On Healing Friendships

Tags

friendship, healing, health, thankfulness

There is much that can change in the friendship landscape for an eighth-grader over the ten week summer break from school. The departure of a few old friends and the arrival of new students tests the resilience of the cliques and leads to a re-examination of the questions: who are my ‘real’ friends? what is the difference between being ‘friendly’ and being a ‘friend’? what makes some so ‘popular’ that everyone wants to be ‘friends’ with them? How did some of my ‘friends’ change so much over the summer?

Yes. School has been in session for less than a week and some of these questions have led to conversations in my home. Over the past few days, it has caused me to pause and ask some questions about the nature of friendship in general, and reflect on my own ‘good’ friends from the past few the decades.

The Indian sage Patanjali (author of the Yoga Sutras) penned an aphorism which offered advice on ‘friendship’. When asked, whom should we consider for friendship, he simply said — “be friendly towards those who are friendly towards you”. Sounds like a simple attitude to practice, right? However, it is often our prejudices, our past hurts and skepticism towards new connections that can stop us from adopting this attitude. My personal experience has been that “being friendly towards the friendly” has seeded many acorns of friendship for me, some of which have grown into big oaks.

The shade and shelter of these oaks has helped me weather many a storm and even healed me of my many of my hurts and sorrows. It is not to say that a vast majority of those ‘friendly acorns’ never grew to become strong, healing oaks. Some fell on hard rocks, some took root but only grew for a season or two, and some did become healthy trees that eventually became disease with neglect, mis-communication and mis-aligned expectations.

Such is the nature of the acorns of friendships, or for that matter, most relationships. If we don’t grow them, or at least maintain them with adequate warmth of the sunshine of caring, the balanced nutrition of sharing our joys and sorrows, they tend to shrivel away. If we aren’t vested enough in the friendship or its growth, we will be unwilling to do the tough work of pruning the deadwood from our minds and pulling the weeds from our hearts.

For me to develop healing friendships that sustain me and my friends, I often have to choose to be a willing vessel that can effect healing. If one of my best friends that is Mother Nature is to heal me, I have to be willing to walk her way with my friendship shoes on. It is when my healing friendship with her is strong, and I am in good health because of her grace, that I can be a good friend to others.

So, I asked myself over the past few days – who are some of my very good friends over the long term? What makes them so? One answer that came to me was that my good friends are those who send a warm current through my heart. Thinking of my healing friendships, even for a fraction of a moment, brings a smile to my face, a sense of playfulness, a flash of joy.

And among them all, there is That One healing friendship which is omnipresent, permanent, and the harbinger of light and lightness. I am grateful for its presence in my heart, and a willing traveler among its path full of oak trees and acorns.

May we heal each other and “walk each other home” in friendship,

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. Join our friendly, healing community of #SpiritChat for our weekly twitter chat – Sunday, Sep 1 at 9amET. Namaste – @AjmaniK

The Gratitude Challenge

Tags

challenges, gratitude, spirituality, thankfulness, thanksgiving

If the number of blog posts that I have written about Thanksgiving are a good measure, then it is an open secret that this is my favorite American holiday. The confluence of many events after my arrival here in the fall for graduate studies, led to a heart-warning introduction to this family-first holiday of “giving thanks”. Even though the holiday itself was “all new” to me, the notion of giving thanks felt as old as the hills.

It reminded me of two words – the first being dhanyavaad – the formal expression of thanks in India. It is a combination of two words, dhanya, meaning blessed or most fortunate, and vaad meaning, an event or a happening. The second, somewhat informal word expressing thanks often used in India is shukriya – a combination of shu-bh meaning auspicious, and kriya meaning action or practice.

It ought to be no surprise that the words used in the expression of gratitude are similar across languages. The very sound of a heartfelt “thank you” or “gracias” or “merci” or “shukriya” is often music for our hearts. When the music of thanksgiving creates harmony, it brings joy to the giver and the receiver. So, with these apparent benefits, what possible challenge(s) could there be in the path of our practice of gratitude?

