thin ice ends / where the forest begins / or when the next call shall come

And yet this much is certain / that when we walk enough trails in faith / with hearts wide open to light / even on the darkest, longest night

we are bound to discover

that it is towards truth, justice and warmth / the radiant arc of the loving universe / shall guide us when we choose / to walk each day in joyous surrender….

and the light shall become stronger…

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat. Sunday, Dec 15 at 9amET in #spiritchat ~ And yes, those from the Southern Hemisphere are welcome too 🙂 Namaste – @AjmaniK

Why Spirituality – I Wonder

Tags

awakening, awareness, happiness, joy, spirituality, wonder

For those of us who have been in and around the weekly conversations with the #spiritchat community on topics related to spirituality and spiritual practice, the answer to “why spirituality” may be plain as daylight. Many of us may even think the question to be irrelevant, or take the answer for granted.

Yet, I have been wondering about this question over the past few days, with a sense of wonder, with a sense and spirit of inquisitive, curious, scientific examination.

So, let me share my sense of wonder with you, and ask the short question – “why spirituality”? What is it about your ‘spiritual practice(s)’ that sets them apart from the rest of your daily life? How do you integrate the results and outcomes of your spirituality into solving the challenges of life and living? Has your approach to ‘spirituality’ changed as your life situation(s) have changed? If yes, how so?

I have often found that the answer to the question, particularly the question that is borne of wonder instead of being borne out of doubt, is already present in our awareness. Over the past few weeks, in preparation for spring, I have been doing some ‘house cleaning’ of my books, media, music and notebooks. During one such episode this week, I came across a few books that were given to be by my mother over my past few visits to India.

As I was sorting through them, one of the ‘bookmarks’ that I came across was a trifold brochure called ‘why spirituality’! The brochure, published in 2011, contains a few quotes from the then leader (Chariji) of the ‘Sahaj Marg’ foundation (http://sahajmarg.org). It contained not one, but a few answers to my sense of wonder. Let me share some of them with you in the quotes below – maybe one or more of them will resonate with you.

“Spirituality is the need for an inner existence. The whole idea of spirituality is to revive in us that which is sleeping in us – the true inner being, the Self”

Why Spirituality? It is a path to an awakening within. It is a yearning for something more than the routine of daily, worldly life. In spirituality, life becomes a wondrous journey to uncover that inner Self. Wonder leads to a wondrous journey. Yes!

“As a bird needs two wings to fly, a human being needs the two wings of existence, the spiritual and the material, to lead a natural and harmonious life”

Why Spirituality? For harmony, for the restoration of balance. Balance is restored by integrating a spiritual practice into daily life. A practice that blends into our daily living like sugar dissolves into tea.

“Happiness is the natural inner condition that we will reach when we have removed all unnecessary things”

Why Spirituality? Spiritual practice leads us to find true happiness and love. Joy is the quality of the inner Self, and is nurtured in spirituality, along with other qualities of the heart – courage, hope, faith, wonder, compassion, tolerance and, most of all, universal love. By following a spiritual practice, we have the possibility to experience universal love, the divine essence, within our own heart.

The brochure holds more wondrous messages. I shared the thoughts above with you, so that perhaps, you too shall wonder with a sense of inquiry – why spirituality? What is this spiritual path that I walk in my practice? How does my spirituality grow my heart and its inherent qualities, and the sense of joy and love within it?

Let the wondering begin. Let us share our wonder, our heart, and our joy and universal love with each other. And I will keep cleaning, exploring, practicing, uncovering more wonder. Namaste.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join the #spiritchat community in our weekly twitter conversation – Sunday, Feb 10 at 9amET / 730pm India. Bring your sense of wonder with you, as we share the answers to ‘why spirituality’, over a cup of tea. Thank you!

After the storm, a double rainbow outside my door…

On Gardening and Joy

Tags

Gardening, happiness, healing, joy

I was never much of a gardener or an active seeker of green space in my younger days. Growing up in the sprawling metro of Delhi (India), most of my encounters with ‘green spaces’ were on the dusty playgrounds at school and the postage-stamp sized front-lawn of my grandfather’s home. Watching the ‘Maali’ (hired  gardener) labor valiantly to keep my grandfather’s small garden green during the Indian summers wasn’t exactly a sight that filled one with Joy.

