The Observer’s Journey

Tags

independence, observing, spirituality, summer, walking

Why does a sunflower even exist? What is it that it takes from the world? Is it not simply an observer of the world around it? To be a seeker of the Sun and spread its attendant light and goodness – is that not the sole purpose of sunflower’s journey?

All these questions came flooding into my mind as I took shelter under the trees near the river bank. In my return to the walking trails on Friday morning, I had been caught in a sudden downpour. The invitation was to pause and observe even more intently than I typically do when I am walking. The river was already swollen from the week’s rain, as was evident from the swift currents flowing through some of the typically dry channels near the shore.

As the rain intensified, I bided my time observing the changes in the 200 foot bluff on the far bank, the slight yellowing of the canopy of leaves under which I stood, the tributaries formed by recently fallen tree trunks, and more. But where were the sunflowers I had been hoping to see on today’s walk? Not a one in sight so far.

A break in the downpour meant it was decision time – do I continue the walk or do I call it a walk and return to the car that was parked a few hundred feet away? One sweeping look at the dark skies gave me the answer. I would walk back to the car, along the trees lining the shore, so that I could take in a little bit more of the river’s majesty on this day.

In my dozens of previous walks past this location, I had never ventured to this tree-lined section of the river bank. I had no idea that I would be welcomed by a bevy of wildflowers a few hundred feet later! Many of them had seen better days, but there were a few that were still seeking the Sun and attracting bees. A stairway of tree roots led me down to the very wet bank, and as I turned around to return, there they were. Dozens of them in full glory, reaching skywards, each yellow flower seemingly pulling their companions higher on their respective journeys.

It was in that moment that I realized what I had missed most about “working from home” during the pandemic. I had missed the serendipity of days like this where I could simply go observing and be filled by the joy of the infinite beauty that surrounds me. Yes, one doesn’t have to travel thousands of miles to observe beauty, but sometimes, the journey amplifies the joy of the experience.

The same amplification is perhaps true of the seeker’s, the observer’s journey into the within. The pandemic, and the hours saved in commuting to work, gave me the extra time every day to commit to my inner observations. What is my mind doing with this sensory input? Why are my emotions rising or falling in response to this observation? Where did this flash of anger spring from? What is the state of the light within my heart? Am I remembering to focus on simply being the observer and not the reactionary, the evaluator, the arbiter of my daily observations?

If we choose clarity and openness, we can eventually arrive at a point where we go beyond self-observation and ask – who is the One who is the real observer? When we arrive at that answer, we can know the truth of Oneness. Until then, we continue to take joy in the Sunflowers of the world that unceasingly, unfailingly, and ever so joyfully remind us to keep our heart pointed towards the light. Namaste.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly Twitter chat, Sunday Aug 15 at 9amET / 630pm India in #SpiritChat w/host @AjmaniK ~ Namaste

Yes… every (imperfect) yellow flower on the journey… is a perfect Sunflower 🌻 to me 🙂

Not really a ‘sunflower’, but a Sunflower in this observer’s heart 🙂

The Heart of Freedom

Tags

celebration, freedom, imperfection, spirituality, summer

I’m feeling a little bit disappointed that I didn’t get to the umbrella on the deck in time during the last storm. As I try to open it, I notice that the middle of the three tiers won’t fully open because one one of the supporting tines has broken in half and gone missing. The puppy is standing beside me, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind as I raise and lower the cranking mechanism in vain, hoping that it will somehow fix itself.

No such luck. As I am about to give up, I look down onto the garden, and there, sticking out of the red flowering bush, is the other half of the broken support. Hope. I retrieve it and jerry-rig the two pieces together, and walla, I have a semi-functional shade from the sun. It’s imperfectly perfect in its deformity, in that the tension has gone missing from the fabric that the broken tine now supports.

In retrospect, the storm has given me what I had wished the umbrella always had — a bit of flexibility in its undue tautness, so that it can better weather a bit more of the frequent wind gusts that tend to come off of the water. It looks a bit bent and articulated, and not so pretty any more, but it is actually more relaxed and functional and free-floating in its existence.

I go back to reading my book on Tao with the essay about being “easy and relaxed”. It speaks about harmony with the universe, about transcending both “being” and “doing’” and effortlessly switching from one to the other when necessary. It seems to bring home the message of choice, without which, it is hard to imagine any sense of true freedom.

Some will not rest until they have achieved or restored perfection, while others are at peace with their ‘brokenness’ and their imperfections. Some use their freedom to choose to walk the hard, challenging, twisted paths of life, while others are content in choosing the ‘easy’ roads. We are often judged, even defined by the world by the choices we make, and yet that is all moot, for only our heart knows the inner peace that comes from choosing what is in alignment with the call of our soul.

The willingness to choose our own path, the courage to be answerable to the heart, the ability to keep growing in connection to the divine, the rising up to be in service to others, the releasing of our inner fragrance of love — and to do all of these in a relaxed harmony with the universe — are perhaps our true freedoms. And for us to practice them, our hearts’ freedoms need not be perfect, do they?