The first challenge is that we are much more open to giving thanks to others than receiving it. We somehow carry around the notion that we are perhaps undeserving of others’ gratitude. The second notion is that “no thanks is due” because we are simply “doing our duty” and that we are best off doing it without any expectation of reward and such. The third notion is that if we accept it from them, we are somehow bound into reciprocity. Do you identify with any of these notions of receiving gratitude?

The second challenge is that we are unsure of the who, why, how, when and where of giving thanks to others. In a world where our offline relationships are getting lesser and lesser time, space and engagement, we are perhaps losing the opportunity to practice the art of saying thanks. Or maybe we don’t have enough role models in our communities who give thanks with grace and unfettered joy. Who was a role model for “giving thanks” for you? For me, it was my maternal grandmother. I don’t know that I remember her saying “dhanyavad” or “shukriya” very often, but her actions spoke volumes. A slight smile, a gentle tilt of the head, a leaning in during conversation- they all felt like she was giving gratitude with every action, in every engagement.

The third challenge in our gratitude practice is the notion that we don’t have “enough”. The great irony that “Black Friday” comes earlier and earlier every year may not be lost on many of us. To my mind, it is simply an outsized attempt to somehow convince us of the “lack” in our lives.

But I have news for you. The first part of the Heartfulness meditation practice is “relaxation”. The intent is to creates awareness of our body, in the form of a slow scan beginning from the toes, traveling through several parts of the lower and upper body, to the crown of the head. As I did the relaxation this morning, I became aware, and thankful, for the mere presence and good health of every single one of my body’s internal and external organs. The gratitude that swept through me after I was done, was a bit overwhelming. Try it. It will only take a few minutes, and you can do it wherever you are. Repeat this ‘relaxation into gratitude’ exercise often, and it will become a portable resource that you can take with you.

So, here we are. Thanksgiving is here again. Maybe we will continue to work our challenges, of giving, of receiving, of (lack of? too much?) abundance. So that the day of, and the days before and after Thanksgiving will bring us a series of opportunities to experience dhanyavaad or gratitude-filled interactions.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join the #SpiritChat community on Twitter for our weekly chat – Sunday, November 18 at 9amET / 730pm India ~ shukriya and Happy Thanksgiving!

On Thankful Expressions

Tags

expressions, gratitude, spirituality, thankfulness

And as I clutch my freshly-brewed cup of chamomile tea, feet dangling above the patio as I sit in the open door-frame of the morning room where the steps have gone missing as they are being repainted, it is still a balmy sixty degrees at 10pm on this mid-November Friday night…

I wonder if any more inordinately warm nights like this still remain on tap for this year, or is this it? The breeze that seems to pick up speed with every passing quarter hour as it increasingly rustles the leaves that are still green on some of the trees that have ignored the entreaties of autumn and refuse to turn for the home that is the earth below indicates that this may indeed be the case.

The clear skies glistening with stars are slowly being consumed by the clouds that are moving in swiftly, as if to make an honest person out of the forecaster who has had plenty of time to get it right this time! We seem to be losing degrees by the minute as autumn is going to have to yield to a brush with winter in the early hours of the morning, and rain and maybe even snow shall be upon us for the next week or so…

The voices of teenagers ring out clearly from the other side of the thicket of trees, a hundred or so feet away as the faint flickering of a bonfire that would be hidden in the thick of summer leaves now flickers through a wedge of the forest where the trees have carpeted the floor for a week or so now…

And among all of this, I reflect on thankfulness and its many expressions…

Am I grateful to be welcoming winter after having enjoyed a few unseasonably warm days so late into November? If so, how may I express this sense of gratitude? Am I grateful that the backyard that is already wet and muddy is going to be saturated even more by the cold front’s incessant rain? Am I grateful that there will be even more wet leaves for me to blow and rake over the next few days? Am I grateful that I will not see the four day old dwindling full moon shine its light through my bedroom windows and stir my dreams awake in the middle of the night as it is unable to penetrates the thick veil of clouds being spread over the sky by the storm?

