The Heart’s Heritage

Tags

heritage, inheritance, legacy, practice, spirituality

As I stepped onto the trail on the beautiful, cool and crisp morning of the first day of October, I was reminded yet again of the forever giving heart of nature. I had been thinking of my cultural, religious and family heritage over the past week, and in her quiet and expansive welcome, it occurred to me that Nature is also an integral part of my heritage.

There is a period of two weeks in the autumn where Indian tradition pauses to remember, honor, and give thanks to the roles of our ancestors in our lives. The two weeks often coincide with the solstice — a period when all of nature seems to pause as it transitions from one season to the next. A period of transition can be a good time to ask some questions. Where did we come from? Where do we want to go? How may our ancestors and our heritage influence our journey ahead?

As we answer these questions, we may discover some parts of our heritage that have served us well on our journey so far, and other parts that may have held us back in some way. The weight of tradition informed by our strong fidelity to our heritage can often prevent us from exploring new paths on our spiritual walk. How do we balance our desire to honor our inheritances and be truthful to our heart’s voice?

We pause and we listen deeply. We examine our written and spoken heritage — and there is a lot of that, often an overwhelming amount, in Indian culture. We adopt and adapt the cornerstone truths and principles from our heritage that are congruent with our heart-led journey. As we walk forward on our path towards self-awareness and direct experience, we may discover that we have gradually derived our personal inheritance from our vast heritage.

How do we know that our personal inheritance, which may be in the form of our preferred spiritual practices, is right for our journey? One way to know try our chosen practices, and then to ask – do they add to our joy, increase the light within our heart, create lightness in our steps, inspire us to create a living legacy?

A rose blooms in October… a new legacy begins

Yes. There are a lot of questions we ask and want answers to regarding our heritage, inheritance and legacy. As I paused and kneeled on the path, letting the Sun that was apparently standing still, shine the same sunlight that it has streamed on my ancestors for generations fill my heart, I felt a deep connection to the permanent.

Maybe That is perhaps the heart’s true heritage.

Kumud

Autumn’s light streams through the trees… a reminder of permanence and heritage

On Passion and Peace

Tags

passion, peace, practice, purpose

What is my foremost passion in life right now?

Some of us can instantly answer that question. Others may need some reflection to arrive at an answer. Regardless of which category you may find yourself in, it may be useful to try and define the word…

passion: a strong or barely controlled emotion… a state or outburst of strong emotion

The thesaurus suggests some synonyms as fervor, ardor, enthusiasm, fieriness, zeal, spiritedness and fanaticism. It seems clear that our passion, whatever it may be, has the ability to connect us to a relatively high state of energy, action, and emotion. Passion also has the ability to bring us to the edge of, the tipping point of energetic balance in our lives, and leave us there. It can almost seem like the edge of a precipice on our journey.

Whether we go towards higher plateaus in life or fall off the precipice, perhaps depends on our ability to remain focused on our purpose. We have a choice. We can use the energy of our passion to lead us towards the higher ground of compassion. Or we can let the strong emotion of unbridled passion lead us towards anger. We are all familiar with what compassion can produce. So, let us examine what anger creates…

Anger creates a state that steals our Joy. It is like the autumn wind that makes the garden barren. When Joy leaves, we lose perspective. We tend to find ourselves in inner turmoil, as we find that peace is departing too. Anger fueled by frustration, lack of control, leads the passion train. Joy and Peace follow the anger engine. And before we know it, our entire inner emotional train has derailed. The casualties are many.

So, how do we position ourselves so that, at the edge of the emotional passion precipice, we can move towards compassion instead of anger? I believe that it is through practice. With observation comes learning. Repeated and regular observation of our passion(s) and their propensity can become our personal practice. With practice, we can learn how to turn the energy of passion — away from the feelings of unfulfillment, undeservedness, unlovedness, and their likes.

In that great turning away from the precipice, we can then use passion to walk our path of purpose, upwards towards the summit, with joy in every step. And before we know it, the nature’s justice will have returned our gardens and valleys to spring-like bloom. Passion would have then produced three things worthy of celebration – Peace. Peace. Peace.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. What’s your take on passion and peace? Share with us in the comments below. We also invite you to join our weekly twitter chat on Sunday, December 10th at 9amET/730pmIST in #SpiritChat ~ Do join us!