As I finish writing this, the creaking of the sunbrella tells me that the wind is picking up and another summer evening thunderstorm approaches. This time, I am ready and present to act before I lose any more tines. I hope to have shade for a few more weeks, for summer has just begun!

Kumud

P.S. What are your thoughts on the heart of freedom? Are we really as free as we think we are? What is it that binds us, often without our awareness? I invite you to share in our weekly chat with the #SpiritChat community on Sunday July 4 (Independence Day in The USA) at 9am ET / 630pm India. Namaste – @AjmaniK

Summer flowers bloom, revealing hearts of Freedom

Spiritual Summer Camp

Tags

camping, healing, retreat, spirituality, summer

The outage started at about 10pm on Thursday evening. It was at about that time when we pulled into the parking lot of the camp ‘in the middle of nowhere” where the eastern and western branches of the historic Delaware river meet. The seven hour drive across rivers, valleys and through the mountains of the lower tier of upstate New York had been scenic and educational.

We arrived to pitch-black darkness under crystal-clear skies with the sliver of a new-moon slowly rising into wispy clouds and the brightest carpet of star-studded diamonds I had seen in a long time. My daughter announced – “there’s no signal, Dad” – a sign that cellular coverage had been reduced to zero. “I am sure they have Wi-Fi” was my palliative response, to instill some hope, even though I knew fully well that that was not to be the case (at for her).

Ten weeks of ‘summer break’ from school usually include at least a few weeks of ‘camp’ for most families, and ours is no different. This year, she decided that she was ready to try ‘sleepaway camp’. So, here we were, to begin three weeks of a journey into a new paradigm without internet, to be (hopefully) replaced with all kinds of activities including outdoor activities and water sports, theater, magic, music, art, and much more. Her ‘device’ is loaded with music and books, but I have a feeling that she will be hard-pressed to find time for any of that.

During the drive out, I couldn’t help but wonder – what were my ‘summer breaks’ like growing up? They were mostly spent visiting family, and traveling around in the areas where my Dad was stationed. Multiple summers were spent in Kashmir, Assam, Arunachal – the far North and Northeastern states of India were my playgrounds. And how about you – what were your ‘summer breaks’ like? Did they include any ‘summer camps’? If so, how did they influence your ‘education’ outside of formal schooling?

As adults, it is perhaps in summer-time that we feel a little bit of extra freedom to take time out for ourselves. As a society, it is a season where it is ‘acceptable’ to take time to be on family vacations, retreats and related travel. ‘Summer-camps’ for adults may look a bit different than those for kids, but the intent is perhaps the same – disconnect from the everyday routine, experience a new (unfamiliar) environment, try some new activities, learn some new skills, make some new friends, and emerge with energy, enthusiasm, and excitement about ‘back to school’ at summer’s end.

So, what would ‘Spiritual summer-camp’ look like for you? Have you ever been to one in the form of a ‘spiritual retreat’ away from home? If so, would you do it again? Have you ever experimented with an ‘in-home’ spiritual summer-camp which involved a new routine, new skills, new connections, internet disconnect, and more?

The outage (for me) lasted well after lunch on the next day. In the morning, it did feel a bit strange to pick up the phone, only to find out that I was still ‘lost’ to the outside world. I will admit that I suddenly ‘found’ a lot more hours in the day… to take a long walk by the lake after breakfast, to sit in an adirondack chair in the sunshine after lunch and doze off into day-dreams, to sit on the hill before dinner and watch the sunlight filtering through the tall trees creating musical patterns on the water…

Total disconnection from the internet, forced upon me as it was, even though it lasted less than a day, allowed me to get a wonderful glimpse of what I had been missing by not ‘going to camp’ as an adult. I was glad to ‘return’, but I secretly wished that my camping adventure had lasted a bit longer…

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.A. Join us Sunday, June 9th at 9amET and share some of your “summer camp” experiences. I will bring some questions, some lemonade and watermelon. You can bring a camp chair and some marshmallows – Kumud

A ‘slice of heaven’ in the Catskills

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”

On Flowering Lightness

Tags

flowers, lightness, spring, summer, walking

It had been a busy spring, and an even busier summer. Family. Work. Travel. Family Travel. Work Travel. And I had slowly gotten away from my regular, almost daily walks on the trails that rarely faired to inspired me to pause, write, take photos, and much more. However, as had often happened before, I knew from personal experience that Nature is patient. And that she would be waiting for me with wide open arms whenever I returned.

And return I did, over the past two weeks. Slowly but surely, like a caterpillar seeded with the knowledge that its truth is to be a butterfly, I emerged into the forest again. The trails welcomed me back with open arms, especially the small ones that were now camouflaged by the overgrowth of summer. As I walked the narrowest ones closest to the river’s edge, the embrace of the tall shrubs forming archways on both sides of me was unmistakable. And with every walk, my heart felt a little lighter, as it found its way away from the heaviness of the world.