But, every once in a while, while leaving that house on a summer evening, there was this heavenly perfume from the “raatrani” (night-blooming jasmine) flowers that would bid me a fond farewell at the main entrance. It was an impression that stayed with me till my next visit, an invitation to return and sit with my grandparents often. It was as if the garden was saying to me – your young eyes only see the labor involved in growing the grass, but there is a deeper vein of joy that runs through the flower beds.

And so, here I am. Three decades or so later. For the past fifteen years or so, twice I have gone through planting my own new lawn in new homes. Twice I have worked on building flower beds, planting shrubs and flowers, mulching, weeding, pruning, seeding, re-seeding, over-seeding, and much more.

Have I found any Joy in all of this work over the years? Satisfaction of a task well done? Yes. Happiness at watching the leaves burst through overnight on apparently “dead as a door nail” branches of perennials? Yes. But Joy?

For that, one has to dig a bit deeper. It is in that moment when you realize that all that work of weeding, pruning, dirt under the finger-nails and more is indeed preparation. It is a form of cleaning, of creating purity in the (heart) space, to allow for the light-filled seeds of Joy to take root. And then, a mixture of patience and love, of water and light, blooms forth Joy in the heart at the sight of the first flower (of meditation).

Yes. Joy, while not often seen, takes root within us when we adopt the attitude that the garden is not really for us. We are doing greater work in planting trees, shrubs and seeds  that will outlive our temporary feelings of satisfaction and happiness. We are planting reminders of love and joy.

And perhaps that is what my grandparents were trying to teach me with their garden. It is the sweet perfume of our love for our work that creates Joy. It is That perfume which outlasts and outlives us, and in its farewell,  provides us with the seeds of invitation to return.

So, excuse me as I take your leave. I have to go find a “raatrani” to plant by my front door. A reminder, an invitation to Joy, for my next guest.

Namaste,

Kumud

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cestrum_nocturnum#/media/File%3ANight_blooming_Jasmine_buds.jpg

P.A. Join us as we share some sweet perfume from the garden – in our weekly twitter chat – Sunday, May 6at 9am ET in #SpiritChat – Namaste.

Close Encounters with Joy

Tags

joy, meditation, practice

The nature of life and its living is that we have many interactions on a daily, hourly, minute-ly basis with the external world. Every sound, every visual input, every thought, every item of food and drink, every encounter that our physical senses have with the ‘world’… they all leave an ‘impression’ on us at some level of our existence. Such is the nature of our living that we tend to filter these inputs into categories of ‘positive’, ‘negative’ or ‘neutral’.

But there are some interactions that resist categorization. They are difficult to describe in words, speech or even visuals. The harder we try to describe or classify these encounters, the more they slip away from us. It is like trying to describe that feeling of pure Joy that courses through your being when you see the first dragonfly of a new summer. Or the pure Joy felt while watching the unexpected visit of a hummingbird on newly blooming flowers on the porch. Or the radiance of Joy that leaves you breathless as the sunset sends golden messengers into the evening sky.

I am sure that you have had many such experiences in your life, in your living. Many of them may have been seemingly ‘random’ encounters, a by product of being at the right place at the right time – often called serendipity. But what if we could have deliberate engagements with Joy on a daily, hourly, minute-ly basis? What if we were to approach our (spiritual) practice(s) with the Joy, the energy, the excitement, the indescribable exhilaration that we felt when we (first) realized that we were truly in love? How forward-looking were we then for the next meeting, the next conversation, the next embrace of our beloved!

Imagine what our (inner) world would look like in a month or a year if we were to rise every morning to meet every daily encounter with JOY?! What (more) could we accomplish then with our action(s)? I posit that we can (re)create an intentional close encounter with Joy in every action. And every time the world distracts us, we can immerse ourselves in the heart and declare…

I AM Joy. I belong to IT. It IS me. I AM present in IT. IT is present in me. I AM That.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

I invite you to reunite with us in #SpiritChat on Sunday, July 23rd at 9amET/1pmUTC on twitter – share some of your personal ‘close encounters of the Joy kind’ with us. I share with you some photos of my personal ‘close encounters’…

On Purity and Joy

Tags

december, happiness, joy, purity

The theme and the idea of Joy seems to pervade our consciousness as the Holiday season comes upon us. There is something about the month of December that brings about a subtle transformation, a renewed focus on Joy. In their wonderful book, “The Book of Joy”, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama focus on this subject in their week long conversations with each other. How do we sustainably create Joy for ourselves in troubled and challenging times – this is a question that occupies the heart and mind of these two luminaries…

We often hear the adage – ‘do whatever makes you happy’. At face value, this indeed seems like a reasonably simple attitude with which to live our lives. The implication seems to be that if we are happy within, then we have a good chance at creating happiness for others. The corollary is that the converse is also true. Unhappy people tend to make others around them unhappy.

