On Spiritual Stability and GNC

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guidance, spirituality, stability

One measure of the ‘health’ of man-made satellites that are orbiting the earth or on missions away from earth is their ability to communicate well with the home planet. When the satellites are communicating well with ground-stations, they are in a proper orientation and alignment. The technical term for this is called ‘attitude’.

There are many reasons that the satellite may lose its proper ‘attitude’. This loss of ‘attitude’ can happen slowly over time as the satellite’s energy producing mechanisms start to malfunction. When detected and diagnosed in time, this loss of ‘attitude’ is often easily corrected. Sometimes, a catastrophic failure in hardware or software can send the satellite spinning wildly. In such a scenario, ‘attitude’ correction to restore stability is much more difficult.

The primary way that stability is restored in satellites is by the GNC system. Guidance. Navigation. Control. One may posit that this makes for a good analogy for restoration of stability in human beings too! It is hard to imagine that any of us have the ‘perfectly positive attitude’ at all times towards other human beings, or even towards our own selves. Am I the only one who needs frequent attitude corrections to restore my inner, spiritual stability?

Maybe we can use the GNC analogy to help us restore stability. Let us consider the first tool, Guidance. When our attitude is declining slowly, we may choose to invoke ‘relaxation’ or ‘mindfulness’ to guide us back to inner stability. If we encounter a sudden, severe loss of attitude due to one of our triggers being pressed, we may need to invoke deeper guidance to recover. What are your ‘rapid spin’ triggers? Who catches you when you suddenly spin out of control? Do you have guidance or guides in place to help you in such situations?

The second tool in GNC is Navigation. Navigation may be internal (programmed into the satellite itself) or external (commands sent by ‘ground control’). Humans are much better than satellites at self-analysis and correcting their internal programming to restore their stability when necessary. Satellites are probably better at accepting and executing stability correction manoeuvers from ‘ground control’ (external sources) as they don’t have an ego (yet) that gets in the way! Our stability would be well served to check our internal navigation regularly. Is our mind, our intellect navigating us more ofthen than the heart? What path is our guidance and navigation leading us to? Is it congruent with our higher and deeper purpose in life?

Which brings us to Control – the third leg of the GNC tool. This is perhaps the toughest thing for us humans (this human anyway!), and our egos to get a good grasp and acceptance of. We often forget some things about control. How much control do we really have in a given situation. When to exert control and when to let go or yield. How to exert the right amount of control to restore and maintain stability. The good news is that we do have much greater control over our ‘inner’ or ‘spiritual’ state than we may realize.

We can get to a state of inner stability, of good alignment and attitude, when we gain mastery over controlling our inner state.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

Join me and the #SpiritChat community – Sunday, January 22nd 2017 at 9amET/2pmGMT on twitter. We will converse and share on the subject of ‘spiritual stability’ using some of the GNC ideas in this post. Namaste 🙂

On Stability and Uncertainty

Tags

spiritchat, spirituality, stability, uncertainty

Some of you may be familiar with my “walking” habit which often takes me into the local parkway and the various bridges, valleys and rivers. There is a kidney-shaped lagoon that I often walk by as part of my “figure eight” circuit – the inside track of the “kidney” forms part of the circuit. I have often looked to the forest on the other side of the lagoon and wondered about the view from that side of the water. My penchant for stability and ‘staying within my comfort zone’ of exploration had so far kept me away from the other side. But that changed in an unexpected way this week. I stepped onto the slippery slope of uncertainty…

The rest of this “essay” is an extract from my “walking journal”. It speaks to my perspective on stability and uncertainty, and the balance that we try so hard to create between them. But the balance does not remain for long. And we ourselves often proceed to subconsciously or overtly upset that very same balance in order to follow an unseen call of self-exploration. Read on.

The other side of the lagoon called to me today – even though I did not know of that when I pulled in and parked in the Lewis road riding area – I was going to walk my walked-before hill that ran along the west branch of the rocky river – and yet I found myself veering off to the right along the riding paddock along the tree line – and the adventure that was to unfold was remarkable as much as it was subtle in the making –

A walk along the trail high that found me at the edge of the lagoon a few hundred feet below – some portions of the small trail ran close enough to the edge to make your heart race a beat or two faster as the drop was almost vertical to the floor of the valley – and I walked on to the turnaround where the majestic tree stood backlit against the rising sun –

Somehow I could not shake the fact that I had discovered the other side of my frequently walked lagoon and yet I was so far away from her shore which lay at the bottom of the hill – maybe another day I will uncover the path down to it, I reasoned with myself. Stability.

And as I walked back on my return journey, I glanced down and saw a clearing – a plateau about halfway down the sweeping cliff – inviting me, tempting me to descend so that I could get some closer photos of the lagoon quickly turning bluer as the sun rose higher in the sky. Uncertainty.

