Choosing to Remember

Tags

choices, memory, remembrance, spirituality, urgency

In Indian culture, the two week period following the full moon in September is a period of ‘remembering our ancestors’. This year, the two week period begins on September 11. In the USA, that date has a remembrance connection of its own since 2001 (‘Never Forget’). For many of us, we may choose not to remember, or remember selectively, particularly when remembering is connected to pain, trauma, and the lowering of our inner vibration at large.

This raises the question – what is worth remembering? How do we best remember, in what way, so that it elevates us and the energy of those around us? Is it enough to simply remember, or can we do more with the wisdom bridge constructed for us by our ancestors? Some reflections came to me on these choices during my Friday walk. Do allow me to share.

Give ‘remembrance of the divine’ a chance to shine in you, on you, to light up your being from within and without, to let you become happier, to arrive at the awareness that the meeting can happen. Yes, You, your I, may have to disappear in the process, and then only the memory of the perfection of That shall remain — and the meeting may not happen anyway. And yet, you would have remembered, and that imprint shall remain for eternity.

Why would we rather forget? Sometimes it feels like we are walking the same paths, the same trails, over and over again… and we may tend to wonder why we keep doing so? What is the purpose? Remember that these doubts on the path are of the logical mind, the domain of reasoning overtaking our heart. What is worth remembering is the choice to walk, to practice, and not the the result itself.

If we more often than not, if not always, feel better about our state, feel lighter, feel less connected to the ego and more connected to the divine after our walk, is that not enough to keep walking? Of course, if said path makes us feel heavier, more connected to anger and despair, then we may want to consider a different walk or habit, is it not? Better to forget that path of heaviness, yes?

At the end of the walk came the message of urgency. The opportunities and invitations to remember the purity of your soul, the purity of the souls of our ancestors, will be few and far between. We think that we will have time to walk towards the divine ‘later’. We tell ourselves we are not ‘ready’ yet. Is that really our truth? What is going to happen ‘later’? If we don’t change our awareness and make a conscious choice, how will we remember to create time from our ‘honey gathering’ in life, create space from all our entanglements with the world, to walk our destiny?

The message from the walk was that remembering takes work. The amount of work of course depends on our current state and where we want to be. That’s where free will and choice come in. Like grandma used to say, ‘We have no one else to point a finger at, for when we do so, let us remember that four fingers point back at us’. Is today going to be the day we stop pointing fingers, even at ourselves, and choose to wake up to our potential for peace, harmony and an attitude of cooperation with others who are on their own path?

I invite you to accept the invitation. Arise, Awake, and Remember the intrinsic purity of the soul. It’s an empowering choice, isn’t it?

These chrysanthemums came full bloom in the front yard in early September… they chose to remember that it was their time…

Kumud

P.S. Thank you for reading. I invite you to share your responses in the comments and/or join us for our weekly gathering on twitter with the #SpiritChat community, Sunday Sep 11 at 9amET / 1pmGMT/ 630pm India. Namaste. ~ AjmaniK

Do You Remember?

Tags

clarity, memory, mental health, mind matters, nutrition, purity, remembrance

As I was doing some early spring cleaning of the audio recordings on my phone, I came across a Vedanta lecture titled “Do You Remember?” from a 2017 visit by Swami Tyagananda to Cleveland. I remember his visit clearly, and the impact it had on me, and so, in this week of remembrance of my Mother’s transition, I decided to listen again. Allow me to share some highlights from the talk.

The phrase ‘Do you remember?’ was often used as a greeting by a particular senior monk when he met other monks. The question served as a reminder to the monks — to think back to their energy, enthusiasm and idealism when they first decided to become a monk. Of course, the analogy can be extended to us – do we remember the excitement when we first stepped into a project, relationship or spiritual journey in our lives? How does our current enthusiasm compare with that of when we began?

The opposite of remembrance is forgetfulness. What makes us forget? Let us examine. As humans, we tend to form attachments because they make us feel more safe, give us security. With attachments, come desires and expectations – we want people to act and behave in certain ways. When these desires aren’t met, we tend to respond with irritation, and then anger. Anger changes us, and causes us to act in ways contrary to our nature — we can become anger itself. Anger creates delusion — a state of mind where we lose awareness, forget what is appropriate, forget how to live and how to think.

This is the process of forgetfulness according to the Bhagavad Gita. Attachment, unfulfilled desires, anger, delusion, forgetfulness, loss of memory — we forget who we are. So how does one strengthen the memory and the mind? We strengthen the awareness of what we feed our mind. We are often very mindful of physical health, and the quality and purity of what we feed our body. The mind-body connection also gives us feedback from our mind about what we are feeding the body.

