On Emerging into Lightness

Tags

autumn, equanimity, lighness

There is a heaviness in the air as the first dense fog of the season is upon me this morning. Visibility is down to a few dozen feet as I drive out of the neighborhood towards school. However, as soon as I turn on to the Main Street, I barely go a quarter of a mile and it’s absolutely clear. It’s as if I emerged out of a ‘heaviness cocoon’ and into the lightness again. However, my mind cannot seem to shake the experience off that quickly.

The heaviness continues on my weekly walk around the lake after the drop off at school. The grass is heavy with moisture and soaks into my socks. I come under heavy attack by the mosquitoes as I approach the water. The water itself is heavy with algae from shore to shore. A lone mallard duck braves the swamp as she ever so slowly swims in the middle of the green coating formed over the past few weeks. Some of the bushes around the lake are heavy with the last of summer’s berries.

As I cut my walk around the lake a bit short so that my don’t become a feeding trough for the biters, I am beginning to think that today’s walk has been a bit of a wash. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see one my daughter’s teachers coming my way. In all my Friday walks, I have never seen another human on the trail. I feel a bit of lightness at the sight of a fellow traveler. We have a short but nice chat about yellow jackets and mosquitoes, and the scavenger hunt he is setting out for the students.

The encounter lasts for less than a minute, but it helps me turn the corner towards lightness. As if on cue, I notice that the sun is emerging through the gloom. By the time I walk back to my car, the heaviness of a few minutes ago has become a distant memory. All I feel as I journal my morning experience while sitting in the driver’s seat is the lightness infused by the ever-so-brief human interaction with a fellow traveler. The rising warmth from the sun as it crests the tall  trees in the distance confirms my feeling. 

By the time I make the short drive back home, it is as if the fog had merely been a dream. And yet, I knew that it was real because I had seen it with my own eyes, heard its stillness and felt its heaviness in my mind. This wasn’t my first experience of waking up to dense morning fog, and yet I had let it so rapidly blindside my feelings and emotions. How can a single external stimulus send us into heaviness, if ever so briefly? 

And then came more questions. 

What symptoms tend to make us aware that we are in a mental or spiritual ‘fog’? What purpose or message may the energy of lightness our way?  What kind of awareness can we develop so as to preserve our equanimity of lightness?

Autumn is on its way. There will be a lot more fog-laden mornings on the mind’s lake. It’s time for me to find some answers, so that I don’t get blindsided again. How about you?

Kumud

Join us for our weekly gathering with the #SpiritChat community on twitter on Sunday, Sep 5 at 9am ET / 630pm India. We will discuss ways to emerge into lightness… Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

 

The lightness of every rose is unaffected by the thorns that surround it…

On Spiritual Lightness

Tags

lighness, spirituality

“Dad. The Swami was really funny at times… and he must have rehearsed a lot for all the speaking that he did!”

This was my daughter’s comment, as we were leaving the evening session with the visiting speaker from Southern California, who had spoken extensively on a wide range of topics encompassing “practical spirituality”. The fact that Swami Sarvadevananda had managed to communicate his message with a lightness of heart that connected with the mind of a grade-schooler, was a great testament to his communication abilities. It also reiterated what I have read and heard many a time in books and lectures ~ spirituality is serious business that is best conducted with a light-hearted approach.

It so happens that this was the second instance, in the matter of a few days, that this message was communicated to me. A few days ago, I stumbled upon a video which featured a collaboration between Mike Myers (of Saturday Night Live and Austin Powers fame) and Deepak Chopra (pioneer of mind-body medicine ideas and much more). Their conversation centered around an effort to explore the connection between comedy and spirituality. It made me see Mike Myers, the “goofball comedian” in a totally different light in that how he used comedy as a “spiritual practice”. At the end of the documentary, Deepak Chopra commented: “Humor and comedy are our tools to deal with our own mortality”.

We all know the feeling when our hearts are heavy with sorrow, anger, effects of illness, and such; and how an uplifting message from a caring spirit can immediately lighten our load. External conditions like the weather and the seasons can have a similar effect of heaviness or lightness, depending on how our minds and bodies react. In a metaphorical sense, developing a lightness (of spirit) can be interpreted as a practice that can help us travel farther with a given amount of energy. One of my favorite analogies is that of mountain climbing – the higher one goes, the thinner the air becomes, and the more important it is to travel light, so one can keep climbing…

So, what are your thoughts on #lightness and its role in spirituality and your spiritual practice? What are the risks in approaching spirituality with a light-hearted attitude? How do you incorporate #lightness in your actions in your daily life? What are some obstacles to an adoption of #lightness in our home and work environments? What are some ways in spreading the message of #lightness in our communities? How does #lightness affect the process of healing?

On behalf of the #SpiritChat community, I invite you to come and share with us on Sunday, March 15th 2015 at 9am EDT / 1pm GMT on twitter. I will bring some questions, and I encourage you to inspires us with your #lightness and light-hearted approach.

Namaste,

Kumud