Walking the Cuyahoga Valley – a celebrated passion of mine…

On Invitations and Wonder

Tags

invitation, practice, wonder

Some mornings, often on weekends and holidays, the temptation to get a few minutes of extra sleep is strong. Even though I rarely set a ‘wake-up’ alarm any more, my internal clock wakes me up fairly reliably at the appointed time every day. No extra sleep for me, as the bell for the hour of morning #meditation is sounded. It is an “invitation to wonder” that has become difficult to resist over time… the more I accept it every morning, the easier it gets to accept it the next day. It’s a much rewarding acceptance.

The invitation isn’t unlike that leftover pumpkin pie from the thanksgiving holiday that ‘invites me’ to partake of a sliver, every time I open the refrigerator door… more on that later.

Yes. There are many invitations that come into our lives during the holiday season. Thanksgiving invitations to family get-togethers. Then comes ‘Black Friday’ – an invitation (actually, hundreds of them!), an urgency, to ‘buy stuff now’. Small business Saturday (a wonderful initiative)! Cyber Monday. Giving Tuesday (I actually love this particular invitation)! And many more to follow as we step into December. For me, every ‘invitation’ is an opportunity to wonder – how will my acceptance or denial affect my quality of life? Will acceptance provide me an opportunity to enhance my sense of wonder, of exploration?

The world’s noise, it’s invitations, it’s distractions are unabated.

What is to become of our inner peace and joy, our sense of wonder, if we do not have a daily practice, and a plan to devote time and space to that practice?

Without a practice or a plan, we expose our Self to the risk of inner and outer overwhelm. So yes – let us examine the next invitation that comes our way. The invitation could come via the virtual space or the physical space. Or even the spiritual space. Take a moment to pause and wonder. You never know.

In that moment of wonder, you may discover something new about your own Self.

And that is perhaps the best gift that and invitation to wonder can bring to us.

But, I digress. The last sliver of pumpkin pie calls. I think I shall accept…

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. In this holiday week (in the US), many are on travel, spending special time with family. We have a special family in the #SpiritChat community too – so, I hope that some of you will join us Sunday, November 26th at 9amET / 2pmUTC / 730pmIST on twitter to explore and wonder… Thank you.

The Forest in Autumn – An Invitation to Wonder!

Returning to Simplicity

Tags

practice, simplicity, spirituality

Whether we are ready or not, the cycles of nature and nature’s rhythms can lead us to re-examine certain aspects of our (increasingly complex) lives. One such change in rhythm is the gradual transition from autumn to winter (at least in the northern hemisphere). The days tend to get shorter and we begin to retreat indoors after having enjoyed the long daylight hours of summer. As the seasons change, the opportunity arises to ask the question – how do we prepare for what is ahead? I have been lately asking the question – how do I reduce the complexity in my daily life and return to more of simplicity?

One place to begin to answer this question is to examine the areas of my life that are unnecessarily complex. How much technology do I really need in my life? I was shopping for a cooking range and my seaarch yielded a ‘smart range’. Do I really need something that (mostly) cooks rice and vegetables, and boils water for pasta, to be equipped with WiFi?! I deem that as unnecessary complexity. Do I really need my new car to have five to seven different ‘safety’ technologies to beep at me, apply brakes and even steer the car for me as I change lanes without signaling? I am not sure. The list goes on, but you get the idea. If we let it, complexity will take over our lives as surely as the leaves fall when autumn comes.

So, what are some alternatives to reduce complexity? Consider this. We can choose (to return to) simplicity in the (most) important areas of our lives. First, we get to choose, to identify the (most) important areas. Then we identify the (unnecessary) complexities in that life area, and either reduce them or eliminate them. For example, consider the important area of food. Do you (mostly) live to eat, or do you eat to live? Open your refrigerator or your pantry? What does it look like? Can you simplify his aspect of your life?

Another (important) area that can use reduction in life-complexity is our ‘mental’ food intake. Every piece of information that we ingest has the ability to influence our thoughts, and requires mental energy to process. How much ‘information’ and from how many ‘sources’ do we really need in our daily life? Are we at risk of creating inordinate mental complexity for ourselves due to our constant ‘junk food’ like information intake habits? Is that why the levels of stress and anxiety across many of society’s demographics are approaching all-time highs?

I hope you get the idea. I only touched on life-complexity, as related to our physical and mental ‘intake’ patterns above. As we identify the complex patterns that we would like to change, adjust or maybe even eliminate, we create internal awareness. The next time we have to make a decision or a choice in that life area, we can make a better-informed decision. How much ‘smarts’ do I really need in that cooking range?!