But where were all the flowers? The ones who with their sudden appearance around familiar bends, would create a surge of joy and elevate the heart? The yellows surrounding blacks on tall sunflower stems, the whites and blues on short stems staying close to ground? I must have missed their comings and goings as I was busy with the outer world, I thought. Or maybe there were some new surprises in store for me, I surmised. Unfazed, I kept walking in the faith that lightness would bloom in other, yet to be revealed ways.

One of the “trails” forms a figure eight. One loop goes three-fourths of the way, around the river and the other loop, forms the inner arc of a kidney-bean shaped lagoon. A roadway forms part of both the loops, in the form of a long border. I usually walk both loops on any given day, on the advice of a #SpiritChat friend who told me a while back that “walking figure eights energizes the heart” (thank you, @SarahsEnergy). On this day, I first walked the river loop, and then crossed over to the lagoon.

As I approached the lagoon and its still waters to my right, I happened to glance left as a flash of pink and purple caught my eye. It was a single hibiscus plant, with blooms opened towards the sun, hosting some tiny visitors. Aha, I thought. A new flower. I knew that there would be at least one new bloom somewhere that would lighten my heart. As is my wont, I paused to record my ‘discovery’ and take a few photos. But that was merely the preview of what was to come. As if on cue, around the next bend that first arched towards the lagoon and then away from it, was an entire ‘field’ of hibiscus flowers. Hundreds of them, forming a ring around a pond out of which arose tall, branchless, trees (roots of trees?).

A heart-lightening, healing, inspiring sight if there ever was one. And as I kept walking, there were hundreds more. One pond after another. It was as if their seeds might have rained down from the skies in spring, and now they all bloomed in unison at mid-summer. The ‘discovery’ reminded me of what happens sometimes on the inner path. We develop a practice (walking), we get energized by some ‘results’ (flowers), and then we fade away from the practice when we feel that our ‘progress’ has stalled. The outer world squeezes our space, our time and our commitment.

And yet, we know from having personally experienced lightness and joy, that the practice can lighten us again. So, with grace and with remembrance, we return and we recommit. We renew our walk, our practice, by reclaiming a small fraction of space and time. We commit to simply walking in lightness in every step, lightness of heart, for the simple joy of being on our path. We learn to surrender our search for the flowers and the fruits, and let the path embrace us.

It is perhaps in our commitment to simply walk, that the fields of flowers bloom without, unbidden, to remind us of the lightness that can flower within us.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us Sunday, July 22nd at 9amET / 630pm India on twitter for our weekly conversation with the #SpiritChat community. Many of us love flowers and are flowering in the company of each other. Come join us. Namaste.

The first hibiscus…

A hibiscus “field” rings the pond

A Spirit of Reunion

Tags

lightness, poetry, reunion, spirituality, summer

I had been so busy with writing the technical paper and then putting the presentation together for the upcoming Aerospace conference that I had not walked the forest in almost two weeks. As I waited at the light at the bottom of the hill where I would normally go up the other side towards the West Gate and in to work, I glanced to my right and saw the bridge gleaming in the sunshine. Something tugged at my heart and said, come visit. We miss you.

So, I turned left at the light, parked in the first available space, and crossed over to the other side. On to the bridge, where now the clouds were playing hide and seek with the trusses. The lack of rain over the past few weeks had almost run the river aground, but not quite. I decided to turn right immediately after the bridge, with the idea of climbing the steep hill to walk the trail on the plateau above. But, it was not to be. The river had other plans for me. Ever so imperceptibly, she slowed down my walk, and brought me to a standstill.

And then, the flow of words began. I paid attention, listened, and wrote… I share a few of them with you.

The river runs so shallow
Yet the hill still rises steep
In walking these old trails
What new promises do I keep?

The air so still
Yet the singing of birds deep
I take in all the stillness
Into my core does the Joy sink deep; 

I stopped wondering long ago
Who is this muse that comes calling,
Amid the crescendo of the cicadas 
In the silence of the water falling; 

The invitation on some mornings
Is simply too powerful to resist
I try going towards the sun, 
but am imperceptibly lured by the mist; 

I came to walk long trails
Yet she has me rooted, standing still
Sit with me a while and visit she says 
Save for another day, the fragile hill; 

Summer is only here for so long
Like a firefly her light is fleeting
I am so honored that you invited me to stay
You raised my spirits with this brief meeting; 

If you will just stay that little bit longer 
Beneath the waters lie many a great treasure
So many dream of an endless summer
Yet of this moment they take little measure...

On this day, I experienced a beautiful reunion with nature, in a quiet oasis that invited me to be still. I arrived ‘empty handed’, yet left with a great treasure of poetry, peace, and a reminder to not stay away for too long. Have you participated in any reunions lately? Are you planning any in the near future? And how about your inner reunion with Joy, Awareness and Pure Existence? How do you experience That (re)union on a regular, even daily basis? Or have you forgotten…

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

I invite you to reunite with us in #SpiritChat on Sunday, July 16th at 9amET/1pmUTC on twitter – and particularly so if you have been away for a while. We hope you will bring some goodies to share.

The nature trails called, and I answered… only to stand still in reunion