There is a certain purity in the internal energy of happy people. This purity comes about because they have made a continuous effort to attain, maintain and remain connected to a reservoir of elevated, pure energy – no matter what.
For them, Joy is not merely a December thing. It cannot be. If it were, it would be transient, like the weather, and their reaction to it. It’s warm and sunny, they are happy. It’s cold and rainy, they are unhappy. Their drive through order or online order is messed up – they are unhappy. Their team wins – they are happy. The team that they don’t want to win, wins – they are unhappy. Surely, when it changes from moment to moment, it cannot be Joy, can it?

So, how does one attain the purity and permanence of Joy? One way to answer the question is to imagine a state of Joy. Have you ever experienced it? Or observed it in another person? A pianist or violinist in full flight, an opera singer immersed in their song, a painter or sculptor covered from head to toe with paint and plaster, a chef in the midst of conjuring up a new creation… Joy can indeed be that simple.

Joy can be that moment where we are where we truly want to be, doing what we want to be doing, with the people that we want to be doing it with. There is a certain purity about that moment, yes?

What if we were to string together a few moments of pure Joy every day? What would our string of pure Joy look like in a week, a month, a year from now? Maybe we will discover that the choice to experience a more permament Joy has to be made by us alone. May it will be revealed to us that Joy is a personal journey of the heart. Maybe we will rediscover the purity of purpose that we were all born with.

I invite you to experience Joy through purity with the #SpiritChat community – Sunday, December 11th at 9amET/2pmUTC in our weekly twitter chat. Bring your pearls. We will bring the thread. Together we shall string…

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

An Offering of Joy

Tags

joy, offerings, spiritchat, spirituality

The notion of an offering is something that may be given up by an individual in an act of devotion, with or without expectation of return.

The offering that is made with an expectation of return is more an exchange than an offering. Prayers offered in times of trouble can often take on this tone of an exchange with a higher power. “If you do this or that for me or my family or my friend or my community, then I will do this or that”. It is difficult to discern whether the expectation(s) of the offeror matter or not… as long as the offering is made with a joyous heart.

We often hear and read that the offering that is made with no expectation of return is the ideal form of giving. Better yet, when the giver and receiver are both anonymous, the giving and receiving attain the highest good – this is one sure way to greatly reduce, or eliminate expectation (for the offeror) and indebtedness (for the receiver). When done with joy, this type of offering, regardless of its size, produces gratitude in the heart of the giver – for they are grateful for their ability to give.

I am sure that you have met a few people in your life who radiate so much Joy in their being, by their aliveness and zest for Life, that they leave a lasting impression on you. You look forward to meeting them over and over again – you may even go out of your way to create opportunities to connect with them. In most cases, they may even be blissfully unaware and oblivious of the offering of Joy that their presence creates for those around them. These are the people who bring light to a room by simply walking into it…

Maybe you already are one of those people who make the offering of their being in joy. If so, I am in awe of you because you are living your truth and shining your light for many.

Maybe you are one of those people who are trying to rediscover your joy and what you really have to offer to the world. If so, I am equally, if not more so, in awe of you because you are doing the inner work of polishing your mirror. Your joy is under the surface, covered by the dust of the world. It is revealed occasionally as an offering in love, but your past pain and hurt makes you hesitate to fully live your joy and truth. Most of us are perhaps in this partial state of offering our true self to the world. The notion of joy has become ephemeral and transitory to us. We have become waves who have engraved the truth in our waters that we are indeed separate from the ocean. The joy has gone missing in our offerings.

I have good news for you. This temporary lack of Joy does not need to be our Truth any more. In any moment, maybe even in this very moment, we have the ability to wake up in a different world. A world where there is respect for the word, and we recognize that the word is the seed, and that every seed is an involved tree. A world where we make a conscious offering of our words in a spirit of Joy and unshakable inner peace that was given to us at birth. A world where we reclaim our Joy by performing each of our actions as an offering to a Higher love.

Will we reclaim our peace? Will we make an Offering of Joy with every word? Will we plant good seeds for future generations?

It is time to decide and act. The health of the tree of Life depends on us.

Kumud

P.S. Join us in #SpiritChat Sunday April 10th at 9amET (USA) / 1pm UTC for our weekly twitter gathering ~ Topic: An Offering of Joy