On Celebrating Nothing(ness)

Tags

action, celebration, healing, lightness, nothingness

The daily nightsong that begins in the pre-dusk hour with great earnest, has been particularly persistent this season. Over the past few days, I have found myself trying to identify the player(s) of this orchestra through online searches of bird songs, Audubon societies, and more. Truth be told, I have not yielded much, if anything. It is more like a whole lot of nothing.

And then, one night last week, after another round of futile googling of the source(s), I was reminded of Winnie the Pooh…

My favorite thing is to do a whole lot of nothing – for something good often comes out of nothing.

I paused, and asked myself – what is so wrong with not knowing the source(s) of the nightsongs? How about I simply do nothing more than embrace the beauty of the orchestra, without trying to assign name, cause or reason to the sounds and harmonies? What if I were to simply choose to enjoy, even celebrate the gift of spring’s songs, without trying to analyze them?

And so, for the past few nights, the night’s songs that last from dusk to dawn, have taken on new tones, new rhythms, new colors for me. It is as if they have been reborn. I have been opening the windows a bit more, drinking a bit more tea, and simply been sitting in open surrender to the all and the nothing.

The result? The allness and the nothingness have often flooded me, occasionally stopped my breath, flitted a not-knowing smile across my face, and filled me with the very same orange-peach glow that sunset often spreads across the sky at spring’s twilight. I have stopped my wandering and wondering in those few moments, to allow for something good to happen as a result of my celebration of nothing(ness).

Impossible to do, you say? Well. Consider another Winnie the Pooh gem of living wisdom:

They say that nothing is impossible. But I do a bit of nothing every day…

Embrace the impossible moment. I invite you to create time and space, where you do a bit of nothing every day with loving effortlessness. Maybe something good will be created as a result. Maybe, in embracing nothingness, time and space will cease to exist, and be reborn as love. Maybe we will discover that our inner black holes are in fact filled with the allness of light, and that nothingness is simply a portal to That something, which is in fact, everything.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us Sunday April 14 at 9amET, as we embrace nothingness while listening to each others’ songs, drinking tea, and sharing light. Namaste – Kumud

Sunset and twilight – an invitation to celebrate nothing(ness)

Making Light Of Obstacles

Tags

festivals, ganesha, lightness, obstacles, sweetness

The fourth day of the brightening lunar fortnight in September marks the beginning of a ten day festival honoring the divinity named Ganesha in India. If you have been to an Indian household or temple, you may have seen his image prominently displayed in entryways. Ganesha is only one his (one thousand and one) names, and he holds the unique distinction of being the first deity to be invoked in any Vedic prayer service.

The festival begins with a “(re)establishment” of Ganesha in the home or the temple, and in temporary celebratory pavilions set up by communities for the ten days of the festival. Small and large figurines of various degrees of ornateness are created by artisans in the form of paintings and sculptures. The festival begins with an elaborate welcome to Ganesha by the celebrating communities, which is appropriate as he is considered to be the “chief of community groups”.

The popularity of Ganesha’s festival is perhaps because of his status as a “remover of obstacles”. His assistance is deemed particularly useful when embarking on new beginnings or during significant life-events. One distinguishing characteristic of Ganesha is his propensity towards a lightness of spirit, an attitude of playfulness and airiness. The proof of this propensity is that his vehicle of choice for his heavy physical frame is a mouse!

If you have read this far, and this is your first introduction to Ganesha, you are probably wondering – what does all of this have to do with (non-denominational) spirituality? I am glad you asked. Ganesha can be viewed as a representation, a metaphor for our intrinsic joy and lightness. His love for food (particularly, sweet stuff!) is a metaphor for adding sweetness to our lives at every opportunity. His elephant head and human body is a metaphor for the Oneness of all living beings.

