Joy was the pruning of the roses one season ago. Joy was potting them in soil without guarentees. Joy is the sudden surprise to see them come alive this year. And the ultimate joy was to part with them, giving them to another home where they will blossom and continue the ‘trend’.

In a world where you can spread chaos, infuse confusion, instill hatred, spread your own “seed” (whatever that means!), inject barriers, divide, separate and conquer minds, and spend your nights carrying on other unmentionables...

....you always have a choice...

To spread JOY!

(like this little emoji that radiates that from all directions! 💓)

In the name of being a lamppost, no guide is allowed to swallow your light. It is a violation of integrity (adharma) in every realm, in every dimension to steal and suppress another’s innate light.

Redemption arrives as it always does, through each pair of eyes that See, unflinchingly, and hold that Seeing.

All subjected except the one born of his own blood, his son. “No, it can’t be, Truth is God,” declared that little lad.

“Ha! i am the greatest there is,” enforced the king and tortured his own son into submission.

The lad remained steadfast: “I only yield to Truth.”

“Truth? Where is your Truth? Is it hiding inside this pillar?” So says the king, and in blind ego smashes a pillar in his own artificial construct of a palace, only for Truth, in half-man, half-beast form, to emerge in full glory.

(Here i insert my own imagination: wouldn’t Jack Nicholson play this part with aplomb? In costume, roaring, “Truth? You want the Truth? You can’t handle the Truth!”)

The description goes on to say that it didn’t take much to rip apart the over inflated ego. Just the edge of the nail, razor sharp as diamond.

This is the story of Narasimha avatar that we are told, both as a premonition, and as guidance. Premonition to what happens when egoic selves bloat themselves up; and as guidance to what all can manifest in devotion to that which is True.

Today’s self-proclaimed gods look like inflated hot air balloons. All gas. It won’t take much, just a prick from the tip of a razor sharp nail.

And nothing is as razor sharp as the clarity of Seeing.

Seeing through all the illusory constructs, right down to the Truth, dazzling like a diamond.

So we know from Spiderman.

Offering two different spin-offs on that:

With great power comes greater responsibility. To hold oneself in higher integrity, as if tight rope walking between two skyscrapers. To treat everything with a greater reverence, with whole-hearted gratitude and humility to all that’s given, and to handle the power as one would handle nuclear codes. Available but never to be used.

In an era when power is not treated as such and is abused without care, the responsibility rests on each.

Taking complete responsibility for all that one experiences, bringing it all back to one, without making someone else the seat of our innate power, without allowing to be influenced by someone else/something else outside or even believing that someone else is needed; is the way to realize that one is already empowered with ALL that is required, all the time.

Nothing is given, nothing taken.

Nothing owed, nothing borrowed.

Each interaction whole and complete.

Each connection whole and complete.

Each, by itself, whole and complete.

Live, such that you leave no residue.

May the “i already know” yield to undeniable Knowing, beyond knowledge.

May the ego that claims all as “i” perish in the blinding light of the eternal.

May Peace be realized.

(To be recognized uniquely, through each.)

(inspired by, and not a direct translation, of

ॐ असतो मा सद्गमय ।
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय ।
मृत्योर्मा अमृतं गमय ।
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

Om Asato mā sadgamaya
Tamaso mā jyotirgamaya
Mrityormā amritam gamaya
Om shānti, shānti, shāntihi

From Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (I.iii.28))

My brother‘s front yard has a lovely sugar maple tree. A tall one, almost like a skyscraper. When I visit him in spring, I spend many a moment leaning all the way back, craning my neck, just watching the gentle helicopter seeds spin in slo-mo till they land.

Some of them land on the well-manicured lawn below. Now this doesn’t bear well for the lawn, for each maple that sprouts is a weed and has to be uprooted.

Yet can the maple stop the seeds? Can the seed stop their spinning and landing?

I get this visual for these compilation of words that arrive helplessly, little helicopter seeds spinning on their own landing as they please. Little gifts from the universe, in sovereign integrity to the Sun.

And I see that as the seeds fall, those that threaten systems will get weeded out. Some trampled on. Some become a child’s play, dissected and tossed around.

Yet one may land on fertile ground, survive intervention, survive the elements and somehow, by the force of life take off and become a shade giving tree.

Then we may have a whole ecosystem that no one realized was possible, who knows?

Until then, these seeds, they continue to emerge, continue to scatter around.

To a whole new ecosystem, rather, to Whole and newness.

Happy Summer Solstice

This Father’s Day, how about we recognize the masculine?

That which remains grounded and in zero state. That which holds down the fort. That which provides, embraces, stands by rock solid.

That in each of us. And then we can see the male with fresh eyes. For the tenderness, and sincerity and Love that sometimes aches for expression.

No glazing, sure there are flaws, and there are systems that put the male on pedestal but the solution isn’t a female hierarchy as compensation. What is needed is embodiment. And embrace of the whole. The masculine working in harmony with feminine in each and in all.

And from that seeing, we don’t see men, we see the whole.

Happy Father’s Day, to each male embodiment shining in Divine expression.

Your Art is your Love language.

Not the practiced, perfected art that is performed to boost one’s sense of self, but the raw, free flowing, (may be) flawed in form or technique, but precise-by-design Art that flows, for no reason, and that leaves one in wonder.

