On Paths of Union

Tags

awareness, spiritual practice, union, walking

There is an instant affinity and connection when stepping into the trail. A distinct sense of being welcomed with joy, even by the mosquitoes! A sense of delight in the meeting, in the coolness of the slate-lined river bank and the breeze and the ocean of green come ashore. A sense of peace in the silent flow of the river whose bottom can be clearly seen in this late afternoon in the light of the filtered sun that remove all your troubles so that you can focus on the expanse of the invitation that lies in front of you…

And then, after you have spent at least a half hour playing among the stones of the river bed, weaving in the trails and bathing in the foliage of the forest, the river-side offers you a place to pause and rest. You gratefully accept. As you sit on the trail bench, there is something about the slant of sunlight on the trees, and the river’s peace, that prompts you to do a first-time-ever evening meditation in that space. The path has unfolded before you.

You are sitting amid the noise of the traffic and people walking on the trail behind you… and yet, after a while, all you hear primarily is the river rustling by and the wind whispering among the trees. The sun filters through the trees behind you and sends warm currents up and down your spine. And then, after what seems like an eternity, and yet is actually less than a dozen minutes, it happens.

You remember Dad and his ability to submerge into stillness and silence in the midst of it all. You realize that That is what he was communicating to you all that time, on all those days-long train trips across India, the road trips in the far reaches of the Himalayas, when as a child you wished that he would speak more words of wisdom into you. He was showing you that the path to a higher Union, the path to awareness, truth and bliss, goes through the deep silence and stillness that quietens the waves created by the “mind stuff” — the path that Patanjali defines as the practice of Yoga.

Pay attention. Do your workings in and for the world, but also do the work needed to walk your path towards higher Union. That has been the message filtering into my heart over the past week or so, and re-iterated in Friday evening’s walk. I am grateful to be sharing the loving message with you. Namaste.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering and twitter chat, Sunday June 19 at 9amET / 1pmGMT / 630pm India. I will bring some tea, fruit and questions – you bring your favorite walking shoes 🙂 – AjmaniK

P.P.S To all who are celebrating, Happy Father’s Day and Happy Juneteenth on June 19. International Yoga Day and Summer Solstice is June 21. Get ready 🙂

The walk is rarely easy… and yet, always worth it! (Rocky River Reservation, Ohio)

On Mothers and Beyond

Tags

celebration, healing, mothersday, not hers, spiritual practice

If you live in North America, you are most probably well aware of the significance of the Mother’s Day holiday, which falls on the second Sunday of May (May 8 2022). To be honest, despite living in the US since 1986, I wasn’t much aware of this holiday until about 2010. My awareness probably coincided with my becoming a parent myself!

Over the years of hosting Spiritchat on Mother’s Day, my awareness of the role of Mothers, and the range of emotions that this holiday evokes, has grown tremendously. I used to wear magenta-colored glasses (my birth Mom’s favorite color!) about the all-loving role of Mothers towards their children, and about children towards their mothers. The people of Spiritchat have taught me that there can be a lot more to the Mother-child relationship than the predominance of love and joy.

I am grateful for the education. The truth is that there are many who have never felt the love of a birth mother, and had to find the ‘Mother’ role in another female, or sometimes, male figure in their lives. I have learn that, yes, the ‘Mother’ and mothering role can extend to aunts, sisters, grandmothers, teachers, and sometimes even to neighbors, nannies and maids.

I have also learnt that all too often, there is very little education and training of ‘how to be a mother’, particularly in a society where the majority of households are a ‘nuclear family’. Where does a new birth-mother find good role-models, particularly if their own experiences with their birth-mothers have been filled with pain, anxiety, lack of warmth, and more? How do we break this cycle of ‘mother-child dysfunction’ if we want to have a good chance to raise thriving future generations?

We often jest that there is no ‘guidebook’ to parenting – you are supposed to learn as you go! While that may have some truth to it, we can do better. What if we were to raise the value of the role of the ‘Mothers’ significantly higher than what we currently assess it at? We can debate about the ‘how’ of doing this, but unless we know the ‘why’ to do it, we won’t get out of the starting gate, will we? One small thing we all can do, and it doesn’t incur much cost, is to educate ourselves about the current contributions of those in Mother roles in our societies.