Is it possible that by (re)establishing one or more of Ganesha’s qualities within us, that we may learn to make light of our own obstacles in life? When weighed down with our own struggles, do we often lose perspective and forget our heart’s intrinsic lightness? When anger turned to bitterness invades us, do we tend to forget our own inherent sweetness? When our own obstacles starve for our attention, do we tend to lose appetite for empathy towards the problems facing others?

The combination of Ganesha’s qualities of lightness of heart, love of sweetness and insatiable appetite for the offerings (of obstacles) made to him, are perhaps a prescription for us. A prescription to make light of our obstacles, and to help others make light of their own.

And then, like the revered figurines of Ganesha that are taken in grand procession and immersed in waters on the tenth and final day of the festival, we shall celebrate the letting go of, the immersion of our own (revered) obstacle(s) in the waters of lightness…

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us Sunday, September 16 at 9amET / 630pm India for our weekly community gathering on twitter in #SpiritChat. I will bring the sweetness of questions. You can bring the lightness of answers. Namaste. (Wikipedia article about Ganesha’s Festival).

Bees at work – making light of obstacles!

From my home to yours – remover of obstacles…

On Flowering Lightness

Tags

flowers, lightness, spring, summer, walking

It had been a busy spring, and an even busier summer. Family. Work. Travel. Family Travel. Work Travel. And I had slowly gotten away from my regular, almost daily walks on the trails that rarely faired to inspired me to pause, write, take photos, and much more. However, as had often happened before, I knew from personal experience that Nature is patient. And that she would be waiting for me with wide open arms whenever I returned.

And return I did, over the past two weeks. Slowly but surely, like a caterpillar seeded with the knowledge that its truth is to be a butterfly, I emerged into the forest again. The trails welcomed me back with open arms, especially the small ones that were now camouflaged by the overgrowth of summer. As I walked the narrowest ones closest to the river’s edge, the embrace of the tall shrubs forming archways on both sides of me was unmistakable. And with every walk, my heart felt a little lighter, as it found its way away from the heaviness of the world.

But where were all the flowers? The ones who with their sudden appearance around familiar bends, would create a surge of joy and elevate the heart? The yellows surrounding blacks on tall sunflower stems, the whites and blues on short stems staying close to ground? I must have missed their comings and goings as I was busy with the outer world, I thought. Or maybe there were some new surprises in store for me, I surmised. Unfazed, I kept walking in the faith that lightness would bloom in other, yet to be revealed ways.

One of the “trails” forms a figure eight. One loop goes three-fourths of the way, around the river and the other loop, forms the inner arc of a kidney-bean shaped lagoon. A roadway forms part of both the loops, in the form of a long border. I usually walk both loops on any given day, on the advice of a #SpiritChat friend who told me a while back that “walking figure eights energizes the heart” (thank you, @SarahsEnergy). On this day, I first walked the river loop, and then crossed over to the lagoon.

As I approached the lagoon and its still waters to my right, I happened to glance left as a flash of pink and purple caught my eye. It was a single hibiscus plant, with blooms opened towards the sun, hosting some tiny visitors. Aha, I thought. A new flower. I knew that there would be at least one new bloom somewhere that would lighten my heart. As is my wont, I paused to record my ‘discovery’ and take a few photos. But that was merely the preview of what was to come. As if on cue, around the next bend that first arched towards the lagoon and then away from it, was an entire ‘field’ of hibiscus flowers. Hundreds of them, forming a ring around a pond out of which arose tall, branchless, trees (roots of trees?).

A heart-lightening, healing, inspiring sight if there ever was one. And as I kept walking, there were hundreds more. One pond after another. It was as if their seeds might have rained down from the skies in spring, and now they all bloomed in unison at mid-summer. The ‘discovery’ reminded me of what happens sometimes on the inner path. We develop a practice (walking), we get energized by some ‘results’ (flowers), and then we fade away from the practice when we feel that our ‘progress’ has stalled. The outer world squeezes our space, our time and our commitment.

