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

On Empowerment and Equinox

Tags

empowerment, equinox, happiness, healing, joy, spirituality

May we not be so attached to “winter” so as to let slip the opportunity to experience the beauty of the transition to “spring”. May we experience the empowering invitation, to walk through the balancing portal called the Equinox.

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The pre-dawn symphony often begins with the call of a single lark – the one who feels the dawn coming for all of the others, and strikes the first chord of hope I the forest

And then, slowly, languidly, perhaps even reluctantly, one or two other dwellers rise and join in on support

But, in this really early hour where it is still more dark than light, and the stars are still out along with the almost full moon high in the sky, filtering her light through the tree branches laden with new buds, the symphony often dies after a minute or two, for the heaviness of sleep and the fog of winter weighs heavy….

The songbird bides her time… and waits… and stirs her lungs again after what seems a quarter of an hour… for I am waiting, lying in bed, mostly awake, for the sparks of sound to light up the forest again, and she duly obliges with a serenade which is, this time around, irresistible to the bird village…

A symphony worthy of welcoming the sunrise ensues and the distant church bells join in as if on cue to conjoin the opening of the human world with that of the natural world… and what had once seemed interminable has been yet again declared to be impermanent and transient…

Arise, Awake, declares the Equinox. It is time to transition.

To a season of your choosing. Whatever season calls to you.

To a healing of your choosing. Are not pain and suffering mere calls to healing?

To happiness and joy of your choosing. Will we hear their call in our stillness?

To walk, run, swim, travel… or any activity of our choosing. A call to action based in purpose.

To beliefs, values, and faith of your choosing. What is it that calls to you?

To a life of the living of your choosing. Will we hear the call to Life?

Will you walk through the portal? Will you choose empowerment offered by the Equinox? What will you choose? Will your new or renewed actions reflect your choices?

The time is now.
Choose with courage.
For it takes courage to choose love.
Life and light, hang in the balance.

Sound your call.
Your symphony awaits.
Fill the skies with your song prints…

The Equinox is here to listen. To Empower with love.

Kumud @AjmaniK

Join us Sunday, March 20th 2016 (Equinox – day of equal light), in our weekly conversation on twitter in #spiritchat – to celebrate a journey to empowerment. Hosted by @AjmaniK. Special greetings to all those observing Palm Sunday…

The Spirit of Oneness

Tags

faith, infinite, joy, love, oneness

In his “Sadhana : The Realisation of Life”, poet, writer, nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore eloquently says..

“Within us we have a hope which always walks in front of our present narrow experience; it is the undying faith in the infinite in us; it will never accept any of our disabilities as a permanent fact; it sets no limit to its own scope; it dares to assert that man has oneness with God; and its wild dreams become true every day.”

-Rabindranath Tagore

As I read and re-read the above paragraph, so many concepts and ideas seem to speak to me. The idea of hope. The idea of undying faith. The idea that the infinite within us will never accept any of our disabilities as permanent. The idea that we, our spirit, our faith, sets no limit to its own scope. And, in a final, glorious pronouncement, Tagore concludes that we, our spirit, dares to assert our Oneness with God… and it is in this assertion, that our wild dreams become true every day. 

So inspiring, isn’t it? This idea, which is more than a mere idea – for when we meditate on it, believe in it, experience it, practice it, imbibe it into our everyday lives – it becomes a living, breathing thing. This idea of Oneness. This idea that is more than a dream – it is a reality. The reality is that there is more in common among us, among me and my fellow humans, among me and the billions of people that you and I have never met – or will ever meet. Yes, there is more than unites us than divides us. 

The Oneness that permeates us is perhaps what brings a smile to the baby’s lips as they sleep. The Oneness that permeates us is perhaps what gently closes our eyes, and takes us to lands of peaceful rest, and wakes us up gently when it is time to awaken. The Oneness that permeates us opens our heart to joy, to compassion, to service, to empathy, to sympathy, and above all, to Love. 

Even science is waking up to the realisation that it is Oneness that can tie the strings of all scientific theories together. In fact, Tagore had written further on in the same essay…

“Through our progress in science the wholeness of the world and our oneness with it is becoming clearer to our mind. When this perception of the perfection of unity is not merely intellectual, when it opens out our whole being into a luminous consciousness of the all, then it becomes a radiant joy, an overspreading love.”

-Rabindranath Tagore

Our intuition tells us that Science and Spirituality are not separate – it is a matter of perception and manifestation that they may appear to be separate – but, indeed they are tied together with Oneness. Science may look for the so-called “God particle” – and some may claim that it has already been found – but it is merely a matter of when and not if the final confluence will be confirmed by Science. We are not going to wait for Science to confirm this Oneness – are we?! Tagore encourages us – to go beyond Science, through science and the merely intellectual – to open our whole being into a luminous consciousness…

So, I invite you – those of you who have read this far, to join me and the #SpiritChat community in a twitter chat on Sunday April 27th 2014 at 9amEDT in a discovery, a celebration, an experience of radiant joy, an expression of overspreading love – of Oneness. 