Here are some numbers for the USA. There are an estimated 85 million mothers in the US. In 40% of households, Moms are the sole or primary income earners. 80% of single parents in the US are mothers. 56% of working mothers have children under the age of 18. Hopefully, these statistics give us an idea of the extent of the contribution of Mothers to US society. What do the numbers in your country look like?

I know that I am far out in left-field from what I had initially intended for this post to be about. But, as often happens, the heart’s current is driving my fingers as I type, and so, here it is. Mothers Day. A day for remembrance, for healing and forgiveness, for awareness, for empathy that will create compassion which will translate into action. What will we do and/or be as individuals, as societies, as the world, between this Mothers Day and the next one? That is the question I am considering. How about you?

Will we be inclusive and have loving understanding of those who aren’t Mothers, and may choose not to be one? Will we pause for a moment and send love to the Mothers of the disappeared and the ones who lost their Mother figures over the last year, so that they can heal and hope? Will we give thanks to the Universal Mother whose grace and abundance flows to us constantly, whose kind gaze soothes us like the coolness of the moon, and whose loving light warms us in every sunrise and sunset? What else can we celebrate about those without whom love and life itself would not be possible, in this, our temporary home of a physical body, as we walk our path towards our permanent abode?

Thank you, to all my Moms. I am fortunate to have had many who filled that role, and continue to do so. My gratitude for all of them knows no bounds. Namaste.

Kumud

P.S. This was supposed to be a short post. Oh well! Do join us for our weekly twitter chat with the #Spiritchat community, Sunday May 8 at 9amET / 1pmGMT / 630pm India. If you would, bring a memory of your Mom (or your kids if you are a Mom :)) to share. I will bring some tea and cookies, and maybe a question or few 🙂 – @AjmaniK

Mother Nature… grateful for her omnipresence

On Inner Conditions

Tags

awareness, heart, spiritual practice, spirituality

Snowflakes! I am waking up to snowflakes! This was my first thought as I emerged from the stillness and peace that has enveloped me in today’s hour of meditation — a habit that has sustained me well for the past few years, and greatly helped improve my overall inner condition.

Meditation has inspired an attitude that distracts me from pessimism and orients me towards the unfettered beauty of the inner and outer world that I live in. It inspires me to be mindful of, and mind my ‘inner condition’, as reflected by the state of my heart. Meditation has guided me to love those who are easy to love, and be patient with those who aren’t so easy to love.

With sustained practice, it’s easy to be in a condition of equanimity when we are by ourselves. And yet, we live and engage with a world of people with hugely varying states of ‘inner conditions’. My inner condition can thus change quickly, with worldly ‘triggers’. Sometimes , this happens as soon as I step out of my meditative state. So why even meditate, I used to ask? This, in turn, led me to ask more questions.

What are the sources of these triggers that disrupt my peaceful inner condition attained during meditation? Do these triggers repeat themselves? What additional work can I do, to preserve my meditative condition of lightness, as I traverse my daily worldly life?

As is often the case, the answers come from the heart’s being in a receptive, loving, observing condition. Be easy to love, and love with a light touch. Bring joy from a distance, and embrace lightly in connection. Celebrate your uniqueness as you delight in your travels. Dance in the wind, let it twist and twirl you along the way.

Ah. The lessons in observing the life and conditions of a snowflake!

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat with the #SpiritChat community, Sunday January 16 at 9amET / 730pm India. There will be questions, tea and coffee, and yes, even some cake! – @AjmaniK

Snowflakes… teachers about our inner condition…

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

Our Spiritual Stress-Test

Tags

covid19, modeling, science, spiritual practice, stress

Most of you may not know that my day-to-day engineering work involves computational modeling and testing of aircraft engine systems, in particular the combustion system or the combustor. As the name suggests, it is the system where fuel and air is mixed in varying ratios to create the desired amount of heat for takeoff, cruising, landing, and so on. In short, the goal of our models is to predict and improve, as best as we can, the efficiency of the engine, and the emissions created by it. The models are constantly improved and tweaked based on data from actual hardware tests. The models help in preliminary design of new hardware, and reduce the costs and time required to build a new, better combustor. 

