About Awards & Gratitude

Photo by Manish Doshi

As I sat down to create my weekly Monday post, I checked into my heart for what wanted to be expressed during this week of ThanksGiving. I realized that Gratitude has been my drug of choice in life – I trace back the infinite blessings of my life to this gift of Gratitude that sometimes blooms with joy and sometimes is a practice of cultivation that reproduces joy unfailingly.

I checked for how and for whom I want to express gratitude today. Of course, for this community that literally buoyed my being for these many years now, and also something unique happened. I realized that I feel a new sense of gratitude for someone who I have often neglected most. Now I feel quite audacious to say – Myself. But honestly, and humbly that is what came to me – I am grateful for myself for all of who I have become.

Now how should I convey this? – I asked, perhaps hoping to be redirected to something else. It was a pleasant surprise when I was guided to this Liebster Blog Award post from when I was 5 months into blogging in February 2016. I did not have readers yet, but this kind blogger acknowledging and encouraging me meant the whole world to me.

I wish to share with you all today, kind friends, my response post to that award. It felt so good to have a glimpse into myself from when I was in this space kind of innocently, not knowing what blogging meant. To see not much has changed truly, in spite of the fact that I feel like a whole new person since then.

I remember so tickled from getting asked questions about myself – it was an unfamiliar and amazing window to look at myself through. This is the only blog award I responded to, going award-free thereafter. Here it is :)))

11 facts about me:

1. I believe magic exists in everyday unfolding.
2. I love rain.
3. I love driving in the rain alone.
4. I like the crunch of walking on fallen leaves.
5. I love the sunshine in lukewarm weather.
6. I can watch waves crashing for hours.
7. I think every single thing that comes my way is relevant.
8. A coffee and a great conversation is time spent well to me.
9. I enjoy creating different styles of outfits.
10. I am passionate about seeing life transformations.
11. I have spent a lot of time playing board games with my sons.

Answers to the 11 questions given to me:

1. If you could live back in time when and where would you choose and why?
Hmmm …Actually I am feeling perfect where I am, so given a choice I would like to stay right now and here 🙂

2. What do you think will be the greatest invention in the future
Don’t know really …

3. What is the best t.v. show in your opinion?
I don’t watch t.v. much … have loved Friends in the past and now occasionally enjoy Big Bang Theory.

4. What book have you enjoyed the most?
Difficult to pick one … Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dyer, I was young and this book felt powerful…

5. Who was your favorite teacher and why?
My first yoga teacher in US, he always helped me see the truth in me, in a very un-authoritative manner.

6. Which parent influenced you the most and how?
Not sure about this actually …by now every interaction has become an influence.

7. How do you think we can contribute to peace?
By cultivating peace within, it can be very contagious!

8. What do you think is man’s greatest achievement?
In my small reality, this virtual world that connects people across the earth, is an amazing achievement.

9. What do you think is man’s worst behavior?
Acting in harmful and untruthful ways, going against joy …their own and others.

10. What do you like to do for fun?
Listen to songs, chat with friends and laugh with them.

11. If you could travel into space where would you go?
Far enough to take a look at Earth as a whole and then back!

Thank you for traveling with me and my words till here, THANK YOU is all I can say truly and deeply. Happy Week of Giving Thanks!

P.S. Thank you to my husband for the amazing fall picture that I used at the beginning.

Don’t Blow Up Your Life: Take Responsibility for the Choices You Make

Photo by Manish Doshi ‘Sunrise on Kauai, Hawaii islands’

I am very happy to share that my prose of perspectives on long-term, family relations, is now published on AmericanKahani.com. I would be honored if you choose to read it on the link below and share your thoughts, feedback on it.

Don’t Blow Up your Life: Take Responsibility for the Choices You Make
Love is not dramatic or romantic sometimes. It is way bigger. It is something that helps accept what Is, wholly, and then change it.

This article was originally published on this blog On January 17, 2018.

The trail behind me

I feel that I am personally transitioning through a portal from a known past into an unknown future in so many ways at once. It is eerie how outwardly all the walls of reality still look the same, and yet as if all the mental castles of reality have inwardly collapsed. Each day I find another brick falling.

As if each day I wake up and walk into a hall of mirrors absolutely wanting to confuse me – Is that me? or is that one me? Until I push back on a mirror to have it open on to a very expansive space of peace, joy and lightness, carrying an air of crisp clarity.

It is so thrilling and awesome terrifying to surrender in to that space, and live without alignment or resistance to any mental constructs, comforts of relations, definitions, concepts of what exactly makes up our everyday life. Also it is awesome that I don’t have the ever insistent fear rumbling inside me. For I recognize this portal from 5 years ago, and I know now what brilliance awaits on the other side of it.