But what about what we are feeding the other senses that directly feed our mind? What is the purity and quality of the books we read, the media we consume, the conversations with our friends and family, and such? In order to strengthen the mind, the mind needs our commitment to purity in all the ways we feed it. It is that daily commitment through our spiritual practices, of awareness of the ‘junk food’ we feed our mind, that will help keep the mind in good health and keep our memory strong. With a strong memory, we won’t easily yield to delusion, anger, desires and attachments, because we will have clarity of mind. With clarity of mind, remembrance of our values, our principles, our purpose, and our path, will become our lifestyle.

May our practices be such that they yield an unqualified Yes to the question – ‘Do you remember your true Self?’

Namaste.

Kumud

P.S. Join us in our weekly twitter chat with the #SpiritChat community, Sunday February 20 at 9amET / 730pm India. I will remember to bring tea and questions – you bring the cookies! – @AjmaniK

The rose – a great example of the mind and its thorns…

On Living Memorials

Tags

inheritance, legacy, memorial day, memory, remembrance

My search for a topic for the weekly chat usually begins around the middle of every week. During most weeks, the topic that I have picked out on Wednesday or Thursday is rarely the final topic that I pick on Friday evening or Saturday. The process of picking the topic isn’t exactly cerebral — it is an amorphous, heart-energy driven act of deep listening. This week was no different. By Friday evening, the topic had gone from ‘welcoming traditions’ on Wednesday to ‘remembrance’ on Thursday to something related to Memorial Day’ on Friday evening.

Saturday morning’s meditation happened to be filled with the ‘Memorial Day’ thought-parade. This mental chatter is actually predictable every week, particularly If I don’t write the weekly cover post by Friday night before bed. Today’s thought-stream was filled with suggestions and questions about how to frame the Sunday conversation. As I emerged from the ‘meditation’ that really wasn’t that still or silent, I noted down the questions that had flowed to me. And then, as I sat outside with my tea, I was prompted  to try something different in lieu of the usual weekly blog post.

I decided to share the questions about ‘Living Memorials’ that came to me during the morning meditation. I don’t believe I have ever shared potential chat questions in the weekly blog post on the Saturday before the live chat on Sundays. And yet, I thought — why not? Maybe it would inspire folks to reflect a bit more deeply about this special Sunday in the USA. Maybe it would inspire them to write and share a blog post of their own, or privately journal about the idea of a “Living Memorial” over the weekend. Maybe it would take the pressure off of those who valiantly try to keep track of, and try to answer every question during the live chat!

So, without further do, here goes. On Living Memorials. Some questions for you. They are in no particular order other than ’stream of awareness’.  I invite you to sit with them. 

• What is the best memorial we can build to our spiritual inheritance? Our spiritual teachers?
• How can we truly live in memoriam of those who have nurtured us in life so far?
• Is it possible to build a living memorial to honor the forgotten? Why or why not?
• Memorials which hold great importance to us often create a great sense of attachment. What is the psychological, emotional, spiritual impact of memorials?
• Public and private memorials. What are the similarities and differences in the creating, the living of each one.
• If and when they look upon how we lived — what would their memorial to us say about our legacy….
• Physical memorials have been built by mankind for centuries. Why may this be so?
• Some memorials are expressions of gratitude for those who sacrificed. Others are remembrances of those who perished… How can we best honor both in our daily actions?
• The greatest acts of remembrance are done by those who ______ for those who _____
• What kind of memorial, if any, could be ‘constructed’ about humanity’s response to the current pandemic? Should there even be one? Why?

I hope you will take one or more questions and do a deep dive into the answer. Maybe the answer will change color with every sunrise and sunset over the next few days. I invite you to share some of your answers — either in the live chat Sunday at 9amET in #SpiritChat or through any other medium you choose to share in. If you have questions to share about the subject, I welcome them too.

Namaste, and Stay Safe!

Kumud

Nature is a living memorial to life and all that sustains it…

On Loving Remembrance

Tags

love, memorial day, memory, remembrance

How are our memories created? Where do our memories reside? What makes certain memories indelible while others fade away over time? How do the memories of those we love, those we live with, affect our lives? What is the best way to pause and honor the memory of those whom we never knew, but who made great sacrifices for us?

Some of these questions filtered through my head as I sat in the parked car, contemplating the path I was going to walk in the forest yesterday. I thought of the questions, and then let them go with love in the breeze, as I began the walk towards the river. A few minutes later, I was at one my favorite junctions, and the choice lay ahead – to walk the broad familiar or the unexplored narrow. I did not have my best walking shoes on, so, as if to say ‘what of that’, I chose the latter.