The average time to design, build, test, re-test, certify and eventually put a new system on an airplane, particularly a combustor, is about ten years. Computer modeling is helping to reduce the ten-year cycle, but we aren’t quite there yet. The reason is that the modeling of the mixing of air and fuel and the subsequent fire that is created, is more complex than it looks. It can often take three to four weeks for thousands of computers working in tandem to produce a single answer for a single setting of the engine (say, takeoff).

Still with me? You can now understand why I have been fascinated by all the attempts of scientists to try and predict the growth, the spread and the mortality rate of the Covid-19 virus.  The modeling is being done with limited real-world data, and with limited understanding of how the virus affects different populations and how fast it is being spread by those who don’t show any symptoms. The result is that is a large amount of uncertainty in the various models’ predictions of when the infections are going to peak in a particular city or state, and what the corresponding death rate is going to be.

In short, the modeling is less than perfect. However, the early modeling was very useful giving hospital systems in cities and states a rough estimate of the number of cases that could happen if no action was takien. This early-warning system is what prompted the calls to “flatten the curve” so that the healthcare systems would not get overwhelmed and fail their stress-test. Some states passed “stay at home” orders, and hoped that citizens would heed their plea and actually comply. In my state of Ohio, the vast majority of citizens did comply,  and the result was that we have collectively put the state and our frontline healthcare workforce in a good position to deal with the peak of the stress-test that is coming in a few weeks. 

And yet, we know that, as of this writing, our preparation is not enough to avoid the stress-test that is coming our way. The very first time I heard of the possibility of one hundred thousand deaths in the early part of the week, I went into a bit of shock. Even though I had been following the modeling closely, I had a very difficult time accepting this number. Over the next few days, my emotions ranged between anger, angst, anguish, acrimony, animosity, and even a bit of anxiety. It felt like my emotional and spiritual systems were facing a stress-test of their own. 

How did my spiritual training and practices respond to the stress-test? How well did they withstand the shock of the emotional waves that came ashore like a raging storm? I would say that the jury is still out. The initial shock and stress-test did expose the cracks in my individual preparedness. I came face-to-face with the awareness that the practices I have developed over the past few years, while useful, need to be shored up. Yes, there was perhaps no way to design my spiritual practices to pass a stress-test of this once-in-a-generation magnitude. What spiritual practices has the current stress-test reminded me of?

The current stress-test has reminded me of the daily habit of returning to the healing voice within, of taking time to limit the voices that influence my mind from the without. It has brought the practices of ’empathy for the suffering’ and ‘gratitude for grace’ to the forefront of my awareness. It has led me to reconnect with nature and ask the question – how do nature’s flora and fauna deal with the stress-tests that they are given?

Late Friday afternoon, it occurred to me that the local bird reservation must have undergone quite a transformation since the two weeks that I had last visited there. When I arrived there, the parking lot was much more full than I could ever remember. In a small patch of grass at the beginning of the trail, a young couple was having a picnic with their toddler and their puppy. The bridge that spans the pond at the entrance had a mother with her two teenage daughters admiring the ducks that were floating around peacefully. The wooded part of the trail sported a wide range of parents with their kids sporting binoculars and cameras, taking in the sights and sounds of the forest. The sun was playing hide and seek with the tall trees and starting to cast long reflections on the trail. Along the stretch that runs between two lakes on either side of it, several pairs of geese had staked out small patches of territory (with proper physical distancing) for nesting. There was a baby turtle sunning itself on a small island in the middle of a swathe of blue. The half-moon had already risen high into the early evening sky, ready to bid the sun a good night. 

As I headed back from my visit, it struck me that all seemed well with the world of nature. There was no sign of stress, let alone any sign of a stress-test. The reservation was in the process of embracing spring with an open, joyous heart. I felt immersed in nature’s joy, internalizing it. I felt nature reminding me that in the midst of perhaps the greatest stress-test of our times, our best spiritual practices are those which return us to our intrinsic nature of love and joy. 