Because it is not so much about what got created, it is what you got a glimpse of even as it is getting created through you. It is about how empty you are, to allow it to happen through you.

That photograph you take of sweeping greenery, which would otherwise go unnoticed, had you been full of yourself.

That stitch of embroidery, that got made with your delicate fingers that may have gone haphazard had you got in the way.

That elaborate contextual expression that came to you in a dance which may have appeared artificial, had you let your inhibitions get in the way.

That completely unrelated insight that dawns at the oddest of times, in the bathroom, on the car drive, while folding laundry, while watching TV and that you will later piece together the words for. And even the words will arrive on their own, edit on their own, and your fingers will just do the typing.

That kind of Art. Basically, Art that arrives in a mindless, mindfree zone, beyond anything imagination can conjure, and that you cannot claim to own, cannot claim as your own, cannot take pride in. Art that leaves you in as much wonder and delight as the one receiving it.

That Art is your Love language.

Share your Love freely. Discover the Love that you are.

All of nineteen with a wish to go to London to see the queen.

Okay, so not exactly see the queen, that just had a ring to it. But somehow England held a fascination perhaps because we were fed so much England in the Indian school curriculum. :-)

So, at the first opportunity that presented itself, with some earnings saved up from a summer job and year-round internship, on my way to India from US for summer break, I stopped in London to visit, just to see in person all that was crooned about in the poetry books and history lessons. All by myself.

That little knapsack I am clutching carried a copy of “Visit London for under 10 Pounds a Day”, printed maps from Mapquest and my passport (which I had to keep checking on frequently). I stayed in youth hostels, took overnight buses to Scotland, and on the last night, slept on a bench in the King’s Cross station.

I ate solitude for breakfast, uncertainty for lunch and gratitude for dinner. That’s all the budget I had, you see.

I learned to rely on myself, I learned to get lost multiple times and find my way back. I learned to ask for help and use discernment. I leaned on my spidey senses, aware but fearless.

I wondered, many years later, what was it that kept me safe then? What in me prompted me to go venture into the unknown? What could I have known?

Nothing. I knew nothing and that was the ultimate strength. Had I known the (apparent) dangers of Wembeley stadium neighborhood, I wouldn’t have stepped on that train. Had I known what happens in the streets of London at dark, I wouldn’t have dared to step out past a certain hour. (And here, my reverence and heartfelt thank you to my dad for never having fed fear. All through my childhood, I never heard “no, no don’t do this”, it was always “go do it, you’ll know what to do.” And thank you to every uncle, every father figure who continued to foster that fearlessness.)

I knew nothing and because of that, the innate spirit took over. That spirit that wasn’t made to run around in familiar territory, certainty, and comfort of what’s known.

Absolutely not, this spirit was meant for the unknown, the uncharted, the unfamiliar.

Then, and always since then, an inner compass has guided. Many times it got clouded and its voice suppressed, conditioned, programmed. But some larger Grace has always, always watched, guided, pushed, nudged.

It took me a while to see, but that Grace was always inside me. Reflected as and in guides outside, as God, as Beings of supreme capacity. But Grace was already available innate.

Demons exist only in the under shadows, they thrive on what’s unseen, on vulnerability. They gossip behind closed doors, feast on shame, our dysregulated energy, our scattered attention. They swoop in when we second-guess ourselves, when we compromise our Truth, when we drift from integrity.

But that comes to a complete halt. The minute you recognize the demon is doing you a favor by showing you where you’ve compromised yourself, your true voice, your intuition, your compass. And then all you can say is “Thank you for showing me what I couldn’t see. Now off you go your merry way.”

This is our fragmented self, and then fragments appear everywhere and are available for the feasting. It really is as simple as that.

And I saw it now, looking back to then, to this story of this little kid who knew nothing, had only wide-eyed curiosity and a sense of exploration and blessings from everywhere.

It is the story of each of us. Each a divine expression, each equipped with what it takes, each powered from within.

Time to bring all of that back Home.

“i have this undigested thing that i have sat on and procrastinated for far too long, i don’t want to deal with it, so let me throw it on you like a projectile vomit and now you sit and clean up my mess while i wash my hands off and watch in amusement.”

Observation:

“I see with complete neutrality all that i am able to see, some of it may be tainted with perception. I see and hold the possibility that i am both right and wrong, while Knowing there is neither right nor wrong. Neither judging myself (gaslighting), nor passing judgements.”

I simply hold the seeing.

Projection comes from, and feeds entitlement. From the attitude of:

“you are simply sitting around anyway why don’t i use you to clean up what i don’t want to face”

Observation is Seeing. Capital S.

Belief is in systems, entities, based on shared experiences.
We are rooted in belief. It determines how we act, what we spent time on, where we put attention, what we experience. What we believe about ourselves sets the tone of what we experience.

Trust is in people, community, institutions.
We build trust, approach with trepidation at first then accumulate perceptions and then affirm with direct experience. And slowly or surely build it.

Now, Faith. Thats something else altogether. Faith is a standalone.
Not Faith in this or that, no experience to rely on. You don’t root in Faith or build upon Faith.

You just fall in(ward), into Faith.

Helplessly, hopelessly, maddeningly.

Much like you fall into Love.