I love and embrace with a much robust gratitude and awe, the exquisite and divine guidance, synchronicity and perfection with which this play of life is executed. These are such powerful times that our tribe of truth seekers and heart followers are finding their way with themselves and each other like never before! I am now ready to show up in ways like never before.

And hence, I wished to post this poem and picture today to share with you, my gratitude for the trail behind me. For the people on the trail with me.

This poem was first published on August 16, 2016, 5 years ago today.

There’s a trail from the past behind me
From whence in this moment I arrive
I look forward to see
Whereto it wants me strive
The smile on my face
Belongs to those who helped me thrive

The chosen and unchosen soul friends
The given and unchosen of relationships
With their simply Being or coaxing mends
Diffused and dissolved perceived hardships

I have all of You in my heart
To walk with You, I would go back to start
Gratitude for You will keep You forever with me
Especially when I seem to have parted ways with thee
There’s times when only You can make me less lonely

That’s when I look back at the trail
Find the bend where you found me frail
Then I walk forward steadily a mile
Taking with me the newfound smile

Of Becoming Myself

Photo by Myself

I have circled back to square one yet again in my journey of Becoming myself.
It is my responsibility to patiently skillfully claim who I am.
I Am the ripple and the wave that keeps flowing in to her destiny.
I receive this gift of melting diffusion of my being fully, breathing and being with it.

A Moved Heart, deep no-tears-eyes feeling tears.
This is pure energy transmission through pure intent.
This is Truth of the moment. This is Love.
On my next phase, I work on absolute skill in silence or speech, than ever before.
My Life is Changed Forever.
I am stunned and moved, and receiving deeply. I am ready. Whatever that means.

In this moment I accept my wholeness.
I leave it to the shift and process to work itself through me.
It feels empowering. I am thrilled at the lack of the lurking fear and overwhelm.
The prayers and blessings are at work at all dimensions.
This energy is so fluid and expansive.

I am done blinding myself from the clarity available to me.
I am done being so cautious of stepping into it.
I feel the grief of mothering others’ emotions and then letting go.
I cared for how much they needed me to need them and so became the needy one they needed me to be. I have been part of the game too, trying to keep it all so comfortable.
Oh Truth is not such. So much peace in this moment I don’t know who I am anymore.
That makes me smile, it shows me my raw beginning yet again, to get back to being who I was, am, to be. I flow in to my destiny, from this moment here now.

I am not stuck here, I am planted and blooming.
There is pulsating power within, my container is adjusting, recalibrating for this shift.
I am reminding myself these sensations are not pain they are sensations of divine rearrangement of energy itself, tangible and intangible.
This process is going to stay alive for some while, I will stay present and silent.
What Gift, Grace, Gratitude – to hold this unfolding, in utmost reverence!
Thank You is what covers it and doesn’t begin to cover it, for the revelations and truth that are a grace of this lifetime.

This post is a modified compilation of my comments that came in response to
Amy Rose on a recent post of mine Layers Illuminated. I decided to make my end of this recent conversation into a post to turn the profound shift into a powerful affirmation, own and embody it fully. I would be honored to know how this post spoke to you.

Life Waves

Photo by Arnav Doshi

The process keeps going life beside
you yearn for a bit longer respite
A sense of having found a ground
maybe for a day and yet again slip down
Another layer being called to shed more,
then called to show up and Be more

Allowing lower energy mind games to penetrate
to become like others around to be able to relate
Showing how attached still to comforts of certainty
then suffering for not being your own self worthily

Feel and sense the divide happening
Grief of as if current reality leaving
Comes with having to keep going
while still staying in your Being

Cusp of opening up from the guardedness
feel the transition and rawness
The waves keep coming yes
you hope you can let go…
Maybe this is how it looks like always
you simply learn to breathe better in calmness

PS : This poem was composed sometime last year from my response to one of Sue Dreamwalker’s post on her profoundly inspirational blog Dreamwalker’s Sanctuary. I realized I had never published it.