And yet, we know from having personally experienced lightness and joy, that the practice can lighten us again. So, with grace and with remembrance, we return and we recommit. We renew our walk, our practice, by reclaiming a small fraction of space and time. We commit to simply walking in lightness in every step, lightness of heart, for the simple joy of being on our path. We learn to surrender our search for the flowers and the fruits, and let the path embrace us.

It is perhaps in our commitment to simply walk, that the fields of flowers bloom without, unbidden, to remind us of the lightness that can flower within us.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us Sunday, July 22nd at 9amET / 630pm India on twitter for our weekly conversation with the #SpiritChat community. Many of us love flowers and are flowering in the company of each other. Come join us. Namaste.

The first hibiscus…

A hibiscus “field” rings the pond

On Developing Forgetfulness

Tags

forgetfulness, habits, lightness, remembrance

Forgetfulness can be a funny thing. We often joke and laugh about our forgetfulness as we grow older. What did I walk into this room for? Where did I put my keys? What did I eat for lunch yesterday? And so on. There are also things (events) that we would like to forget. However, that is easier said than done. The things we want to forget tend to stick to us like algae on rocks. The river of time flows over the rocks, trying to dislodge the algae, but often to no avail. The harder the river tries, the faster the algae seems to want to cling. Such can be the nature of our attempts at developing “voluntary” forgetfulness.

From a mental health perspective, forgetfulness isn’t funny at all. The growth of memory related diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia, poses serious challenges to our health systems, to families and to communities as a whole. The financial costs related to the treatments of these disease is conservatively estimated in the billions of dollars in the USA alone. The nature of “involuntary” forgetfulness is that it leads to memory and cognitive loss, which, in most cases, is irreversible.

The classification of forgetfulness as “voluntary” and “involuntary” is perhaps arbitrary. From a spiritual health perspective, what is perhaps important to ask is – how skilled are we at forgetting what we need to forget? Once we have learnt what we needed to learn from a particular event, how long do we keep it around in our awareness? In many instances, our brain helps us out by deciding what to immediately discard. The rest of the ‘life-stuff’ then gets filed into short-term, medium-term or long-term storage. The challenge is that we forget what got filed where.

When I moved into my previous home, I brought boxes full of stuff with me that ended up in the basement. There must have been at least two or three dozen of them, of various sizes. I had attempted to label them as best I could, so that I would know what was in them without having to open them. Fourteen years later, at least half of those unopened boxes ended up in a storage unit, in preparation for my next move. I had forgotten that I had filed away my “life-stuff”. My rationale was – maybe, someday, I may need what’s in them.

Some memories are like that. Their impression on us, our clinging to them, runs deep. The deeper the impressions, whether from pain or happiness, the harder it is for us to forget. Their depths become our comfort spaces, the valleys in which we go to hide from the world. And the more we (re)visit those spaces, the deeper they become with our fresh treads. So, how do we break the cycle? How do we make sure that the unopened boxes don’t make it into the basement of our next home?

We may have to make a decision to lighten our load, to develop voluntary forgetfulness towards certain ‘things’. Our decision may create room for other ‘things’, preferably those which leave a lighter imprint than the ones they replace. How may we do this? Any current practice, which is ‘working’ for us, can help us. For example, in meditation, we can decide to ‘forget’ the outer world and our river of ‘problems’. If we can commit to this for even for a few (tens of) minutes a day, we can create space — for remembrance in our inner world.

One unopened box at a time, we can choose to develop forgetfulness and empty our storage unit. Our new home’s basement will be grateful.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat in #SpiritChat – Sunday, July 8th at 9amET / 630pm India. I will make sure not to forget the tea and snacks, and questions. Looking forward to ‘seeing’ you. Namaste.

The hydrangea finally blooms… when it has (perhaps) finally forgotten about what winter was like…

On Traveling Light

Tags

journey, lightness, travel

The metaphor of traveling is often used to describe our passage through daily living, and our lives in general. Some folks take naturally to traveling, and even have a strong affinity and liking to it, while others are more ‘meh’ about the whole idea. Regardless of our preferences for travel itself, our experiences have taught us that ‘traveling light’ is much easier than traveling with ‘excess baggage’.

