A Spiritual Return to School

Tags

autumn, curiosity, delight, discovery, school

The first day of return to school is often a shock to the system. No matter how much you prepare for it, the fact is that you are jolted out of the long sleep of ten or so weeks of summer. The signal of change is unmistakable as all the lights that had been flashing yellow over the past week or so suddenly change to green… it’s time to move forward and meet the early waking hour again.

There is a certain stillness about the world in the new waking hour that I am glad to welcome back. There is a return to a routine, a structure, a familiar purpose that I am glad to return to. And it isn’t just me. The entire household, including the puppies, seem to have been jolted into the ‘return to school’ mode.

Like many mornings this summer, it’s humid, warm, gray and overcast today. It doesn’t quite feel like autumn yet, but our bodies and the trees outside seem to be ready for it. We are ready to welcome the change in color and the chill in the air that makes you clasp your hands around the mug of tea a bit tighter as you first walk out onto the deck to check what kind of weather is approaching from the west.

She is more than ready, though. The excitement of a new grade, new teachers, new subjects, new friends and much more has her bubbling over with enthusiasm. We take our “first day” photos at the top of the steps overlooking the lake — her puppy joins in and they both enjoy some special moments. And then, just like that we’re off for the ride to school.

It’s one of those days where I wish the car ride was a bit longer. She is talking a hundred miles an hour about the subjects and her new teachers – Math, History, Chemistry and more. It’s all pouring out and I’m happy to watch the resumption of flow that had been seemingly at a standstill for the past few weeks.

As I drop her off with a quick goodbye, she has a quickness in her step that I haven’t seen in a while. As much as she looks forward to the beginning of summer every June, she looks forward to her return to school in August even more. It is a sign that the village is raising her well, and that return to school is much more than just the academics, the sports, the extra-curricular and such.

How does all this connect to our inner spiritual life?

Return to school can be a reminder of an embrace of possibilities, adventures, and detours that await us when we are dunked into the alphabet soup of human beings and their variant personalities. It is an invitation to remain young at heart, to embrace every new day with freshness, curiosity and preparedness for the possibilities that will unfold.

We are ready for our return to school. We’ve been ready for a while. A new inner awakening is just a sunrise or moonrise away for us. Let’s simply choose to return to it with childlike joy and delight!

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly chat on Twitter – Sunday Aug 22 at 9amET / 630pm India in #SpiritChat. Bring your open mind and heart. I will bring the tea and cookies and school syllabus 🙂 – @AjmaniK

A walk around the school campus on the first day back..

Spiritual Return to School

Tags

backtoschool, change, school, spiritual practice

The entire notion of ‘return to school’ this fall has taken on a new meaning in the context of the pandemic. For my daughter’s school, the conversation between administration, teachers, support staff, parents and local, state and health agencies has spanned most of the summer. Finally, this past Friday, school did reopen to students. The entire first day was spent in orientation sessions about new rules and guidelines.

And yet, about 15% of the students have chosen not to return ‘in-person’. They have chosen the ‘online’ option. In many ways, the ‘return to school’ has become a bit of a fragmented experience for the student community. Just like the world that they live in, school has become a brand new world for students. Wearing of masks and six-foot distances, taking turns while visiting their lockers, no large assemblies, no theater in the auditorium, no inter-school sports. It’s quite a bit to take in for the parents, let alone the school community.

However, inspite of all the changes and adjustments needed to make ‘in-person’ school possible, the ‘first-day survey’ says that the students are happy to back. The social bonding that happens in school cannot be duplicated online and is thus an important part of the educational experience. One may argue that some level of social bonding does happen in online (social media) interactions, but we can all agree that the ‘real life’ meeting is orders of magnitude more impactful. So, what does all this have to do with spirituality?

Well, that’s a good question. I guess one connection that comes to mind is the question – how have our spiritual practices served us in times of great change? Most students seem to have taken all these big changes in their ‘return to school’ process in stride, and with a good attitude. How do we adults handle great changes in our (learning) environments? Assuming that there are no setbacks, and that ‘in person school’ continues through the academic year, these fairly large changes will be in effect for a fairly long time. If we were in a similar situation, how would our spiritual practices be affected or undergo change(s)?