But, you see, all of that is of the future… and when I choose to return to this moment, I am indeed grateful for the hint of coolness that wraps around my fingers that are wrapped around the warm mug of tea –

I am thankful for the leaf that bounces off my head into the morning through the open door and lands beside by hot water carafe, anchoring me into the moment –

I am thankful that the laughter of mother and daughter streams through the upstairs bedroom window that can still remain open due to the warmness of a moment of mirth shared by them –

I am thankful for the puppy who nuzzles behind me as he tries to squeeze his way out the door around me to go frolic in the backyard and say his own goodbye to autumn – and I am grateful that the clouds have parted just enough up above to reveal the tail of the little bear in the western skies

The expressions of thankfulness and gratitude are as many as the quarter hours that pass by – I just have to be present to this moment – it’ stillness, its near and distant sounds, its light and its lightness, its connection to the earth, the wind, the clouds, and the celestials…

Yes, a simple cup of tea on a warm November night quickly turning cold can become a beautiful expression of thankfulness, of gratitude, and more. And as some of us gather around the tables big and small this week, may we take a moment of grace to express our gratitude to and for each other, and for being together, in That moment of shared Joy.

Namaste.

Kumud @AjmaniK

Do join us on twitter on Sunday, November 20th at 9amET/2pmUTC and share your ‘Thankful Expressions’ – how do you express thankfulness to yourself and others? what (new) ideas for thankful expression may have you discovered and implemented recently? what thankful expressions extended towards you do you best respond to? And more…
I will brew the tea and some questions. You all bring some answers and goodies to share 🙂 Thank you for sharing, and reading my ‘stream of thought’ post for this topic!

Moon among Clouds – Thankful Expressions (photo by CA)

On Choices and Gratitude

Tags

choices, gratitude, spiritchat, thankfulness

Novemeber is the month when the focus of many in the USA shifts to giving and gratitude. It is perhaps brought on by the anticipation of the Thanksgiving season and the holidays that follow in the month of December. In order to honor giving (of thanks) and (the attitude of) gratitude, our four Sunday conversations in November will focus on four aspects of gratitude – the choices, the preparation, the expression, and the giving.

We begin with choices, and choosing gratitude. As I see it, our ability to choose is a wonderful freedom which we may often take for granted. In fact, the extent of how much inner freedom we experience may be directly correlated to the choices that we truly have. Beyond the number of choices, the quality of the choices that we are afforded is also important to our well-being. In order to dig a bit deeper, I came up with the following four classifications for our choices. I posit that true gratitude results from an optimal combination of one attribute from each class.

Class 1. The time-frame that the choice affects. It may be short (immediate), medium, or long. Of course, these are all ‘relative’ in nature – a ‘short’ time for us humans is an entire lifetime for a butterfly. But, sticking to humanity, the weight and consideration that we give to short-term choices is often much less than we give to our long-term ones. What we choose to eat for dinner is often an easy choice as compared to where we are going for vacation or what we choose as a career. Short. Medium. Long.

Class 2. The space-frame that the choice influences. These may be personal, local, or global. I could choose to sleep the extra fifteen minutes and lose my ‘window’ for morning meditation. The effect of that choice is mostly personal. Although, if said choice influences my attitude negatively, it could affect the locals around me. An example of a choice that (in)directly affects the local community, town or city around me is my decision at the voting booth. I would at least like to believe that it does. Examples of global influences of my choices would be ‘paper or plastic’, ‘GMO or non-GMO’, ‘gasoline or electric’ and so on. And then, of course, to weave the spaces all together is the ‘butterfly effect’. Not so cut and dry, is it?