No matter what the projections and models say, we are all in this together. There is no computer model that can predict the strength of human resilience. With cooperation, integration and harmony, we can pass this stress-test. Of that, I am sure. 

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering on twitter on Sunday April 5 at 9amET / 630pm India. How are you coping with the current stress-test? What practices are helping you most in these times? How can the #SpiritChat community be of help to you in these times? Do share with us. We look forward to connecting and listening. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Resources: IHME Covid-19 Modeling (US State-by-State Data) / State of Ohio Covid-19 Modeling / American Medical Association Podcast: Vaccines and Immunity

A goose takes a rest from nesting… yoga on the trail! 

On Creating Clarity

Tags

awareness, clarity, spiritual practice, stillness

Over the past twenty four hours or so, a warm front sitting over the state has removed all the signs of winter from the landscape. Fierce winds and rain have lashed the west-facing windows and sidings as a reminder of the transition. The “wind tunnel” effect that pulls the wind off of the lake and guides it in the space between the back of the house and the forest, has created a continuous roar for two straight nights.

The unseasonal weather has resulted in seemingly erratic behavior among many birds and animals, if not some humans. Unanticipated transitions tend to remove clarity from our minds and replace it with doubt. When our outer environment is greatly disturbed or disrupted, the antennas that monitor our inner space try to recalibrate and reorient themselves.

Our spiritual practices — those that help us build reservoirs of resilience, patience, calmness, jurisprudence open-minded acceptance, and discernment — are often tested during ‘unseasonal’ weather. It is in these seasons of great disruption that the heart draws on our reservoirs of intuition to restore clarity. When we evoke the heart’s trust, it helps ensure that we remember to operate from a state of calmness in the midst of confusion.

Clarity of the heart helps us see the temporary for what it is, and remember the permanent for what It is.

The forecast is for a bit of snow to return over the next day or so. The heart awaits in the knowing that every season brings its own clarity.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter gathering Sunday Jan 12 at 9amET in #SpiritChat. Bring your heart’s weather with you – I will bring some tea and we shall chat. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Spirituality and Veterans

Tags

freedom, healing, spiritual practice, spirituality, veterans

One benefit of sitting next to my daughter study American history this semester is that this immigrant is also learning some important bits by osmosis. Her course’s current focus is on the American Civil War of the 18th century and all the battles that were fought between ‘North’ and ‘South’. Many of the war’s stories are stark reminders of the cost of war in general — the cost of human disagreements gone greatly awry.

Some of the ‘greatest’ wars that humans have engaged in are perhaps the ones which incurred the greatest casualties and deaths. Some are deemed ‘great’ because they were fought to gain freedom, to preserve freedoms. Others are considered ‘great’, even termed ‘world wars’, because their conflagration spread across nations and continents.

And then there are the wars that us humans have fought, even fight today, because we deem that ‘our’ religion is superior to ‘theirs’. Or that ours is the only ‘true’ spiritual path to ‘liberation’ and all others paths are ‘false’. Millions have died in wars to assert religious superiority — to what effect, one has to wonder?

There are those who will assert that war is sometimes essential to maintain peace, to enable and ensure the practice of religious and other freedoms. Yes. History is full of examples of power gone berserk in the hands of those whose greed and ambition know no bounds. If we all were to evolve to the point where we could regulate our own selves well, examine and limit our wants and words, love and give more, then war would become an anachronism.

Until we get to that stage where all war becomes unnecessary, the greatest respect that we can perhaps pay to veterans is to acknowledge and respect their ability and willingness to go to battle, to suffer the pain and horror of war on our behalf.

In return, may we practice constant remembrance — to use the time, space and freedom gifted to us by them, to involve into spiritual veterans. Perhaps the result of our daily, hourly, minutely spiritual practice can be to honor and cherish the truths of joy, love, light and kindness in thought and action.

Maybe we can give new meaning to ‘remembrance’ on every future Veterans Day. By working toward a sustainable inner peace, by supporting those who work for peace, we can create new kinds of heroes. Through constant remembrance of peace, our spiritual work and practice can help create an alternative to war for future generations.