Let me share one personal example of change affecting spiritual practice. Ever since we brought a new puppy home six weeks ago, my morning meditation routine has had a ‘return to school’ experience. I had no idea how difficult it would be to try and sit quietly in the same space with a ten-week-old puppy. You see, the puppy wants to do the exact opposite of sitting still at 7am in the morning after a good night’s sleep! So, I had to change, adjust, and even school the puppy a bit. I would let her play for half an hour, let her burn off her energy, and then sit for my morning practice. And guess what?

After a few days, she caught on to the fact that this was my quiet time. I often found her curled up at my feet at the end of my morning sitting. I won’t go so far as to say that my original daily practice has been fully restored, but I am on my way back. It is a ‘return to school’ in a different environment for me and my practice. The timing and space where I practice varies depending on how the morning develops, and I have developed a new sense of gratitude for what I can accomplish on the days when I am able to practice.

That’s my short story. How about you? Have there been occasions where you’ve had to make small or big changes to your practices? Have you experienced a ‘spiritual return to school’ at any time and learnt new things about yourself and your environment? What did you learn in the process?

Kumud

P.S. I invite you to ‘return to school’ with the #SpiritChat community on Sunday, August 23 at 9amET on twitter. We will ask some old questions in new ways, and share some new answers. Maybe we will even get a bit of an education on taking change in stride and staying in school. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Spiritual Return to School

Tags

education, retreat, school, summer, vacation

I still remember how I felt when I first found out that school is “out” for summer break for TEN full weeks in the USA. I was incredulous. Ten weeks? What I wouldn’t have given for ten weeks out of school for summer in my native India? For starters, it would have meant an additional four weeks with my parents and siblings. A lot more traveling the far reaches of the northern and north-eastern states of India. A lot more curvy windy roads in the mountains, crossing ten-thousand feet passes, visiting far-flung monasteries, and playing in rivers like the Indus, Jhelum and Brahmaputra. I could go on for a while here…

As much I enjoyed taking a break from school during the scorching heat of Delhi, I truly did enjoy going “back to school”. Other than the last week or so before school began, when there was a mad dash to try and complete the myriad homework assignments and science projects that were due in our first week back, “back to school” brought great anticipation. The “catching up” with friends on the first day of return-to-school was perhaps the most looked-forward-to event. In an age before cell-phones, summer apart from friends was spent in a virtual vaccuum of information about their wherabouts and wheredoings. The first few days back were filled with an exchange of stories over the what seemed to be oh-so-short thirty minute lunch breaks.

Once the euphoria would wear out, reality would strike. The teachers were not afraid to bring our focus quickly back to their view of the “purpose” of school – education through examination. The quarterly exams would loom a mere two or three weeks away from when school started. You see, we were supposed to be ‘studying’ over the summer. What “blasphemy”, “torture” and borderline “cruelty”… abuse of the student’s mental faculty, don’t you think so?! I say that (almost) tongue-in-cheek, for I know now, that as a parent, I (almost) wish that they would hand-out some summer home-work to occupy their oh-so-long, languid, “I don’t want to go to another summer camp”, ten weeks of summer.

So, what is your favorite part about “return to school”, I asked her the other day. “My friends and teachers,” she said. I guess some things are inter-generational. As much as I looked forward to a return to my friends, “returning” to (some of) my teachers was a close second. It was almost as if they also came back renewed, revitalized and re-energized with an energy to create an environment for learning. A few of my high-school teachers innately understood that the frequency of “tests” and “exams” actually interfered with the process of learning. They were the ones from whom I perhaps learnt most about life and living.

For in the ‘real world’, there is really no ‘return to school’. We may take vacations or retreats, but unless they are of the “lost-to-this-world” variety, we remain ‘in school’. Or so it seems. It is when we choose to explore beyond the walls of our physical world, that we perhaps (re)create the “summer breaks” of our childhood. It is in that ‘eternal summer’ that we can teach our hearts to explore the inner mountains and brooks. It is in that ‘heart school’ that we can feel the warm depth of the river beds, and watch the ripples as the thought pebbles skip on the surface.

The heart is this ‘daily school’ of the learning experience of joy, warmth, silence, stillness, awareness. We may not want to take a ‘summer break’ from it even for a day, let alone for ten weeks. No return may be necessary, for we never did leave.

Kumud

P.S. I invite you to ‘return to school’ with us in the #spiritchat community on twitter – Sunday, Aug 19 at 9amET / 630pm India. And yes, you can leave your homework at home… just bring your ‘summer’ adventures to share. Namaste.

After a Summer of Exploration, a “Return to School”