On Time and Heart Space

Tags

family, heart, letting go, patience, reason, space, time

A few months ago, I started hearing the word in fragments of mother-daughter conversations in my home. She had been physically out of school since spring break this year, and we had been mostly self-quarantined for several months until school officially ended towards the end of May. No summer camp. No meeting up with friends. No getting together with cousins. I guess, somewhere along the line, she decided that the home – or rather she, wanted another dog to give her and our seven year old puppy some company.

And so her search started with online portals, spreading the word among her friends, calling local shelters and so on. Her  requirements were fairly stringent and that shortened the list of possibilities considerably. Almost every other day, Mom would help her put in adoption applications when there was a “match” online. A few days later the email would come, saying that the “match” had already been adopted. Week after week, I could see her getting more and more disheartened. 

“Give it some time, honey. Be patient, and it will happen. The puppy you are supposed to get will show up.” Supposedly comforting words from a Dad who had tried to discourage her from the idea from the very beginning. I wasn’t sure that she was “ready” for another dog in the house. More like I was the one who wasn’t ready. So, after eight weeks of this roller coaster of applying and being denied, it seemed like she let the idea go for a few weeks. Mom kept making phone calls, leaving messages for folks.

Then, one lady from Indiana called back on July 1st afternoon and said – yes, there is availability. Possibility. Hope. 

So, we decided that we were going to make an eight hour roundtrip to see if things would work out. A few hours later, another phone call. A lady whom my wife had called six weeks ago was on the phone. She said that one of her puppies was ready to be re-homed. In the course of the conversation, we came to know that our current seven year old had the same bloodline as the one that she was trying to get re-homed. Not only that, she lived two hours away and she could bring the puppy to our home the next day as she was going to be passing through Cleveland on a road-trip to north-west Ohio. 

Too good to be true, yes? If I hadn’t been witness to all of it myself, I would have said “no way” too. The combination of yielding time and space to a heart set on a love-driven desire can allow for the universe to work in our favor. On July 3rd 2020, virtually seven years to the day that we adopted “Tucker” ( who was renamed “Bubbles”), we received his sister “Flower” (who was renamed “Bindi”). Unfettered joy, some tears, a lot of broken sleep patterns, and a huge rearranging of our lives has happened in the past week. 

In the small, last minute Zoom meeting on Friday, I asked Lucille – so, what’s new with you? I hadn’t told them any of this story yet. She said, “I just got finished reading the book – ‘When the Heart Waits’ – by Sue Monk Kidd. She talks about giving yourself the ‘chrysalis time’ in your life – time to let the caterpillar develop into the butterfly (of creativity).” How appropriate, I thought. Giving yourself time, allowing the universe to work in harmony with you when you sometimes feel as if the whole world is conspiring against you, your heart and your goals and dreams…

Chrysalis time for the heart and its space, the heartspace that is our constant companion. I dug up an Osho essay where he spoke about time, reason (the mind), and the heart:

Time exists only for the mind, for reason. For the heart there is no time; the heart exists in timelessness. So, the mind insists on haste, hurry, urgency – and the mind becomes tense. Things should happen instantly – such is the insistence of reason. But the heart knows no time, there are no clocks for it. That is why the heart exists timelessly and it can wait — infinitely. — Osho in Vedanta – The Art of Dying

So, here we are. Life teaches us so many lessons. It invites us to listen with the heart, to allow for our heartspace to simply be timeless. Timelessness invites us to disengage from the daily conflict of opposites. In timelessness, the heart of the caterpillar learns to rest in, allow for chrysalis time.

Kumud

P.S. After a few days, Bubbles and Bindi are starting to play together. His heart has accepted that Bindi is here to stay, that she is part of the family. All of us look forward to their football-like scrimmages at all hours of the day. He may outweigh here by a factor of five (that won’t last long!), but that doesn’t deter her from taking him on with the youthful heart and dynamic energy of one who knows not much about reason, time or space. 

P.P.S I invite you to join our weekly twitter conversation on Sunday, July 12 at 9amET in #SpiritChat. I may share a puppy photo or two with you, and give you the daily update of puppy mayhem. Yes, there will be questions and tea and cookies. It will be good to see some of you after a week’s hiatus… – @AjmaniK

Bubbles – the result, so far, of seven years of all-heart

Risk and Reason in Spirituality

Tags

heart, intuition, reason, risk, spirituality

A few weeks ago, we had a conversation about the role of intuition in our lives, and how it can inform our short- and long-term decisions. One theme that we did not address in that conversation was the interplay of intuition (guided by our feelings) with the role of reason (guided by our mind, our thoughts). How do we balance intuition and reason, and what are the risks that we undertake when we favor one over the other?

As a ‘schooled’ engineer and practicing scientist, one who swims with numbers and equations and spreadsheets and contour plots every single day, the realm of reason is very familiar to me. The scientific process of the design of experiments uses the cornerstone of reason on which to lay its foundations. All new analyses and observations have to pass through the gates of reason before they are deemed to have validated the hypothesis for which the experiment was conducted in the first place! But what does all this have to do with risk and reason in spirituality?

In order to explore the connection, we need to transition from pure science into the realm of technology, into the realm of the discovery and invention of ‘things’ that make our lives better. The technologist often cannot wait for science and reason to give them all the answers, and learns to rely upon empiricism (a close cousin of inutition) to do their work. One powerful example is that of the invention of the aircraft engines by technologists. A hundred or so years ago, the Wright Brothers were seized by the idea that it had become necessary for humans to fly. They began by putting all the reasons of ‘why it could be done’ aside.

What did it take to succeed? It was good, old fashioned, risk. They used a combination of a ‘flying’ concept, added ingenuity and experimentation, followed by ‘tweaking’ of their design based upon ‘direct observation’ and ‘intuition’ – to achieve their first successful flight. Would we be flying the advanced aircraft of today if they would have waited for reason-based science to verify all the principles of flight before beginning to build and test their flying craft? We don’t know the answer to that speculative question. What we do know is that a combination of risk, feeling based intuition, empiricism and observation overcame the perfection of reason.

As it turns out, there is direct application of empiricism and risk adoption in spiritual practice(s). If we tow the line of reason, and wait for all that we feel and observe to be explained by the reasoning mind, we will either remain ‘stuck in place’ or simply go around in circles with our mental gymnastics. It is when we respect reason but take action to answer the calling that we feel in our heart and spirit, to serve and keep serving when reason seems to indicate otherwise, to keep listening for the whispers of stillness even when reason nudges us to do otherwise… Reason asks us to stop when love and the feelings that it creates gently lead us by the heart.

Risk leads us back to the knowing that reason, like the mind, is limited by cause and effect. Risk leads us back to the river that flows in the land beyond cause and effect. Risk leads us over the bridge, which we may have never walked before, to the garden of the infinite. The choice is ours to make – will we move beyond pure reason, or at least bring love into reason?

What are some of your thoughts on risk and reason? I invite you to share in our weekly twitter conversation with hashtag #SpiritChat – Sunday, October 11th at 9amET/1pmUTC. Yes, you will invest some of your time in participating, but it is a low-risk investment – and, we will give you plenty of reason to return week after week to visit with the new risk-taking friends that you will meet along the way.

Thank you for reading, share in the comments if you will, and Namaste!

Kumud