As we make better decisions, which may coincide with a return towards simplicity, we will find that we create time and space for ourselves. We may ‘discover’ time for the activities that we have been meaning-to or wanting-to do for a while. Time for ctivities like (daily) writing, exercise, reading, meditation, slow cooking, calling (on) people and listening, taking a nap in the mid-afternoon on a rainy Saturday, and much more.

There are many gifts that returning to simplicity can return to us. Who knows? They may be some of the most important gifts that we give to ourselves in the coming season.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join me and the #SpiritChat community as we explore a return to simplicity – Sunday, November 5th at 9amEST / 2pm UTC / 7:30pm IST on twitter. Please note that due to the one hour time change (USA ‘falls back’ to ‘standard’ time!), the chat may occur an hour later than usual in your time zone. Namaste.

Life’s Facets and Challenges

Tags

challenges, choices, practice

The final event for this year for our small (yet growing) group of folks (Vedanta Center of Cleveland) was a Thursday evening conversation titled “Facing Life’s Challenges” by Swami Sarvadevananda of Southern California. His message about ‘challenges’ was conveyed with remarkable directness, humor, strength of spirit and practical advice that I share with you below.

1. Acceptance. We are best served by accepting the challenge head on – whatever we may perceive it to be. Acceptance empowers us to use our energy to deal with the challenge instead of wasting energy in fighting its existence. Once we accept that challenges are inevitable, and that they are signs that we are alive, we can put our best energies forward in facing them. This is the first facet.

2. Identification. Is the challenge at a physical level, a mental level, or at both levels? Yes, there are challenges that come our way beyond the physical and mental, but let us talk about these two levels for now. If it is a purely physical challenge, say injury or disease, are we making it worse by adding inordinate suffering to pain? We often transfer the pain of a physical challenge to the mental level, and recovery takes much longer than necessary. This is the second facet.

3. Perspective. When faced with a new challenge, our tendency is to believe that this temporary challenge is somehow permanent. We tend to forget all the previous, more daunting challenges that we may have overcome. We may even compound or exaggeratedly ‘advertise’ our adversity in order to perhaps attract immediate sympathy. How does such an attitude – a loss of perspective or a distorted view of the challenge – really help us face the challenge? So, we need to ‘keep our head about us’ and keep our perspective. This is the third facet.

4. Blame and Change. We often find great solace in assigning blame – our friends, our family, neighbors, co-workers, politicians, religious leaders… the list is long. Somehow, our challenge is ‘their’ fault. If only That person would change Their behavior or actions or thoughts, we would not be facing this challenge. How often it is that we are quick to forget from our heart all the good things they may have done for us or said about us! And how often it is that we hold for inordinately long periods of time in our heart the smallest of slights or perceived insults? What if we were to reduce blame and change our own selves? This is the fourth facet.

5. Service. Is our current challenge really that big? How does it compare with the challenges of others in the world around us? How about we take the focus off of our (often petty) challenges and use that very same energy to serve those who are much worse off than ourselves? This is one of the easiest ways to forget about our own pain – serve those less fortunate than us. This is the fifth facet.

6. Faith. We accept, do our best, with a good attitude and perspective, stop blaming, change ourselves, serve others – and yet, the challenge remains. Now what? We may need to humble ourselves to the fact that there are some challenges beyond our physical, mental (and other) capabilities. We may need to ask for help to deal with the challenge. We may need to surrender our excessive reliance on the I. This is the sixth facet.

I share the above facets with you in the hope that one or more of them will come in handy as you face your next challenge. As we polish each facet, the inner diamond becomes more luminous, more radiant. And the next big challenge will be met by us with a brilliant sparkle!

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us in #SpiritChat on twitter – Sunday, October 29th at 9amET/1pmUTC. Share some facets of your challenges, and your tools and techniques in dealing with them. Thank you!

Chat Summary: https://storify.com/ajmanik/life-s-facets-and-challenges

Spirituality – The Two Wings

Tags

materialism, practice, spirtuality

We live in a material world. Our physical actions have consequences in the material world around us. Our speech is heard by others and the words contained therein often have a significant impact on the listener(s). It is said that even our thoughts – which are essentially a finer manifestation of the material – have significant influence on those that ‘feel’ their energy.

It is safe to say that our practice(s) of spirituality, whatever they may be, would perhaps work best if they were to help us become well integrated with the external world that we live in. How much meaningful spiritual progress could I possibly make if my time-commitment to my practice of meditation causes my responsibilities towards my family to unduly suffer? What would my ‘gains’ in the material world (say, financial progress) be truly worth if they came at the cost of a ‘loss’ in my commitment to the pursuit of (inner) peace?