In the life-metaphor context, traveling light takes much practice. A lot of it. We tend to accumulate, to collect, to even hoard things like feelings, experiences, judgements, rejections and much more. Every so often, even on a single day that might have started off on a ‘light-hearted’ and upbeat mode for us, we find ourselves ‘weighed down’ by the end of the day. Sometimes we barely reach mid-morning and we are already ‘traveling heavy’. Have you ever had this experience? Have you ever wondered why?

It is easy to assign blame to the external world when we feel ‘weighed down’. Then again, the world is relatively agnostic to our inner state, i.e. our traveling preferences. The outer world provides us with all kinds of opportunities – both positive and negative – that can help us subtract from or add to our cumulative traveling weight. For example, the choice to take a short, brisk walk outside at some point in our day is as much available to most of us, as is the choice not to take that walk. In this case, our choice will determine whether we lighten our load or not.

What are some other daily life choices that can ehlp us lighten our load and travel light? Here are a few choices to consider…

1. Invoke Joy. When the world begins to weigh heavy on us with its demands, we can remind ourselves to invoke Joy in our heart. “I choose to do this with Joy” can instantly lighten our load.

2. Grow your Peace. When the world swamps us with its heaviness through discord and dissonance, we can choose to continue to plant seeds of peace within. This is where our commitment to our daily (spiritual) practice(s) can play a significant part.

3. Observe your patterns. Our thoughts, our food intake, our media consumption, our spending habits and more. They can all reveal the ‘traveling habits’ of our lives. Are our patterns trending towards increasing or decreasing complexity? Heaviness or Lightness?

4. Choose your energy footprint. Are we brightening or darkening the space that we enter? Does our presence weigh heavy or light on those we connect with on a daily basis? A quick self-check of our heart-state can often inform us if it is light or heavy. Rest assured that it is that very heart-state that becomes our energy footprint.

I am sure that you can think of many more choices that put you in a ‘light’ state of travel. The more aware we are of these choices, the better our odds of ‘traveling light’. And when we choose to travel light, those around us appreciate us more, we enjoy the journey more, and we arrive rested and relaxed!

Namaste, and happy travels!

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Please join me and the #SpiritChat community as we explore ‘Traveling Light’ – Sunday, December 3rd at 9amEST / 2pm UTC / 7:30pm IST on twitter. Thank you!

‘Traveling Light’ on a walk through the local Metroparks…

Abundance in Spirituality

Tags

abundance, lightness, spirtuality

What can an attitude of abundance bring to our daily life? This question is perhaps best answered when we are knee deep in a lack of abundance. It is often easy for us to get into the “lack” mode when life isn’t quite going the way we expect it to. It is when we reach for the peanut-butter jar – and end up scraping the bottom – that we appreciate the abundance of the full-to-the-brimness that we had enjoyed recently. How easily we take all the wonderfully abundant ‘things’ for granted in our life, don’t we?

If we have an abundance of clean air to breathe or fresh water to drink and shower with or nourishing food to eat – we can be grateful. If we have an abundance of all three, we are perhaps in a small minority on this earth. If we have an aboundance of healthy relationships (friends, family, neighbors) or good personal health and energy levels or vocations that afford us a good standard of living, we can be grateful. If we have an abundance of all three, we are perhaps in a small minority considered super-abundant. Yet, we are often unaware of these simple abundances, aren’t we?

There is something unique about a self-awareness of abundance. It provides lightness to the heart. The more that we become aware of our simple abundances, the less we tend to focus on what we lack. The less we focus on our lack, the more our heart attracts Joy. Abundance helps us become like the flower that revels in the Joy of its own color and fragrance. It is this Joy that eventually attracts Grace. The bees come visiting, sit lightly with our lightness, and create and spread even more abundance.

