The older I grow, the lesser I know.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

A book with frayed edges sat tucked inside the pocket behind the driver’s seat. After an overnight train journey from Sakleshpur to Goa, we were going home in a taxi. No coffee yet. I was not quite switched on. Bleary eyed, I pulled the book out of the elasticated edge. It was Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Some poor tourist had mistakenly left it behind while traveling to the airport to fly back home.

Thoreau wrote this book while he lived in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, hundred and eighty years ago. He was testing the idea that divinity was present in nature and the human soul. He stripped his life down to the barest of essentials and secluded himself as much as he could, living off the land as much as possible. He wanted to find out just what in life is necessary and what is superfluous.

(Picture, courtesy Maria Popova )

Having chosen to live in a place where, for hundreds of miles very few people speak our language, with no cinema halls, restaurants, therapists or book shops, where the food is of one particular kind, but nature is abundant, that question has arisen for me too.

A few weeks back, a quote by Thoreau had whistled right into my heart:

“Life! who knows what it is, what it does?”

Such a beautiful sentiment. I had wished for more of his writings. After learning some more about him and his love of birds, streams, woodlands and meadows, I got busy with other things.

When I brought this question to CORe, it generated a rich discussion.

“What is our relationship with not knowing? What feelings does it provoke?”

Some excerpts from our conversations:

It is a real test of oneself, dropping how things should be and taking each day as it comes. It took me a long time to realise how much my mind was tied to certainty. In Africa, the relationship with death is very different. They have many ways to remember a loved one. They believe they’re still here and it gives them great joy.
Anxiety of the need to know at work. I have to change my mind set to curiosity. Some things we’re not meant to know, such as, where is he? It would spoil it. I must accept that I’m not meant to know.
When he went, I didn’t want to be here. Now I do. I have a life that I want to have. I have lots of godchildren who have promised to take care of me. I have a vision of him and his dad, which I hope will come through in my own death. Maybe when it’s my time they’ll be there, and their peace will be shattered.

Yes. The older I grow, the lesser I know. There is a freedom in that, to be with whatever is happening. It allows for the mystery of life to unfold as it will and it allows me to witness it without conditions, with an open heart. The smallest things. The book that I had wished for a month ago, appears right in front of me after I had forgotten all about it.

Life. Who knows what it is, what it does?

PDA

Posted by kidsaregifts20

(Awakening Needs Cards Created by Linda Nolan and Karen Plumbe)

It was natural, spontaneous and normal in London. Now, we must look around to ensure no one’s watching us.

Holding hands in public? At our age? Oh my God! At any age. Strange.

A hug. Inappropriately bold.

A peck on the cheek? Unthinkable.

A quick kiss on the lips to say hello or bye. Absolutely scandalous.

“Your husband even holds the umbrella for you in the market”, an acquaintance remarked.

I had not given it a thought. “Yes. He’s very good”, I said. I was tempted to defend his actions by making statements like, it’s easier for him as he’s taller than me or it helps me use both hands to select the fruit and veg but I stopped myself. He needs no defending. I was learning about what is normal here.

Affection isn’t a thing here. Public Display of Affection (PDA) is prohibited.

Food. Yes. Gifts. Yes. Laughter. Yes. Folded hands as greeting. Yes.

Hugs. No.

A young man of seventeen studies Biology with me for an hour, twice a week. He wants to be a doctor. He showed me an MCQ that he did not understand. It was about Barrier contraception. I asked him if he had covered the chapter on Sexual Health in School. He said the teacher had completely omitted it. She had asked the students to read and learn that chapter on their own.

The next day I found myself retrieving a little square white and blue packet from the small cupboard outside the door of the local Health Centre. It was labelled Nirodh (the Government sponsored condom). I had not signed up for this, but I turned out to be the one to explain Sexual health to him.

In a society where men and women pretend, they never touch each other and it is somehow wrong to do that, how can the adolescents learn affection, let alone intimacy?

“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.”