Kumud

P.S. Join our weekly gathering on Twitter – Sunday, Nov 10 at 9amET/ 730pm India in #SpiritChat ~ Namaste – @AjmaniK

Spiritual Reverence by @IntuitiveHeal

Tags

reverence, spiritual practice, spirituality

Spiritual Reverence – by Dr. Christy Johnson

Dictionary.com defines reverence as “a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe; veneration.” When we revere ourselves, our loved ones, our experiences, and what we sense with our five senses, even just a little, the world rises to meet us in a new way. Reverence is like gratitude magnified by divine grace. Gratitude allows us to notice, appreciate, and then more easily notice and appreciate, all the goodness we experience. Reverence lifts this to another level, by opening our hearts to the heavens, to the mystery of the universe, and to allowing ourselves to be stunned and awestruck. In reverence, we worship and transcend.

Nature can invoke reverence. My family visited Grand Canyon when I was a young girl and the magnitude and beauty stunned me, opening my heart forever to something unfathomable prior to the experience. Likewise I remember standing near Niagara Falls as a child, feeling amazed and awestruck. Luckily by remembering these transcendent moments we can access reverence whenever we want.

Imagine shifting from resistance to reverence. I often hear people, and even myself sometimes, say, “I’m so done with this. This has to go,” when referring to one
pattern or another in their lives. Intellectually we understand wanting to be rid of something makes it stick like Velcro but another part of us believes if we push it away hard enough, we’ll dislodge it for good. What might happen if we could revere our patterns? If we could deeply appreciate and be stunned by how perfect they are for us, how aligned they are for our growth and evolution, how we are fundamentally good and whole, perhaps we’d be reborn in our own beauty and soul level perfection.

Please join us this Sunday, October 27th, 2019 at 9 A.M. EDT/6:30 P.M. India, as we open our hearts to discuss and invite feeling reverent. During this hour, let’s uplift our community Twitter feed by revering one another, our lives, our connections, and our own tender and resilient hearts. As Rumi says, “Only from your heart can you touch the sky.” Let’s touch the sky together.

Dr. Christy Johnson quit a decades-long engineering career in 2010 to open her integrative energy healing practice. She helps clients relieve and soothe the pain of life’s challenges while embracing their authenticity and joy via soul level insights and energy healing. You can connect with her via her website www.intuitiveheal.com or on Twitter @IntuitiveHeal .

P. S. Join our special guest host Dr Christy Johnson as she steps up to host our weekly twitter chat (Sunday Oct 27 at 9amET in #spiritchat) on this wonderful topic. Thank you – Kumud

Dr. Christy Johnson (@IntuitiveHeal on Twitter)

On Loving Discipline

Tags

awareness, freedom, spiritual practice, spirituality

Have you ever thought that “discipline” was invented to put you in a “box”, restrict your freedom(s), prevent you from living the life that you were meant to live? Have you ever met someone who is allergic to, inherently resists the idea of “discipline”?

In my younger (read ‘teenage’) years, discipline was perhaps the last thing that I wanted to be subject to. The very notion that I was expected to make my bed before I went to school seemed like an injustice. And the bus came at 6:30am! In high school, there was no ‘sleeping in’ on weekends. Saturday morning discipline included going shopping for milk, vegetables and groceries. Then there was the choice of dusting the furniture and bookcases, folding the laundry, putting away the washed dishes, setting the table for lunch or dinner, clearing the table after the meals, and much more. There was no escape from the seeming prison of chores and discipline. And I haven’t even talked about the take- no-prisoners attitude of discipline of some of the teachers at school!

But little was I to know that it was all preparation for what was to come my way a few years later. On my arrival as a graduate student in the USA, I realized that the ‘prison of discipline’ in my aunt’s home in India had taught me self-awareness. I was pleasantly surprised that I knew exactly what it would take to thrive on my own in a foreign land. I was able to work out chore-sharing with my roommates, just like I chore-shared with my cousins growing up. I quickly became aware that grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, cleaning, and even cooking, were all things that I was already good at. I actually began to fall in love with the idea of discipline!