It all begins by celebrating the abundance that we already have in our life right now. We can then experience lightness in our heart and soundness of mind. Lightness of heart helps make available valuable emotional energy that we can direct towards creativity. Have you ever noticed that when your heart is heavy, in emotional churn, that your productivity drops off drmatically? I know that mine does. The quicker I return my heart to abundance, the easier it is for me to get out of my own way and start walking in Joy again.

I invite you to join me in a self-test. Let us ask these questions, everyday for the next seven days. In what area(s) of my life do I feel most abundant? Did I share lack or did I share abundance with others? What actions made my heart feel light, abundant? How can I include more of abundance-creating activities in my daily routine? Let us observe our answers, and watch if our daily actions change to create more abundance for us, and those around us.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join me as I host the #SpiritChat weekly chat on twitter, Sunday August 27th at 9amET/1pmUTC. We shall celebrate the small abundance(s) in our life, and share some cheer and lightness with each other.

A Butterfly Enjoys Simple Abundance…

A Spirit of Reunion

Tags

lightness, poetry, reunion, spirituality, summer

I had been so busy with writing the technical paper and then putting the presentation together for the upcoming Aerospace conference that I had not walked the forest in almost two weeks. As I waited at the light at the bottom of the hill where I would normally go up the other side towards the West Gate and in to work, I glanced to my right and saw the bridge gleaming in the sunshine. Something tugged at my heart and said, come visit. We miss you.

So, I turned left at the light, parked in the first available space, and crossed over to the other side. On to the bridge, where now the clouds were playing hide and seek with the trusses. The lack of rain over the past few weeks had almost run the river aground, but not quite. I decided to turn right immediately after the bridge, with the idea of climbing the steep hill to walk the trail on the plateau above. But, it was not to be. The river had other plans for me. Ever so imperceptibly, she slowed down my walk, and brought me to a standstill.

And then, the flow of words began. I paid attention, listened, and wrote… I share a few of them with you.

The river runs so shallow
Yet the hill still rises steep
In walking these old trails
What new promises do I keep?

The air so still
Yet the singing of birds deep
I take in all the stillness
Into my core does the Joy sink deep; 

I stopped wondering long ago
Who is this muse that comes calling,
Amid the crescendo of the cicadas 
In the silence of the water falling; 

The invitation on some mornings
Is simply too powerful to resist
I try going towards the sun, 
but am imperceptibly lured by the mist; 

I came to walk long trails
Yet she has me rooted, standing still
Sit with me a while and visit she says 
Save for another day, the fragile hill; 

Summer is only here for so long
Like a firefly her light is fleeting
I am so honored that you invited me to stay
You raised my spirits with this brief meeting; 

If you will just stay that little bit longer 
Beneath the waters lie many a great treasure
So many dream of an endless summer
Yet of this moment they take little measure...

On this day, I experienced a beautiful reunion with nature, in a quiet oasis that invited me to be still. I arrived ‘empty handed’, yet left with a great treasure of poetry, peace, and a reminder to not stay away for too long. Have you participated in any reunions lately? Are you planning any in the near future? And how about your inner reunion with Joy, Awareness and Pure Existence? How do you experience That (re)union on a regular, even daily basis? Or have you forgotten…

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

I invite you to reunite with us in #SpiritChat on Sunday, July 16th at 9amET/1pmUTC on twitter – and particularly so if you have been away for a while. We hope you will bring some goodies to share.

The nature trails called, and I answered… only to stand still in reunion

On Light and Levity

Tags

levity, light, lightness, perspective, spirtuality

Two books – “Questions for the Dalai Lama” (library digital edition) and “The Mastery of Love” (library analog edition) merged into a powerful stream this week. “Light and Levity” emerged from reading them concurrently and alternately, interspersed with a few notes from walking among the profusion of Life springing up in some new areas of the local forest…

And then one day we will wake up and decide that we are done with punishing them for their long past mistake(s). We have been carrying this burden of being judge and jury for as long as we can remember. They may no longer even be the person that we think or imagine they were. For all intents and purposes, the person who heaped all that hurt and pain and suffering and grief upon us, all of which was justifiable and (still may be) very real for us – may be long ‘dead’ and gone. Yet, we remain. Transfixed by the past.