– CS Lewis.

What is your Superpower?

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When I lived a cramped, hectic life in London, I often romanticed the texture of life in a scenic little seaside cottage with no neighbours in Cornwall or a tiny remote island a few miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest or a lonely dwelling on the side of a vast mountain in the Himalayas. Deep down lay an incipient desire to experience it.

A few years on, I make the choice to live in a one bed-room house in remote South India. Malnad, the region of rain, notorious for a long heavy monsoon. The nearest airport, five hours by road on a good day and the closest half-decent hospital an hour’s drive away. After a few months the newness of this rural setting starts to diminish. Mornings begin with chirps and trills emerging out of a serene silence. I draw the curtains to find the morning fog gently floating across layers of overlapping lush green slopes, reaching right up to the horizon. I am filled with gratitude. I say to myself, ‘Don’t ever take this for granted.’

If I start listing all the things that are not here, an exhaustive inventory might appear – a library, a café, a restaurant, a museum, an art gallery, a community centre, a swimming pool, a book shop and so on. But I do have a superpower. On whatever I put my attention, that seems to grow, fill my awareness. Music, chanting, yoga, reading, writing, meditation, nature – all the things that I used to struggle to make time for, are now in abundance.

I can choose where I want to place my attention because this is my one precious life, my one chance to live and learn and enjoy. I am exactly where I want to be and need to be. This is the perfect opportunity to match my inner silence with the one I sit within. To observe and let go. Examine and let go. Feel and let it go. Think and let it go. Breathe in and let go.

Contentment does not need objects to justify itself. In every moment, it is present as a choice. At the tiniest hint of my attention, it shows up, smiling. The more I sit with it, the more it makes itself available. When I touch, its texture is silky.

Caves are well-known conduits to enlightenment. May be this is mine. I wonder if contentment is another name for happiness.

Who’s the boss?

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Did you know there’s an organisation that brings science and spirituality together? Its mission is to create a kinder, heart-centered world where we care for one another and live harmoniously. It’s called the HeartMath Institute and offers many free resources.

They have found that the heart is not just a mechanical pump. It contains thousands of nerve cells. That is probably the reason our memories and trauma are stored in various parts of our body, mainly the brain and heart.

We were taught in school that the brain is a master-organ but it’s the heart that tells it what to do. The intelligence of creativity, innovation and intuition resides in the cells of the heart. Brain neurons are the antennae that follow the heart’s desires. For example, I want to speak and understand Spanish says the heart. The brain follows.

We humans have a stunning ability to self-regulate. Our biology is engineered as a soft technology. Our fundamental physiology is made up of ion-potentials across membranes. We’re the only form of life that can harmonise its two major neural organs through Heart-Brain Coherence. We can alter the chemistry in our bodies. Once this coherence occurs, we can heal and be healthy. The immune system is strengthened, longevity enzymes rise and stress is reduced at a molecular level. Three minutes of this shift can produce beneficial effects for 6 hours.

3 steps:

Shift in focus – into the heart
Shift in breath – slow it so the exhalation is longer than the inhalation
Shift in feeling – a positive feeling – initiate Gratitude on demand.

We are powerful self-regulators. It is a God-like ability that we have, to heal ourselves. We’re conditioned to feel helpless and think we need external help. Sometimes we do need interventions, but we can honour the gift of this body to heal ourselves.

A silver heart

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His bench is where I go to say hello and good-bye and I love you, even though he’s with me always. One late September afternoon, a day before leaving London last year, I drove to where the bench is, in Dulwich College. I parked in front of the Great Hall. As I stepped out of the driver’s seat, something twinkled on the tarmac. I looked down and just by the rear wheel on my side of the car lay a black friendship-band with a silver heart. Just the kind of casual thing he would get for me. I picked it up and looked around. The car park was deserted. No claimants. I slipped it on my right wrist, convinced this gift was left at that particular spot, specifically for me. I wonder if that’s true or plain silly.