Earth Abloom
In Celebration Of
All the Transformation
Around & Within Me
After relentless rains, California is now bursting with these wildflower superbloom on lands, mountains & valleys – the drives are heaven-on-earth beautiful! I felt a rejoice and a deep peace within getting to drink in with my senses, the delicate beauty of the flowers counted in millions to make it easy?!!
Some glimpses on our planet make me feel blissed and blessed for being alive here. They fill me with pride, glory, and humility in my being. They drop my felt sense experience of living into a sense of nothingness, in a way that I become present to life in ways indescribable. They stun me into silence and a childlike surprise for being chosen for these unexpected prizes for being in the right place at the right time, in the most undramatic manner.
This is how I feel about my visit to Maui, Hawaii at the end of December 2021. I expected warm waters, pristine beaches, forest hikes, and beautiful sunsets but didn’t imagine encountering these few other things:
I used to wake up in the early dark hours in anticipation of catching the sky colors at sunrise. I witnessed this instead. (It was difficult to pick just one picture of each kind. These are simple mobile clicks)
As if this was not enough, a totally unknown (to me) phenomenon was sent my way!
These phenomena at the ocean along with other soul-nourishing experiences made me pinch myself for why I deserved this perfection of life moments. I met the ocean in various moods – calm & clear, fun and playful, and yes amidst all this beauty I had a major emotional meltdown as if wanting to deeply feel my worldly humanness again. As much as the Ocean mirrored the former qualities with slow rhythmic waves at the shore, it also joined me with thunderous unruly waves for the latter mood. The ocean showed me how all kinds of waves are beautiful – it is just breathtaking how we get to have all our humanly ways of being. I returned forever in gratitude.
A short poem that emerged for an early morning with the waves:
The Ocean lends me a sense
Of power and beauty
Quite Unapologetically
The waves within
Are as playful or then unruly
I allow them all to flow
Quite Un-shyly
Happy Greetings for amazing times in the year ahead, my dear respected long time friends and newer heartfelt connections through our words in this space! I am always and ever so humbled and thrilled to be here and have this space to be here.
I did not really want to take a break from blogging during this holiday season – I kept coming here and then feeling very silent, so that’s what I stayed with, silence and all of you in my heart.
Silence did not translate into solitude for me – As much as I took an unintended break from much activity, life was brimming full with homely family time, island vacation, and a sense of blessedness for it all.
Life brings so much beauty through intensity, and also intensity through beauty! I raise one to you all, to drink it in with gratitude for the splendor of it all.
Though I feel fulfilled about honoring the silence regarding being here, I do feel the regret of being absent on reading your works. It is my loss when I don’t get to visit you. I will now take the time to make up as much possible for my misses. To my new visitors – I am greatly honored that you chose to spend time in this space. To my old friends – I apologize for being unresponsive to your comments for so long.
On another note, I am very happy and proud to share a poet friend Lalit Kumar’s first poetry book “Years Spent : Exploring Poetry in Adventure, Life and Love” Sharing my favorite lines from him:
“Niggling fear or the raging fire
whom should I choose?
I choose fear,
feels my life beginning to shrink.
I choose fire
I expand beyond my proportion.”
I hope you check it out and enjoy it as much as I did. I like how he relates to poetry the way I do – this surge that comes from experiences of our worldly quests and inner explorations of ourselves. His poetry feels like our story really. He writes beautifully about all things life – success, transitions, emotions, pain, love, etc. For my Delhi readers, this book will also be displayed at New Delhi World Book Fair in Pragati Maidan, Jan 8th – 16th.
It is Monday, time for my weekly post. I almost decided to skip posting today. The only way to convey the deep rich silence I am feeling full with, is Silence – I thought. And yet I wanted to park myself in this space. To be Here with you all. So then I decided to bring these glimpses of my yesterday to you, a day I spent in the golden weather and nature of California with a dear friend. These pictures are the only times I felt the urge to use my phone, and lock the moments in memory. I didn’t plan well to be able to share with you better, I hope you feel the magic dripping from the moments I did capture.