I followed the riverbank for a short while, and then re-traced my course in the other direction, pausing for quite a while on some of my favorite rocks in the middle of the river where the waters had receded enough to allow me passage. And, as often happens, the muse flowed words of remembrance in response to my questions. Some of these, I share with you. Maybe you will find some answers within…

Out of the corner of my eye
I saw the heron with full wingspan fly
Over the river flowing shallow ;

I must have interrupted her morning sojourn
As I knelt and bowed at many a turn
To walk the fisherman’s walk ;

No fishing pole in hand I held
Except for a camera with phone 
To come closer to the river flowing swift
And listen to the bluebells alone ;

And the chipmunk who stared at attention
In his stance from the fallen tree trunk proud
What beautiful solitude awaits us
A mere few yards from the madding crowd ;

I can hear the chirping of fledgelings
And the rumble of motorcycles loud 
I pause to kneel, to sit on haunches
To breathe in the earth's green cloud ;

And the flat rounds on this bank remind me
Of skipping stones in the Indus in Leh
So much is different and yet the same
Water, air, sun and swallows hold sway 
My heart feels like it’s going to burst forth with memories
Of lullabies filled with love from that day;

And the dancing of sunlight on ripples
Asks - does it take much courage to flow?
Or does it take courage to stand...
For the truth we've all have felt from beyond the know ;

Yes, yes it does take courage to admit of tears
Of all our meager holdings to let go 
We swim in the river of desires
Forgetful of love's seeds given us to sow ;

So when this world weighs you down now and then 
Find a river whose other shore you can't see 
Remember -- love's courage helps us walk
And leads us to who we're destined to be... ;

Yet forget not that for love to bloom life
We need to master the courage to die ;

But what is it -- that we are to die to and for?
That is perhaps the question's cry
I often wonder, and try to remember —
As I watch the swallow who's learning to fly... 

Kumud

P.S. Thank you for reading this far, and letting me share my musings with you. May 26th marks the observance of Memorial Day Sunday in the USA. Join us on twitter at 9amET, as we discuss some (spiritual) aspects of ‘loving remembrance’. Namaste. – Kumud @AjmaniK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towards the end of the circle of my walk, I came upon this young tree with fresh green leaves, seemingly growing almost horizontally out of the love of the soil accumulated around the tree trunks of fallen trees… #MemorialDay

Power of Remembrance

Tags

empowerment, memory, remembrance

One of the lasting memories that I have of my Dad is when he returned home from an out-of-town assignment, exhausted and totally worn out. I asked him – Dad, why did you go when you didn’t really have to? His reply was – “I signed up to do the job, so I wasn’t go to quit halfway and come back even though I wasn’t well”. That one conversation, which barely lasted a minute, has remained lodged in my mind, thirty years on.

There are certain remembrances, that have the power to keep influencing our heart for a very long time like a warm, gentle summer rain. Then, there are others, which we would much rather divert, or even dam, for the pain and the angst that they bring back like the flash flood created by a spring thunderstorm. What distinguishes our “warm rain” remembrances from the “flash flood” kind?

Is it that the mind filters and amplifies different memories differently? Is it that we teach ourselves to “play favorites” with certain remembrances as compared to others? Is it that time and distance from the actual event change our perception of it?

Regardless of our original experience, it often happens that our own inner growth, our spiritual journey can effect a change in our heart’s attitude towards some memories. This can particularly happen with our “flash floods”. In India’s gangetic plains, flooded fields can often be the recipients of rich deposits of minerals, once the waters recede.

Those very memories, which had the power to create pain and angst among us (farmers), with patience, become the fertile grounds for new growth in our hearts. We learn to create better filters, better perspectives through which we accumulate new memories. We begin to trust ourselves more, and build better reservoirs for their preservation. We empower ourselves to let some memories go – yes, even the “warm rain” ones – if we need to lighten our load as we go up higher on the mountain.

One way that we can lighten our “memory load”, is to discover the power of “constant remembrance”. How may we discover this power? We can ask ourselves. What is the “constant” in our lives- That which is beyond the influence of time, space, and the weather of our emotions? Once we answer That question, we can create a practice of “constant remembrance”.

Let us empower ourselves to ask. It is perhaps the best way to remember the “warm rain” of all those who sacrificed their all, so that we still have the power to ask.

Kumud

P.S. Join us Sunday, May 27th at 9amET / 630pm India for our weekly twitter chat. Share some of your favorite memories in #SpiritChat – particularly those ones that empower you towards “constant remembrance”. Namaste.

On Memory, Ego and Awareness

Tags

awareness, ego, memory

The #SpiritChat conversations over the past two Sundays – Inner Workings of the Mind and Inner Conditioning and Habits – have generated a lot of diverse insights into the mind, its workings, its effect on our inner conditioning, and how ingrained patterns lead to formation of habits. One of the aspects that we haven’t talked about much, is the role of memory, its connection to ego, and its effect on our external and internal awareness.