Class 3. The domain that the choice impacts. Mind, Body or Spirit. What we choose to input into our mind (through our senses) is a qualified choice that we make in every moment. As I write this post, there are a lot of external inputs competing for my mindspace. I am choosing to actively filter out a lot of the inessential ones. I hope I am choosing well for the sake of some degree of coherence. The body and its well-being is largely dependent on the quality of our food and air and water choices. And what about our spirit? How do we make choices that will be helpful and healthful for the heart and spirit? We may have to make choices that address the health and healing of our mind and body. Then, within a sound, healthy mind and body, gratitude will flourish, and our spiritual choices will be most impactful to us and those around us.

Class 4. Our choices affect our attitudes. According to Sage Patanjali, these are – compassion (towards suffering), joy (in their joy), friendship (to those friendly to us), and indifference (to those of wicked intent). It is when our choices grow these four attitudes in a positive way, that inner gratitude manifests fully. Our peace becomes unshakable and has a permanence about it. In such choosing, we are not anxious or fearful that our choices are going to be negated by those made by others. We have made our choice in the highest awareness possible to us in the current state of our mind, body and spirit.

There are a lot of possibilities for us in our choices, particularly when we view them in the four-class framework presented above. In fact, there are one hundred and eight of them. As we live our lives, and make our conscious, sub-conscious and super-conscious choices, we can use this classification to help guide us. If the classes seem arbitrary or incomplete to you, I invite and welcome you to extend, modify and edit them. Create your own choice framework. Play with it. Evaluate it from time to time.

Above all, I know that our freedom to choose, even if others consider us to be making a mistaken choice, is our greatest freedom (Mahatma Gandhi). And for that, we can be grateful. Isn’t that wonderful?

Kumud @AjmaniK

Join us in our weekly #SpiritChat on twitter – Sunday, November 6th 2016 at 9amET/2pmUTC/7:30pm India. Let us discuss our choice framework with a sense of gratitude. Namaste 🙂 (Note that the USA reverts to ‘Standard Time’ this Sunday, so adjust your clocks if you are in the USA. For other countries, the chat will happen an hour later than usual – unless you are choosing to push back your clocks by an hour too!)

The Spirit of Gratitude

Tags

gratitude, spirit, spiritchat, thankfulness

As November gathers steam, the thoughts of people in the USA move towards the last week of November, and the holiday that celebrates Thanksgiving. It is perhaps the one holiday which remains true to its spirit of celebrating family, with family. The one holiday which hasn’t been overly commercialized, perhaps because the one principal gift that is exchanged on this occasion is ~ Thanks, or gratitude.

In our busy lives, as we rush around trying to accomplish our tasks on any given day, some of us (like me) sometimes forget to stop, pause, and say thanks. The opportunities to show gratitude abound in every act of kindness that is done toward us ~ by friends, family, co-workers, service people, and perhaps even strangers.

We just have to be mindful, be aware of that moment in time when the other person abandons their own need and focuses on our need. When the other person acknowledges that we may need a small helping hand, and reaches out, sometimes, even without our asking for it. How can we acknowledges these simple, selfless acts of kindness towards us? Perhaps, with a smile, and with a spirit of gratitude.

The great philosopher, Cicero said:

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all others.”

Can gratitude really affect our spiritual growth? Many different faiths and religious traditions are said to promote ‘a sense of gratitude’ as the cornerstone of their practice.

But are those who are more inclined to towards spirituality, necessarily more advanced than others in their sense of gratitude?

Can we actually increase our sense of gratitude over time? How does an attitude of gratitude (or the lack of it) affect our physical, emotional and spiritual well-being?

Please join us in a special SpiritChat discussion this Sunday, November 13th at 9am ET. Your host this week will be Joanne Cipressi (@JoanneCipressi), who is a professional ‘Life Coach’. She will be joined by Martina McGowan (@MartinaMcGowan), a physician and ‘seeker of knowledge’. Thank you, Joanne and Martina!

Kumud

P.S. I am very grateful to Joanne and Martina for taking up the mantle of continuing #SpiritChat while I travel abroad. Thank you to both ladies ~ I know that they are much loved and appreciated by the entire community.

Please leave a comment about gratitude and how it affects your life. Thank you!