Blessed Feelings. I offer to you the peace and rich silence within. Hope you take some moments to yourself and breathe in with ease & joy of your Being.
I am so absolutely dissatisfied forever and yet have this absolute contentment in me for my life – How is it even working out?
I am greatly amused at this thought that I am pondering about.
There are days I wake up with such waves of desires and aspirations pulsating within – all I can do is hold myself in stillness so I can watch where the currents are taking me. Sometimes I marvel at the glimpses of possibilities shown to me and sometimes I scream silently “Just Let Me Be”
And then there are days that I wake up so clear and calm, an emptiness that is so full, a fullness of the magic of life currents and empty of the turmoil of living – all I can do is bask in the bliss of gratitude, looking around at all that seems like a dream come alive.
Drenched in the joy of the life of it all, I then become aware of those undercurrents stirring within – they are both kinds, of today’s blessings and tomorrow’s visions, carrying the yesterdays in their very womb. And I am in awe of this container I am – that holds it all.
I look back gratefully at all the grief that brought me to this joy, I look forward gratefully to all the more grief and joy waiting for me.
I am sensing that one thing that I am never looking back on and looking forward to – the fear that I used to live with. It was not the fear of particularly anything, it was just Fear, my forever friend, who strived to keep me safe. It was the primary emotion I woke up with for a long part of my life. I now affirm to thrive and have fear take appointments with me, for any important conversations that need to happen. After all we are old friends.
(Just typing this brought up a tinge of fear in me – what if this is too much to ask? Thank you my friend – I hear you.)
I am so absolutely dissatisfied forever and yet have this absolute contentment in me for my life – How is it even working out? – Gloriously, I think. It is working out gloriously.
Life is a Celebration every moment we notice our blessings and happiness.
Whenever I see a rainbow it seems to be a very personal experience as if the rainbow appeared just for me to see, or perhaps I am wherever I am, just so I would see the rainbow.
There are times I feel so blessed, I wonder whether I am celebrating life itself or celebrating myself in life.
I feel utmost reverence and gratitude for getting to be alive on this planet, surrounded by angels and lessons exactly as needed for my evolution. It is my insistence to discover, understand and carve out my authentic being while embracing the gifts and trials of familial roles and relations. What a privilege to get to pursue the spiritual while getting to traverse the precious worldly.
I look at this lifetime as a series of rebirths into different versions of me. Some rebirths are unexpected painful ones and some are inherently woven to become invisible in the fabric of life.
I don’t feel any number to my age. Parts of my childhood self are still catching up with the growing up. There are moments I feel whole in the present, and there are moments I am being pulled back into my smallness or forward discontentedly into the future.
When I found the language of my offering to the world through becoming a yoga teacher – I pursued it relentlessly, got designated E-RYT 500. In short, that means I have completed 2000 plus some big number hours of teaching and facilitating transformation for others in my humble capacity, and completed the required education for that.
I am thrilled to find myself at yet another tunnel of rebirth. I am claiming this one to be a happy kind of rebirth as I am choosing to become a beginner student again with a 4 year long Yoga Therapist Training with my teacher Chase Bossart and his school Yoga Well Institute. Unlike my other rebirths of emerging into the unknowns, this one feels so exciting for discovering what would become of me at the end of the next 5 years.
Dear WordPress friends, all of you are an exquisite contribution to my being here today in one way or another. I feel deep gratitude for You and this rich space for heartfelt expressions, authentic emergence, and truthful cultivation of our life journeys.
Life is a Celebration every moment we notice our blessings and happiness.
For those who are curious, the website for my yoga work is http://www.YogaSaar.com.
Flowers strewn all over my walking path feel like a definite sign and reminder of blessings on my way. They make me pause and smile – at myself, and at their short miraculous existence that brings beauty and joy on our way. That is if we happen to encounter them in different ways – either as buds, blooms or dried and fallen around undramatically returning to ground.
And we get to walk on that ground.
We get to walk on this Earth.