I must be able to extend the wing of spirituality into my material life. Then there is beauty in material proliferation. – Kamlesh Patel

Our commitment(s) to spiritual practice(s) when harmonized with our actions and pursuits in the material world, will serve to yield growth in both areas. Harmony will strengthen both our wings, material and spiritual. Our wings will then synchronize to channel our internal energy to raise us towards our higher purpose in life. Awareness that we need both our wings, material and spiritual, to beat as one, will raise us towards the goal of Oneness.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us in #SpiritChat on twitter – Sunday September 24th at 9amET/1pmUTC. We will gather to talk about ‘the two wings’ (material and spiritual), the current states of their health in our lives, and how we can “extend the wing of spirituality into our material life”. Namaste.

Tradeoffs in Spiritual Practice

Tags

decisions, living well, practice, tradeoffs

Our daily lives are often filled with seemingly invisible “tradeoffs” or micro-decisions that we make. These decisions are partly affected by the mental and emotional state that we may be in, in the moment that we make the decision.

Do we hit the snooze button once or twice and sleep the extra few minutes, or do we decide to wake up and invest those few extra minutes ‘gained’ by setting the proper tone for our day ahead?

Do we choose to continue to add to our theretical database and knowledge of a particular field, or do we say that we now ‘know enough’ to focus more on actual practice and ‘work experience’?

Do we tend to focus more on the ‘short term’ affects of our daily decisions (do what makes us feel good NOW) or do we give more weight to the ‘long term’ impact of our choices?

Do we pay more attendtion to the means, the ways, our paths – or do we ignore the means because “the means justify the ends’, so any path is adequate?

The above are just some of the tradeoffs we often make. Depth versus breadth. Change versus tradition. Chance versus control. Community versus individual. Quality versus quantity. And there are many more that I am sure that you can think of.

It should come as no surprise that we tend to make a lot of these tradeoffs without even giving them much thought. Our habits, beliefs, values, finances and the amount of time and space available to us may determine the tradeoff. A tradeoff that we were willing ot make a decade, or even a year ago, may be unacceptable to us today.

Perhaps the same is true of our spiritual practice(s). As we (hopefully) grow through our chosen path (by paying attention to the means), our practice(s) evolve too. It isn’t that one way or means is ‘better’ than another. It is more that we may outgrow certain practices because we graduate to the next grade of practice. We may have loved kindergarten, and our teachers there, but we end up trading time and our comfort space in kindergarten for a higher grade – a bigger challenge, an oportunity to learn and practice more, to be challenged to climb to the next plateau.

Consider and evaluate. What tradeoffs have you made in your (spiritual) life over the past year that have made you, and those around you, ‘better’? Are there any tradeoffs that have had the opposite effect of ‘betterment’? What are a few habits and beliefs that you could change so that you would ascend to the next plateau? Or are you choosing the tradeoff of holding on to ‘tradition’ in favor of change?

As Swami Vivekananda once said – “We do not evolve from error to truth. We evolve from (lower) truth to (higher) truth”. The corollary is that no matter the tradeoff we choose, we are not in error. We are simply evolving from one truth to another.

And so what if one evolves more slowly than another? “The more we keep engagingwith the flowers of spiritual practice, the more fragrance shall remain in our hands…”

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us Sunday, August 13th at 9amET / 1pm UTC for our weekly twitter chat in #SpiritChat – we will talk about the tradeoffs between cookies and fruit, tea and coffee, and more 🙂

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 Experiencing Stillness

Tags

experience, practice, silence, spirituality, stillness

The stillness with which leaves appear and grow on the trees… an overnight flood that greens the forest right before my very eyes… even the breeze has stood still to gawk at their brilliance…

The stillness with which the single goose swims in the lake at dusk… perhaps looking at his own shadow on the calm surface as it mingles with the fading light of the post-sunset glow…

The stillness with which the mother goose sits on her freshly laid eggs among the rapidly growing tall grasses… as she patiently grows life anew to sustain the promise of staying true to perpetuating the cycle of life…

The stillness with which the puppy watches the play of the geese on the water after he has registered his protest to them in no uncertain terms when he deemed that they were ‘in his space’ in the field where they came out to dry themselves off on this overcast day… in the same field where he chases robins on sunny days…

The stillness with which the rain falls on the lake and sets off circular ripples that dissolve into each other and quietly, imperceptibly raise the level of the lake… and spread infinite possibility in their wake…

