Spiritual Acts of Solidarity

Tags

covid19, solidariy, solitude, spring, unity

At the end of my mid-afternoon walk through the local bird reservation, something remarkable happened. As I headed back to the trail that would lead me back, a wave of sound emanated from the forest — a wave the could be heard but not seen. It was if a million birds were raising the banner of spring in unison. I turned to my daughter and asked — is it just me or do you hear that too?

Later in the evening, in the golden hour after sunset, I could still hear them. As I sat on the front porch, watching some brilliant colors of light up the fringe an unusually dark and wide storm front, they were “filling the sky with songs”. I don’t know the reason (yet) for their behavior, for their beautiful act of solidarity. I do know that it brought a tremendous sense of joy and peace to me. In their unified wave of action, it seemed like the birds were affirming the recent actions of solidarity being taken by many families, communities, cities, states, and countries. 

If we are willing to listen to it and learn from it, Nature and her beings have many messages and lessons for us. Nature’s  latest message seems to be that our long-term viability as a human race depends on our ability to be present to each other, even when we are physically apart. Nature’s latest lesson seems to be that our health – spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, financial – is only as good as the health of some of the most vulnerable among us. 

We cannot ignore the wave of sound coming from the forest any more than we can ignore the voice of our elderly neighbors, the immune-compromise, or our healthcare workers. Every time we wash our hands, maintain adequate social distance, self-isolate if we feel sick, use our supplies frugally and buy only what we absolutely need, we are committing to an act of solidarity. Every human action of solidarity adds to the wave of sound of hope, caring and empathy that emanates from our human forest. 

What acts of spiritual solidarity can we perform as individuals and as a community? Over the past week, I have had a few phone conversations, and many online chats with folks to listen, learn and discern. As a result, the first action is that we  have started a new daily effort of getting together every evening (930pm EDT) and participate in a ‘group meditation’. I will be posting daily reminders in #SpiritChat, but no online ‘check-in’ is necessary. The intent is to ‘pause in place’, wherever we may be, and bring peace to our body, mind and heart, with our peace-evoking action of choice that works best for us. Let us hum (or listen) to our favorite prayer or mantra, read a piece of spiritual or inspirational literature or scripture, or anything else that we may consider to be a spiritual action of solidarity. 

I am also (re)starting our Zoom (video chat) meetings on a weekly basis. Our first attempt will be on Wednesday, March 25 at Noon ET (link to join the meeting will be posted on FB and twitter). These meetings will serve as quick ‘check ins’ on each other, and allow us to find opportunities to help out where we can. By keeping them to 30 minutes or less, we may be able to do them more frequently, if necessary.

So, it’s your turn to step up and let us know – what other actions of solidarity can we perform at this time in our history? What resources can you offer or share that could be helpful? We have been gathering online and supporting each other through weekly sharing for a quite a while. We have the experience, the willingness and the wisdom to create a viable, dynamic, empathic, sustainable response to this great challenge that faces us.

Every one of our voices counts. Every action of solidarity counts. Let us speak and act in solidarity so that we can evoke a wave of spring for the benefit of all. 

Kumud

Resources: Meditation Made Simple  and a Free Meditation App (by @heartful_ness)

P.S. Join us for our weekly chat, Sunday March 22 at 9am ET / 8am CT / 6am PT / 630pm India – we will gather and share in an act of solidarity. Namaste, and with deep gratitude – @AjmaniK

A turtle in the middle of the walking path… teaching me to slow down… (March 20, 2020)

Fruits of Solitude

Tags

silence, solitude, spirituality, stillness

The month of March was unique for me in many ways. As one who has naturally tended towards silence, and lately towards stillness, it surely was a month filled with a lot of activity, including change and travel. Two of the #SpiritChat conversations in March were about silence and stillness (with Janet Nestor). There was also the beautiful conversation on serendipity (with Elisa Balabram).

We filled three of the four S-quadrants in March – in April, we return to color in the fourth S-quadrant – Solitude. On the face of it, solitude could pass for the fraternal twin of silence, and a close cousing of stillness. In the context of spiritual practice, solitude bears sweet fruit when it is a choice made with a sense of freedom. When imposed upon us, solitude can be a form of bullying, of punishment, of retribution. Solitary confinement was (and still is) often used as one of the most effective forms of “breaking the spirit” of prisoners.