So, what is memory? One definition is that it is the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information. We are perhaps born with this faculty, this ability, this skill – some may loosely refer to it as the brain – and as we grow, and our physical brain grows, our ability to gather, store and then remember or retrieve information, also grows. For most people, this faculty (of memory), reaches its peak at a certain age, after which, the process of aging can cause a drop-off of this skill. We may start losing our ability to gather information, to store it, or to retrieve it – or it could be any combination of those three abilities. While a discussion about how these three aspects of memory can affect us is beyond the scope of this conversation, suffice it to say, that a good, well-functioning memory is considered to be a significant quality of life skill, by most people.

Another definition of Memory may be in the context of something remembered from the past, a recollection. It is this ability, of us to remember, that is crucial for us to develop our discriminative side – the ability to know, and remember, and recall, that touching a hot pan with our fingers leads to pain. The ability to experience, and remember, and recall, that eating vanilla ice-cream with hot chocolate fudge sprinkled with nuts leads to (some degree) of pleasure! So, the accumulated sensations of pain and pleasure, as stored in our memory, shape and influence our mind by creating ingrained patterns (inner conditioning, habits). When faced with an action choice, the mind may ask memory – is this action likely to produce pain or pleasure? Our choice is likely to be based upon an avoidance of pain…

So, how do we break out of ingrained patterns that no longer serve us well? It is hard to break out of them because the memory and the ego are in collusion. Our accumulated memories of pleasure-producing actions are continuously feeding our ego with fear, encouraging the ego to avoid new actions – for there is no record in our memory of what results those new actions will bring. Once the memory bank has had a sufficient deposit of actions/results which had produced ‘pain’ in the past, the mind starts becoming conditioned – and responds with fear, when faced with the mere possibility of a new action. The ego’s response is based on what our memory informs our mind, even before the intellect (our higher intelligence) has a chance to intervene and give its opinion. The biggest casualty of this cycle of conditioning? Self-Awareness.

How do we break out of this pleasure-pain duality that exerts control over our mind through the memory faculty? Which memory vaults need to be ‘cleaned out’ in our lives, for us to improve our mental health, and hence our spiritual health? What is the risk in taking actions which are not influenced by memory? What are the rewards? How do we break this collusion between our memory and our ego (that produces fear), so that we make choices in self-awareness?

If you have read this far, and have some thoughts to share with us, or would like to ‘hear’ the thoughts of the #SpiritChat community on this topic, please join us for our weekly twitter chat on twitter – Sunday, August 31st at 9amET / 2pm UK / 6:30pm India. If you would rather share your thoughts in the comments, please do so, and one of us will be sure to respond.

Namaste, and Be well.

Kumud (@AjmaniK on twitter)

Ready? Q1. #Memory ~ creates a life full of memories… What are some of your choice ones? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506065061862191104

Q2. #Memory can serve us well. What are some instances when it has NOT served you well? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506066875294691328

Q3. “Remembering is easy. It’s forgetting that’s hard”. Agree or disagree? Why or why not? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506068724051619841

Q4. Any specific tools to train the faculty of #memory ~ to weed out what we don’t want any more? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506070948106485761

Q5. Memory informs us of both pain and pleasure. How may we extract value from painful memories? Should we? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506072782581821441

Q6. How does our having a good (or bad) #memory influence our Ego? Our actions? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506074073596952576

Q7. There is a time to hold on, a time to let go. What role does Ego play in this decision? Does it? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506075174496927744

Q8. How can we use the faculty of memory AND our ego – to build self-awareness? Can we? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506076398742941696

Final Q9. This question is yours. What would you like to ask the community about #Memory? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506077516894076928

Questions from participants, in response to Q9 ~ Thank you, to all who contributed questions 🙂

@denisebuchman
Q9 How do memories hold us back from forgiveness? #spiritchat https://twitter.com/denisebuchman/status/506078294782275584

@margiebonwick
A9; would you erase it if you could?? #SpiritChat https://twitter.com/margiebonwick/status/506078130008625153

@EmeliaSam
A9 Which of your memories imprison you? How does your life change if you reinterpret it? #spiritchat https://twitter.com/EmeliaSam/status/506078334145421312

@SimonSaysLife
A9.When will you let go of the memories that are holding you back? #spiritchat
https://twitter.com/SimonSaysLife/status/506078455705137152

@Naren_Raykar
A9 if given a choice to have powers to choose your memories, would you like to acquire those powers? #spiritchat
https://twitter.com/Naren_Raykar/status/506078574752063490

@SignyTheSage
A9 How can you use your painful memories to help others who are still there? #spiritchat https://twitter.com/SignyTheSage/status/506078948342898688

@GThakore
A9: Do memories help us in repairing our negativity and ego? #spiritchat https://twitter.com/GThakore/status/506080378377875458

Full Transcript for “Memory, Ego and Awareness #SpiritChat Sunday, August 31st.