After the self-awareness, I began to realize that freedom from the ‘prison of discipline’ had led me to the practice of self-discipline. The more I practiced it, the more my self-respect and self-image grew. With this growth, I found that I was comfortable in reaching out and making friends with all sorts of nationalities, and particularly the Americans. The land that I considered foreign, adopted me over time.

I believe that this two-way adoption happened because self-respect grew into self-love. It took self-love to keep an open mind to learning about western customs and culture, and harmonizing them with my eastern foundations.

As a parent and teacher, I began to consider that most of our parents’ (and teachers’) discipline is perhaps borne out of love for us. By by ‘drawing lines’ for us, they are teaching us self-awareness, self-respect, and self-love. Theirs, and now mine, is evolving into a loving discipline indeed.

Loving discipline manifests because true love takes some discipline, and true discipline takes a lot of love. What’s your take on ‘loving discipline’?

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. join us for our weekly #SpiritChat gathering – Sunday, Aug 11 at 9amET – I will bring some questions on discipline – with love 🙂 – Namaste. Kumud.

Nature’s discipline takes many forms – mostly of a loving nature!

On Spiritual Flexibility

Tags

practicality, resilience, spiritual practice, vedanta

It was a bright, sunny early evening when I left home to head out for the Friday evening lecture hosted by our local Vedanta group. By the time I got to the highway a few minutes later to head east for a few miles, the skies had suddenly darkened. A mile or so later, it was pouring down, torrential downpour – severe enough for me to consider pulling over and let it pass.

I slowed down but decided to keep going, hoping that the thunderstorm would pass through. By the time I arrived at the venue, I realized that I had arrived at the eye of the storm, which included the steady drum-beat of pelting down pea-sized hail. I decided to wait it out in my car, for to step outside would surely mean an instant shower. Maybe I should have stayed home today?

The speaker was a young monk from Hollywood, California, who had arrived in the USA from India, less than two years ago. As he started his lecture, it was apparent that his (very good) English was still heavily tinged with Indian accents. However, his two-part message, of which, “flexibility in spiritual practice” was the second part, was unmistakably clear. With story after story of how to practice spiritual flexibility in life with respect to time, to people and to situations, he held the audience in rapt interest.

The gist of his message was that spiritual flexibility is one of the best ingredients to create inner peace.

Have you ever read or listened to spiritual and religious material(s) (books, essays, lectures, scriptures) and wondered why some of the messages within them seem anachronistic (out of time and place) with modern life? If yes, then his suggestion was to put a ‘time context’ to those material(s), and allow for temporal flexibility of the message(s) contained within them. The message(s) that made ‘sense’ then may not necessarily make ‘sense’ now. We may have to re-visit, re-classify, re-evaluate, and maybe even reject certain old doctrine(s), so that we do not become prisoners of dogma. This is called spiritual flexibility in time.

Have you ever wondered why certain people get attracted to certain spiritual practice(s) while some seem totally disinterested in them? Some may prefer yoga or chanting, others may prefer going to places of worship, while others may choose meditation or something entirely different. To each their own. There are also those who have developed a variety of such practices. Such people have the ability to be flexible in their understanding of, and their response to, different types of people. Diversity of spiritual tools allows us to practices flexibility with people.

Have you ever felt that your beliefs, your responses, and your outcomes to seemingly similar life situations have changed over time? An event or situation that would have sent you into a tail-spin a few year ago barely registers a blip on your emotional radar – this is a sign of growth in emotional intelligence. Similarly, our ability to respond with equanimity to ‘good’ and ‘bad’ events in our lives, and keep on doing good for the greater good, is a sign of spiritual flexibility in life situations.

Spiritual resilience is a benefit of developing spiritual flexibility. We learn the art of being flexible, and adapting with time, with people, and with life’s situations. What other pros (and cons) may be the result of practicing spiritual flexibility? I invite you to come and share with us in our weekly gathering. Namaste.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering on twitter – Sunday, June 30 at 9amET. I will bring some questions (and answers), and we can help each other build resilience as we walk our paths forward. Namaste – Kumud

The tree trunks, the branches, the leaves, and the not-visible roots… they are flexible, they all bend to the light and the wind… and hence transmit peace