Maybe, if I can make it down halfway, that will be a start for the next time when I can go all the way to the floor – I rationalized to myself. I chose a “path” where if I started sliding on my descent I would be able to grab on to some young tree trunks or at least some exposed tree roots…

Off the trail and onto the hill I stepped. Into uncertainty. The floor of the steep hill floor was soft yet firm enough – the consistency of a mixture of mulch and the underlying shale on which the trees seemed to flourish – and so, sideways I descended – like a goat finding his way, right shoulder towards the decline with my right foot perpendicular to the slope, leading the dance down the mountain…

Of course, once I got halfway down and caught my breath. I admired the bluer blue of the water below. Sure enough, there was another path revealed to me. It was clear that I could reach the base of the hill and the shore of the lagoon. Maybe next week, I thought. But I recalled that the forecast was for the weather to turn rainy and cold from here on out – this was probably going to be the last dry and warm day of the season and the hill would probably become unnavigable once the weather turned…

So, down I went towards the lagoon’s shore, discovering trees full of tiny redwings and burrows in the soft mulch – probably the practice grounds of the many baby chipmunks that scurried across the hillside… and as if in welcome, a few acorns fell from trees into the clear lagoon water, sounding like thunder laps as they struck the surface…
And the very geese that would scamper at my sight when they would see me walking the other shore were now swimming towards me… one of them swam by me as if I didn’t exist – and the other pair put up quite a show as they bathed and preened on a fallen log eight in front of me. I guess that they felt no threat from me or were shocked to see any human on this side of the lagoon – so, they simply ignored me 🙂

The ascent up the hill faced me now – I had figured on my way down that the ascent would be easier than the descent – but I was wrong. I had to get on my hands to grab the ground a few times to navigate up the steep, soft incline. Often, what I thought to be tree roots that I could grab for support turned out to be chewed up, hollowed out branches. More uncertainty. So, I decided to take a circular route up the hill instead of a straight-on ascent. An attempt at stability. This strategy worked well as I huffed and puffed my way up the second half… I guess I’m not in as good of shape as I think I am!

So, that’s my story of the other side of the lagoon on a beautiful autumn day where Mother Nature blessed me abundantly for letting go of my preconceived notion of what constitutes a ‘walking path’ and stability. I learnt that a little bit of faith in oneself backed by past experience and learned intuition can mitigate the risk and fear that one feels when stepping into the unexplored regions of uncertain yet familiar terrain.

The rewards for doing so are tough to describe in words – for how does one describe the sight of a backlit tree in all her glory and the multifarious views of leaves changing color and letting go when their work is deemed complete… they spend an apparent lifetime on the branches in stability, yet they are happy to let go as they are set free in their yielding to uncertainty.

What is your current (spiritual) story about uncertainty and stability? Is it an even balance? What gives you stability? What invites you to step into uncertainty? I invite you to share with us, Sunday October 9th 2016 in our weekly #SpiritChat conversation on twitter.

Namaste – from the other side of the lagoon,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Enjoyed this essay? Leave me a comment if you would like to see more of these… Thank you for reading!

Trail’s End – Backlit Tree

The Hill Invites me to the Lagoon Floor

The Other Side of the Lagoon

Spiritual Agility and Stability

Tags

agility, spiritchat, spirituality, stability

In my study of martial arts over the years, one concept that has been “drilled” into me is that of “foundation”. Get your foundation right, and all other things – balance, stability, power, agility – will flow from there. Get your foundation wrong, and nothing can possibly flow well. And how do we set our foundation? It is all in our “stance”.

The most basic stance is the 50-50. Shoulder width apart, even distribution of weight on each leg… and so on. Bend your knees. Bend your knees. Bend your knees. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that in class… For it is in bending the knees that we lower our center of gravity, create more stability. And so, we literally “ground” ourselves, root ourselves to the ground, grip it with our toes. Firm. Stationary. Balanced. Stable.

And it is out of this stability that our ability to be agile – our agility if you will, emerges. For it is when we are established in our confidence that we are truly relaxed, and it is when we are truly relaxed that we can focus on what we are to do next. It is when we try to do too many things at once, that our energy, our stability, is scattered – and we do none of the things well. Some of you may say that this runs counter to the idea of multi-tasking, or even the ability to be agile – and that’s okay. If that approach works for you, more power to you 🙂

I am just here to communicate to you what has worked for me, and some of the lessons that my 35-years-in-training Karate Master has taught me. One of those lessons is that agility – the ability to move in any direction at any given time – emanates, emerges, flows, from stability. So, I have taken this lesson to heart, to my work, to my (spiritual) practice(s). And I have to say that I am better off because of it.

What is your take? Does this interplay of stability and agility make sense to you? What practice(s) or principle(s) add to your overall stability? How do you practice agility (the ability to move quickly and easily) in your thoughts and ideas? If you are in a leadership role, how do you communicate the ideas of stability and agility to your team(s)? Does the notion of spiritual stability – our core, fundamental values and principles – come in the way of our being spiritually agile – our ability to entertain new ideas and practices?

We will address some of these questions in our weekly twitter conversation on Sunday April 6th at 9am EDT (see here for your local time) with the #SpiritChat community. I invite you to join us and share your thoughts.

And no matter whether you can join us or not, I wish the best of stability and agility…

Kumud

P.S. Photo Credit: Grandmaster Willie Adams (10th Degree Black Belt and one of the most ever-smiling, peaceful people you will ever meet), executes a kick… I took the original photo and ‘layered’ it onto one of my “ocean” photos. He is the teacher of Master Clyde Dennis (8th degree Black Belt, my teacher, and one of the most peaceful people you will ever meet :))