The stillness with which the daffodils appear at the beginning of spring… in seemingly random clusters to light up the forest floor… a welcoming committee getting their color on to greet the leaves on the trees that are soon to follow…

The stillness of the morning fog that waits for the sun to rise high and turn it into dew drops on the daffodils… so that the hummingbirds and butterflies and bumblebees can awaken from their slumber and slake their early morning thirst…

The stillness that comes over the forest between pre-dawn and sunrise after the single morning lark has announced the wakening call of sunrise, only to then go silent in deference to the rising sun’s horse-drawn chariot emerging from the East…

And I haven’t even yet talked about the inner stillness that is inspired by, reflected in, is a conduit for, all of this outer stillness… for that is a gift of stillness that is an amalgamation of light and lightness and color and joy and levity that transcends any experience that the stillness of the outer world, limited as it is by our outward facing senses can present to us… imagine That.

Better yet, experience It.

For yourself.

Meditate.

On That.

Kumud @AjmaniK

Join our weekly twitter chat held Sunday April 30th, 2017 with the #SpiritChat community. We will try and experience stillness among conversation in our connection… Bring your stillnesss stories. I will bring tea and cookies…

On Experiencing Stillness… with flowers

On Spirituality and Yoga

Tags

practice, spirituality, yoga

A few weeks ago, on a Sunday in June, the international community held an observance called “International Yoga Day”. A first of its kind, it was an initiative that attempted to highlight the health and relaxation benefits of performing Yoga as a daily physicalpractice. Whatever the physical benefits of any Hatha Yoga practice, when performed under the tutelage of a ‘qualified’ teacher may be, we are here to go a bit beyond physicality and physics…

In his book, “Light on Life” (amazon link), one of the most widely known and respected Yoga Masters of the west, BKS Iyengar, delineates the greater benefits of Yoga. Iyengar’s thesis, arrived at through diligent practice over many decades, is that the mental and emotional benefits of Yoga follow from the physical benefits. For those of us who are considering adding a daily Yoga practice to our toolbox, this is welcome news indeed! But wait. There is more. If there are physical, mental and emotional gains to be derived, can spiritual benefits be far behind?

The aspect of Yoga that is of equal, if not greater importance to the spiritual aspirant, is delineated by the Indian sage, Patanjali. In his treatise called the “Yoga Sutras”, his definition of Yoga is simple and succint:

Yoga is the cessation of the mind stuff ~ Patanjali

Keeping this definition in mind (no pun intended!), we can immediately see the spiritual benefits of Yoga practice. So, one may view the physics and physicality of hatha Yoga as the skin, the outer layer of Yoga. The multiple layers that reside underneath the outer skin, are uncovered through an eight-step practice. Each step of the practice requires greater commitment from the practitioner, and builds on the gains of the previous step. These eight steps are:

1. yama ~ practice of a universal code
2. niyama ~ practice of a personal code
3. asana ~ body postures (this is the well-known hatha Yoga)
4. pranayama ~ breathing exercise, discovering the life force
5. pratyahara ~ understanding the emotions and senses, and what controls them
6. dharana ~ developing the power of concentration
7. dhyana ~ one interpretation is the practice of meditation
8. samadhi ~ perfect union, becoming yoked, or in Yoga with the divine

At first read, the above list may appear daunting. Some may assert that it is not exhaustive. However, it can provide a framework for those who may be looking for one, and can bring some clarity to the diverse practices that are given the tag of #Yoga. As we scan the list from step 1 to step 8, we may be able to identify the steps which need more work than others. For example may be already attempting dhyana (step 7, meditation), and wondering why it is not working for us like we thought it would. The answer(s) may lie in the preceding steps. Maybe we haven’t quite yet learnt the nature of breath, or our emotions are running wild as we try to concentrate!

Needless to say, it is way beyond my ability, and time and space does not permit, to talk about all the intricacies of Yoga in this short post. There are many, many qualified teachers and masters who can explain Yoga to those who would like to learn. My intent for this short post was to provide a spark and introduce you to the (for me) life-affirming works of Iyengar and Patanjali. The ocean of Yoga is vast and deep ~ we can sit on the shore and watch the waves, wade into the water and get a bit wet, get on our surfboard and skim the waves, or do a deep dive.

The ocean is patient. It will wait for us with her gifts…

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. We will make an attempt to touch on some aspects of Yoga in our weekly #SpiritChat on twitter on Sunday, July 12th at 9amET/1pmUTC. I will bring some questions, and some tea. I invite all of you to bring some cookies to share. Come join us!