We may not admit it, but, to a large extent, we all choose the burdens that we wish to carry – and we have been carrying some of these burdens for so long that they have become part of our identity. We cannot imagine our forward motion or movement without this burden. The burden lowers our center of gravity and may even give us (temporary) added stability, like the sandbags that we throw in the back of our trucks to give us traction on icy pavements. But, is winter not yet over for us? Did we forget that it is spring time, the ice has melted, and that it’s okay to shed those sandbags which do not serve any more purpose?

Yes. Gravity has a purpose, but so does levity. When gravity threatens to whelm us, wash our joys away in an emotional current like the swiftly moving river swollen temporarily with overnight rain carrying away everything in her path – levity and light can be a safe haven for us.

We can choose a different perspective. We can choose to lighten our burden and reframe our vision. Instead of looking down upon ourselves in gravity, or looking behind at the hurts and pains of our past, we can reframe our view. We can bridge the wisdom of levity with the compassion of the future.

A change in perspective is often our friend. It can remind us to be kind to our own selves, to treat our own selves with a bit less gravity and a bit more levity. Consider: if we forget how to occasionally laugh at our own selves and smile at our own infirmities and frailties, how will we find the courage to chose to lighten our dead-weight burdens?

Light and levity beckon to us. They are like the steps leading up to ‘Indian Hill’ that come into view as we round the blind corner on the trail, on a day when we had only planned to ‘walk the flats’ to rest our aching feet from a week of walking the forest…

What is a seeker to do when invited? To climb or not to climb? Is That even a question?! Do I even need to describe the new light and levity gained from walking the forest at the top of That hill?

Kumud

P.S. Join us in #SpiritChat Sunday May 1st at 9amET (USA) / 1pm UTC for our weekly twitter gathering ~ Topic: Light and Levity ~ Hosted by @AjmaniK ~ Light, Levity, Lightness and Perspective will be our themes for May…

On Light and Lightness

Tags

light, lightness, spiritchat, spirituality

The last week of October and the first week of November usually bring a confluence of festivals and celebrations for our household. The five days of the “Festival of Lights” (Diwali) and the many variants of “Halloween” (harvest, trick or treat, scary stories and more) are enjoyed in their various forms and manifestations by the intergenerational and intercultural mixture of folks in our home and our community of family and friends. This year, the entire final week of October seemed to be occupied with light, levity, laughter and lightness.

So, it was natural that my Saturday morning “meditation” about a topic for our Sunday morning twitter chat brought me to “Light and Lightness”. The idea that Light is an important element of our existence cannot be understated. Natural light, provided by the Sun, is said to sustain the existence of all living beings. There is a lot of scientific evidence which shows that the presence of natural Light influences our mood, our activity levels, our ability to heal, and more.

The idea of “inner” Light also finds favor among those who have experienced it as part of their spiritual practice. When I consider the concept of enLightened souls, I think of individuals who have succeeded in removing all “darkness” from their words, their actions, their being. The notional lighting of lamps in the “Festival of Lights” emerges from this striving – to help us remove “inner darkness”, also called tamas. As I try and connect Diwali and Halloween traditions, I find it interesting that pumpkin décor follows a similar notion. The “inside” (of the pumpkin) is removed, and a candle or light is placed within to make the pumpkin glow from the inside out 🙂

Light creates a feeling of Lightness in our spirit, doesn’t it? When we see the sunrise, or the full moon on a dark night, it tends to elevate our spirit. Darkness creates a feeling of heaviness. There is perhaps a good physical reason for this. Physics tells us that Light particles, called photons, are perhaps the lightest “particles” known in existence. Is that why exposure to outer or inner light, has the ability to alleviate any heaviness that we may be feeling in mind or spirit? Like the enlightened master, Osho has so eloquently stated on the role of lightness in attaining wisdom:

“Wisdom is light”. We many not need any more proof of the importance of being light-hearted, shedding our heaviness, our unnecessary seriousness, so that we may rise in our lightness, like a photon of light.