Solitude as imposition, often bears bitter fruit, which creates an energy of insecurity, fear, anger and more. One other undesirable fruit of forced solitude is that of loneliness. When we feel isolated, a sense of loneliness invades our heart and weakens our light. After the basic necessities of life are met, one of our greatest needs is perhaps the need to belong. It takes great inner (spiritual) strength to be in a state where we can feel absolutely content in being, and staying alone, without a sense of loneliness eventually creeping in.

Even though we may occasionally, by choice, turn away from the world, deep, prolonged solitude is a tough mountain to climb…

I asked the boy beneath the pines.
He said, “The master’s gone alone
Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,
Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.”
— Chia Tao in My Country and My People

Yes. It takes a certain Mastery of our own self to be at peace, even joyful, in our choice of solitude. And yet, it is often unnerving to be alone with this stranger that we often only know in the context of our relationships, our jobs, our accomplishments. We are often at see when left with our own selves, aren’t we? The regular practice of silence and stillness do help us along the way. Serendipitious discoveries on the path – an unexpected burst of spring blooms as we turn the bend, an unfamiliar yet welcoming bird call, a flash of sunlight through the trees – reinforce our choice and our practice.

And then, spring comes, and we learn to bloom, to thrive with the stranger whose silent, still company once made us uncomfortable. Solitude begins to produce that sweet fruit which we feel comfortable to share with the strangers around us. In embracing solitude, we truly embrace Oneness. In embracing Oneness, we become the masters who look forward to traveling alone, to a destination unknown…

Kumud

P.S. I invite you to join us on Sunday, April 8th at 9amET on twitter, as we gather to talk about solitude… in the community that is #SpiritChat. Namaste 🙂

Fruits of Solitude – Passionfruit and Pomegranate (on farm in Brazil)

On Practicing Silence

Tags

silence, solitude, stillness

The practice of silence is perhaps one of the tougher practices in this age of so much noise and chatter. To experience external silence, one has to make a concentrated effort to filter out the inputs that are clamoring for our attention. Even during sleep, noise surrounds us, even though some of us sound sleepers are fortunate to be blissfully unaware of it. Have you ever noticed that you wake up on some days feeling completely rested, while on others, you are still tired? Why is that?

One reason for the difference between a ‘sound’ sleep and an ‘unsound’ one is perhaps the amount of ‘internal noise’ that we may have experienced during the night. When we get ready to go to sleep after a particularly hectic, busy, noise-filled day, our brain has not had enough time during our waking state to fully process all the inputs that it received during the day. Our central processing unit, the brain, has only so much processing power. So, when overloaded, it tends to enqueue the unprocessed inputs. It is these excess, unprocessed inputs that the brain then processes during the night – in the very hours that we are physically at rest, but mentally wide awake!

And so we begin the next day, often to the sound of a jarring, noisy sounding alarm, which literally sets the tone for the day to come. And the cycle repeats itself, until the weekend, when we can (hopefully) take some time off from the treadmill of external chatter and noise. But the weekend is often not enough time to rest our body and mind, never mind the spirit. And so we look forward to the next vacation, or at least a three- or four-day weekend, to play catch-up, to truly feel physically, mentally, and spiritually rested again. I have a proposition.

What if we could vacate our mind-brain on a regular basis, every single day? Let us develop a practice, so that we actively immerse ourselves in silence at the beginning and end of every day. The moment that we wake up, we dive into silence. We may start with fifteen minutes, grow to thirty minutes, and then progress to an hour of morning silence. If we can be physically silent, then we have a better chance to be mentally silent. At the end of every day, laying in bed, what if we were to take a few minutes to be physically, and then mentally silent? How would the quality of sleep improve with this practice?

Once we can develop a practice to be mentally quiet when physically still at the beginning and end of every day, we can invoke that quiet state any time during the day. We can even invoke silence while in motion, even amidst the great noise of the world. And when we can be internally silent on demand, we have taken one giant step towards invoking peace, joy and lightness, no matter our external state of stimulus.

In the true depth of our inner silence, we discover our connectedness to the infinite. In silence, we discover that our heart has the capacity to be like the ocean that refuses no river. For it is in silence, that we can hear the message, the purpose, of the seed that was planted in us at birth.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us for our weekly conversation on twitter – Sunday, March 11th at 9amET/1pmUTC/6:30pmIndia. Please note that we shift to daylight savings time in my time zone this Sunday. The live hour of #SpiritChat will arrive an hour early for those not observing the one hour time-shift. Namaste!

Practicing Silence…