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. The entire text of the essay is available for free at ibooks: Rabindranath Tagore. “Sadhana : the realisation of life.”

P.P.S. The word sadhana is translated as “that which is attained or accomplished by devoted practice ; the act of practice"

//storify.com/ajmanik/spirit-of-oneness-spiritchat-summary/embed?border=false//storify.com/ajmanik/spirit-of-oneness-spiritchat-summary.js?border=false[View the story “Spirit of Oneness – #SpiritChat Summary” on Storify]

On Colors and Celebrations

Tags

celebration, color, healing, joy, spirituality

Our lives are full of color, and color seems to surround us wherever we go. In nature, the sky and the clouds, the sun and the moon (and even the distant stars, when we look at them up close), the earth and trees – they all have their unique colors, and may even exhibit different colors during different seasons. The same goes for plants, flowers, animals, and so forth…

The science of color is fairly straightforward – we have the three primary colors – red, green and blue (RGB), and a seemingly infinite combination of colors can be derived from them. Perhaps, the most well-known example of this color-mixing is the rainbow – seven colors, derived from the three primary colors, all arranged in a beautiful, composite illustration. Each color is important in the composite – the rainbow would not be complete if you took out any one color, would it? No one color is necessarily ‘better’ than another – we may have an affinity for violet or green or orange or red – but, they all are significant in their own way. They all matter.

The rainbow of humanity can be viewed in the same way. In our physical, financial, emotional and spiritual lives, we are all of a different color – in the sense that each of us are unique state. If violet were a ‘low’ state and ‘red’ were a high state (you can switch the order if you like), we all are somewhere along the spectrum, in the different areas of our lives. So, take a moment. Think about your physical health. Where along the spectrum are you? Where would you like to be? You can repeat the exercise for your financial, emotional and spiritual health, and other areas of your life.

The Color Wheel (via Wikipedia)

Now, if I were to ask all of you to take all those colors from your self-exam of the four primary areas, and add them all up, what is the final color you would get? (need help with color mixing? Try this tool :)) Let me theorize that the resulting color represents the composite, holistic aggregate of your health. The present. And the composite color of where you would like to be, represents our future. And the spiritual journey that we are going to undertake, will take us from the present, to our future. For some, the present and the future may be the same. They may feel that they have arrived. For some, there may be some gap between the color of the present and the color of future.

I am here to tell you, that it is all, cause for celebration. As long as we are not color-blind, and we are aware of the color that our spirituality represents, and the color of that others’ spiritual health represents, we can celebrate. What are we celebrating? The fact that no matter what the color, we are all part of the bigger rainbow, and that no one color – in thought, word or action – can be discarded, without affecting the rainbow.

So, that is what the Celebration of Colors (an Indian Festival called Holi) has come to mean to me. An awareness of our humanity, our uniqueness, our commonalities, our communities, and above all our colors!

I hope you agree, that that is cause for celebration!

Kumud

P.S. Join the weekly gathering of our global, colorful, #SpiritChat community on Sunday, March 16th at 9amEDT on twitter for a “Celebration of Colors”. If you wish, I also invite you to create a “collage of color”, which we can then share with the community on twitter. If enough of you create and share collages, maybe we can create a mega-collage, to celebrate our community. Thank you.

Here are the questions asked during the live chat. The answers are compiled in the storify summary. A full, complete transcript is also available at the hashtracking site (802 tweets, 71 contributors, 3.0M timeline deliveries, 0.37M reach). Enjoy!

Q1. Ready to Color? Visualize a box of crayons. What feelings does it evoke within you? #SpiritChat http://t.co/grX42xgzmB

Q2. How often, and how, do you engage or 'play' with #color in your daily life? #SpiritChat

Q3. If a rainbow is nature's color spectrum, what color are you drawn to in it (if any)? Why? #SpiritChat http://t.co/xhqZ3SUFjC

Q4. If violet is 'low' and red is 'high', where are you on the scale of "celebration" right now? Why? #SpiritChat

Q5. At times, what may prevent us from celebrating (with) our true colors? How to overcome? #SpiritChat

Q6. "Single, solid colors represent a higher  awareness than a mixture..." Agree or disagree? Why? #SpiritChat

Q7. Many vital 'things' - air, water, love, joy - are 'colorless' - so is color even important? Why #SpiritChat

Q8. How can our actions add color to the lives of those around us, our communities? #SpiritChat

Bonus Q9. To those looking for reason(s) to celebrate today, you would say... #SpiritChat