We will explore the interplay of Light and Lightness some more in our weekly #SpiritChat. Join us Sunday, November 2nd at 9am EST / 2pm UTC / 7:30pm India for our weekly conversation on twitter. Note the time shift to 2pm UTC because of a one hour time shift in most of North America on November 2nd.

Until then, I wish you the best of Light, and a Lightness of being that inspires your spirit and all those that you connect with,

Kumud

A Spirit of Good Humor

Tags

humor, lightness, silliness, spirituality

Our everyday spiritual practice is usually considered as a fairly serious pursuit. The conversations about mindfulness, self-awareness, meditation, silence, stillness and such, tend to invoke a sense of deep inner reflection. There is rarely a notion of humor or lightness in our sometimes intense chats. However, it need not be so.

A few weeks ago, in the chat titled “stillness and silence”, one of our participants, @LoisMarketing came into the chat and commented that she had misread stillness as silliness! A few more tweets later, here we are. Ready to explore the idea of silliness, of play, of humor, of laughter – as a spiritual practice, in a full conversation in #SpiritChat 🙂 In the context of healing, we have all heard the adage that “Laughter is the best medicine”, haven’t we?

Swami Vivekananda has said in one of his lectures that spirituality has very little to do with seriousness. In fact, he says that the more spiritual progress we make, the ‘lighter’ we tend to become internally. When we get rid of the heavy baggage of anger, resentment, desire that controls us, extreme attachment, pain that causes inordinate suffering, and more – it would imply that we would become ‘lighter’ within, wouldn’t we? And then, our lighter being within emerges as a lighter attitude and aptitude without. We tend to smile more, we tend to be more kind, we tend to uplift others more, cheer them up more – for when we are cheerful inside, it spills over and floods the senses of those around us 🙂

In the context of living a healthy life, the phrase good humor used to imply the physical state of health, as also the ‘state of mind’ of a person. If the mind and body are in good humor, can the heart and spirit be that far behind? It is no coincidence that when we read a funny joke, watch a movie full of great comedy that makes us smile from ear to ear or laugh out loud, that our entire being feels is uplifted! Being in good humor seems to awaken something deep within us – a sense of abandon, of exploration, of discovery, of optimism, of the goodness of life and living it. A spirit of good humor attracts all that is good, because very few people or blessings want to be around those who are in bad humor, don’t you think?

It may not be easy for us, surrounded by, and feeling weighed down by, all that is happening in the world, near and far, to retain our good humor. Sometimes, our good humor, persistent as it may be, may be misjudged or misinterpreted as a pollyanna attitude. However, if we acknowledge that Joy is our natural state, our inheritance, our birthright, then a sense of good humor opens the door for us to return to it. There is no other path to truth, to an open heart, to lasting joy, without the help of good humor, is there?

In the context of our Sunday conversations, this Sunday, September 28th 2014, we will have some fun, with a sense of good humor. We will play. We will be silly. We will laugh and make others laugh. I hope you can join us at 9am ET / 1pm UTC / 6:30pm India on twitter in #SpiritChat – and don’t forget to bring your sense of humor. See you then!

Kumud

Here are some questions contributed by @LoisMarketing for our conversation – we will draw from these – Thanks, Lois! 🙂

1. How does humor play a role in your spiritual life? Or does it?
2. When has a sense of humor helped diffuse a difficult situation in your life?
3. What makes you laugh? How to you 'escape' life's pressures?
4. Everyone has their favorite comedian, movie comedy, classic TV sitcom. Share some of your favorites.
5. Do you perhaps take life a bit too seriously? How can you relax and unwind more? 
6. Is humor missing from your life? Or someone else's? How can you rediscover it?