The Lightning Bolt – of Time

Photo: Vidur Sahdev of VerseInEmotion

My Beloved WP Community Friends – I have this deep overwhelming joy as I return to this space, a moving gratitude for finally being led to return to my birthplace as if, after a brilliant yet humbling voyage of life that I wandered off into – always looking back here over the shoulders, not wanting to leave ever.

I left here after “Lingering on the Rim” and the poem I share with you today urged me to come back to my center here:

For it has been a decade since my entire existence was cracked open to the insanity of living unskilled with my raw spirit.

A decade ago
began
a series of
my own personal deaths

A decade after
begin
a series of 
my own personal rebirths

A decade
whole
a series of 
oceanic churnings

Stillness at depths
Turmoils at surface
Redefining coastlines
for where the water
meets the shore

Dipping the toes
not an option
The ocean
devoured
me whole

‘Tis a mystery
Yet I see clearly
Why
I still hover
between
two worlds

Witnessing
the mind rain
in the darkness
Spirit drinking it up
with stilling starkness

I am left dancing
in the vivid rhythms
in between
‘Tis is yet only
the spine moved
with my breathing

In this moment –
A decade ago
and this decade after
and the decade from now
All merged into
one bolt of lightning
across the sky
of my earthly existing

Pray my spine
can sustain
the brilliance
of the bolt
as it traverses
my earthly time

Photo of lightning bolts by Vidur Sahdev of VerseInEmotion – thank you for letting me borrow it to go with my poem, it fits perfectly. Their poetry & mine have been conversing coherently for years now – do visit this beautiful poetry blog, if you would enjoy one more.

I want to visit with all of you, all at once!!! Please catch my beaming heart smile as I wander around old streets, making my way to each one of you. Perhaps help me by leaving a link in the comments for where you would like me to visit first, and not miss an update or a favorite from you. It has been 10 months … I offer this poem above to you, to celebrate my decade, to begin with.

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Note 1: Please join me here for conversations through the lens of yoga that I have begun sharing recently & inconsistently.

Note 2: Upcoming Virtual Seminar & Series in honor of International Womens Day: Embracing Equity through Stress management & Self Awareness

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Happy Greetings for Amazing Times!

Photo by myself: First Sunrise of 2022

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.

Life, a Celebration

Photo by myself

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.

Couple of Little Celebrations

Me & The Book :))

I thought of meeting you face to face to share my happiness of this book that I am holding :)) Some of my poetry is published as part of this collection, alongside poetry from some amazing poets that I have come to admire and adore for their absolutely magical art of words. It is available on Amazon for download on Kindle here for $0.99. Do check it out to see its description and if it interests you.

Step Into the New You – image sourced from the India Currents article

And in another little celebration and I am thrilled to share with you that an article of mine was selected by a community media platform India Currents to be published as part of their January theme – Renewal : You and the World around You. I chose to focus on my favorite topic, you can read it here: Step Into the New… You. I would love to know your thoughts on it.

Heartfelt Gratitude for all your support, reading and meaningful interactions that has afforded me tremendous growth as a person and this journey with words as a writer. It is more like pouring these surges of expression that come and what a privilege to be read and received! These tiny expansions of publishing in the outer world are a spillover of all the love in this inner world of WP where I first dipped my toes and then kept swimming in this world of writing and sharing.

Impossible

Photo by myself

The Impossible Just Takes A Bit Longer

Much of life that I live today are seemingly craziest, weirdest thoughts that I kept repeating to myself to the point of absurdity even. So many regular simple moments now were a distant dream of the past. If I pay attention truly, each day is a celebration of some evolution and manifestation. It helps me trust and dream bold. Without the yearning to be anywhere different than where I am. And of course at times I get impatient with the next dream. Then I remind myself to look for places I am not paying attention. To find gratitude for prayers answered and desires fulfilled. I love the feeling when I find it, again and again. I love being in the moment, as if I am living a dream.

On a visit to a beach close by, early November 2020, I picked up a stick and asked the ocean to guide my hands to carve words as messages, to move forward into the days ahead. I kept my mind clear as I watched the words appear. The above image – ‘Trust’ was the first to appear. The next 2 were as below.

Photo by myself

Photo by myself

I then stood there silently and watched the waves wash over some words partially. The ocean surely washed away those messages after I was gone – they are now a part of me and part of the ocean. I continue to wish, dream and trust happily.

Wishing you my kind friends on WordPress and dear readers a very optimistic, fulfilling, enriching, peaceful, healing New Year 2021!

Note: I will get back to visiting your beautiful posts that I enjoy heartfully after Jan 4. I apologize for not being able to take time now and any delay in my responses if they happen.

The Feeling of Published

Photo by Manish Doshi

I loved standing at the center of this labyrinth, as if a journey inward & then looking outward. If you could get a wider view, right behind me you would see the Golden Gate Bridge over the San Francisco Bay. This photo was an unplanned surprise. While a couple of other visitors and I enjoyed walking the labyrinth, my husband decided to hike up a nearby hill and take some pictures.

Little did I know that this picture would become the cover photo of my first article published in a magazine. Getting an email from the editor saying that my article was live on the India Currents magazine site was as novel an experience as beginning to publish on WordPress exactly 5 years ago. Yes that’s right it is 5 year anniversary of my blog today!

I soaked up the feeling of being published, it was like crossing a threshold for me. I was writing after a long time, also something that was more than poetry and inspiration. I was writing the personal story of how I happened to develop this relation with poetry and inspiration. I was opening up a lot more, with surprising ease, to a wider world than before. I hope this is a beginning towards more open authentic writing that would serve its purpose, God/Universe willing.

It does feel like a sliver of courage to bring this article for more people to read. I would be honored to have your time on it and perhaps get to know if you have any thoughts for me.

Here’s my article:

Poetry was never something I imagined to become this significant to me, it was not even a sliver of a dream of an unimagined future …read more @ A Poet Born Through Healing