Sometimes with flowers strewn on our way…
And sometimes there are pebbles…
As a child growing up in a tiny home in Mumbai, I used to run out to play with my friends without any shoes or slippers. Coarse sand and tiny pebbles poked my feet but I only remember a befriended feeling of it. Staying out as much as possible was happiness and the feet stepped on and around the pebbles effortlessly.
My family later upgraded to an upstairs apartment in another town and from there into adulthood, stepping out only with shoes on became the norm. It took some decades until now to get back to appreciate going barefoot, welcoming the experience of Earth through the sands, the grass, the water. I am beginning to also venture on to some pebbled areas to test how my comfort conditioned feet now play with the tingles and the tickles.
“Wherever I Stand, I Stand on the same Earth”
Use this to stand a bit taller
Use this to soften within…
These lines posted on Jan 26, 2017 came to my mind today. They had come from my awareness of so many levels of separation we feel with others – the feelings of smallness or superiority based on innumerable definitions we have created as our markers, including where we live, what we eat, how we spend our day – literally shaping how we live our life. There was a yearning to share the feeling of Oneness and yet not much ability for how to live it. So I had reminded myself that we share the same Earth – it felt as simple and as radical.
Today, we are collectively experiencing our existence on Earth as never imagined before. The world is vaccinated and opening up where I live. Yet family and friends in India are suffering deep losses and hardship every day. I feel trust in our Oneness and in our Earth to guide us to be of support to each other.
How do you relate to these 3 lines that came back to me today? I would be honored to know what came up for you when you read them. I discovered a lot more layers in those lines today from the time that I first wrote them.
Peer Within
I was drawn out of my way to peek in to this web of roots, branches and shadows on water. I felt as if I was pulled in towards the womb of the Earth. I had posted the original picture in this post last month. The words describe the special experience of being there.
This glimpse simply made me feel blessed. The beautiful goose was peacefully strolling around ahead of me and as I reached this curve, I found it sheltering here with such ease and quiet. Reminding me of how we share this planet, how we belong to the same nature and can find such rest & respite if we would choose to.
I have been looking for a doorway back into this space certainly. There was an inert kind of sadness when my inspiration to keep posting trickled to a stop, earlier this year. I trusted it to show me when and where to be. I woke up this morning with a design of the quote image above and a clear feeling of wanting to bring it here for my WordPress friends.
As the entire world went through tumultuous changes that came with the pandemic, I took time to appreciate simple blessings, the gifts of being alive, the deepening heart connections for how real the ephemeral nature of our existence is.
Sadness is really one side of the coin, when a mere breeze from the air or a caring word from someone brings us joy.
Happiness heals the planet
the kind that makes you smile from the heart
…and from behind your closed eyes
the kind that is only truly felt
…if the joy is shared
I questioned myself a lot for what my purpose on this planet is, what is my role truly in all my relations, gave myself permission to practice being unapologetically myself and enjoyed the privileges afforded to me. I went through some major internal shifts but then who hasn’t lately?!!
As we all question what our role is
In this world when none can stay passive
Take care of yourself no guilt & then give
We are all together in how our heart lives this
I am so happy and grateful to be back here to connect with you all and further explore the emergence of inspiration and new avenues of being!
Humble gratitude to all of you who emailed me or left messages in this space to ask about my well-being and to let me know that I am missed. Means-a-lot-whole-lot-to-me. You have been the most kind witness of my inner world when it poured out and needed to be received.
As I make my way to find you and your words, one by one, I await your visit on my post with childlike curiosity for who would I engage with next as I perhaps see your comment 🙂
Photo Credit : Vikram Phale
Beware what you ask
For it surely comes
Make sure you Ask
For it surely comes
Sometimes gift-wrapped
In porcupine skin
Pricks & pierces as you get it unwrapped
Until your heart bleeds in pain as if tapped
Unwrap with gloves of gratitude
And blessings counted profuse
The asked gifts get revealed
Deep wounds get healed
Be aware of all you ask
For it surely comes
Be Alert
For it surely comes
In ways you haven’t considered
Infinite Living 