Tidal Wave

Photo by Manish Doshi

The deep blue
Ocean
Clear waves
Peaceful purity
I watch
I feel
From the threshold
Careful that
I Don’t get wet
So I can Turn back
walk in home
Engage with drama

I glance back at the blue
It calls me back
“Watch” it whispers
Enormous tidal wave
It drenches me
Sweeps me off my feet
I playfully give in
Then come back to my threshold again
The insistent blue wave
Now peaks higher than the roof
Breaks through the doors and windows
Floods in through me and everything
From the back of the house, out through the front
Cleansing everything on the way
Within me and the house
I am amazed at, how clean and peaceful it feels
Despite such powerful waves breaking in

And I am reminded ‘they’ will return soon
The ones that I am not done playing with yet
And their games have different rules
So I close the windows and the doors
The wave, like the romantic lunatic lover whispers
“I won’t give up – now that you are wet, you can’t keep me out”
I smile one way and annoyed in another
Proceed to hold the door shut tight with all my strength
The wave still pours in, flows through me, and the house
This time it is careful, once inside the house, not to flow higher than my ankle
Flows out the front silently, without the uproar unlike before
‘They’ arrive and I start explaining and convincing
How I tried my best, with all my strength
To hold the door, so no water comes in
I just couldn’t do better than this

I was amazed again
How they simply said “Oh the floor is wet”
Fetched the mop and started mopping the floors
I watched them from the corner
All wet and floored at myself
Wondering if they would ever want to know
About that amazing blue ocean
That visited this house
Did they even notice
That
I am
All
Wet!

Perhaps
I will just
Allow myself
To
Hang dry
As I help Them
Mop and dry
The floors
Of the house.

I woke up recently with a sense as if I had had a profound experience, and slowly realized and recollected this vivid dream. I decided to write it down and this poem is how it got described. It gave me abundant clarity in my juggle and confusion in navigating my relations while allowing/resisting the waves of transformation that keep washing over me. I am in deep gratitude for the gift of healing and awakening afforded to me in this lifetime. All relations and interactions serve a purpose in this evolution towards embodying my authentic being. Emotions of guilt and grief tend to interfere when we first become aware of how we have been unknowingly contributing to false constructs and agreements of relations. Guilt for not keeping up with our end of the agreement any longer and grief for losing some comfortable ways of being, not being acknowledged for who we truly are. It is my personal responsibility to honor the truth of what the tidal wave brings me and continue to walk with that truth. This acceptance helps me smile and continue to engage with all my Love and Gratitude.

Did you relate to the poem in some way …similar or different? I would be honored to know.

Awakening

Sunrise photo by Manish Doshi

Yes Dreams Come True
The Waking Ones often Do

Fears too Come True
The Sleeping Ones often Do

Each can be stifling to the other
Awakening within, the creator

It is so interesting to look at our life and reflect on how it is a sum total of our dreams and our fears come true. Often when we stumble into suffering that diverts us from going towards our dreams, we are actually living our unconscious fears. Our waking dreams are our desires and yearnings that give us hope, direction, trust to find our way back again to where we are actually living parts of what we always dreamed of.

I chose not to make the C capital in the word ‘creator’ above because in the tender moments when we are transitioning from fear to faith, it is hard to feel the power of the Creator, and yet we are getting in touch with our creator self within to not succumb, but to dream even more boldly.

Awakening is a short poem published on June 20. 2018. The words felt very relevant to me to repeat and put them in the form of image.

The Journey

Photo by Manish Doshi

“The journey itself doesn’t see our earthly age. It is a joy to arrive when we arrive and a delight to meet your own tribe on the same path.”

This blog platform has been a significant way of meeting and interacting with utmost amazing beautiful people who have created an indelible impact on my life journey from one day to another. They are generous hearts and souls delivering divine messages and reminders as if guide posts on the path, through their work and exchange of comment conversations, often year after year. I hope to find the ability and inspiration to share about each one who has been a contribution to me. You know who you are. An humble bow of gratitude to you.

Today I want to share about one such beautiful blogger friend, Tamara Kulish.

The quote in the above image came as a part of our conversation on one of her blog post “Remind yourself that you cannot fail at being yourself” This post made me thoughtful and I responded with saying:

“Do what you want and what you enjoy – this seemed like the most revolutionary advice I gave myself at one time I remember. The sense of self-worth when not independent of others’ expectations, we lose our sense of Being and keep choosing to do things to satisfy some external standards. Your post is one perfect statement after another.”

Dear Tamara responded to the above by saying:

“We have both learned the value of doing this in our lives, you earlier in life than I did, but it’s wonderful when anyone does, whether earlier or later! There’s really no better time than now, for anyone contemplating this in their own life! It’s a truly liberating mind set!”

My heart all joyful with resonance and as if with a nod to her, I responded :

“The journey itself doesn’t see our earthly age. It is a joy to arrive when we arrive and a delight to meet your own tribe on the same path.”

Tamara then generously shone her bright light on this statement of mine and made it into a quote in this post: Your soul is the place within you that is timeless, ageless, and eternal She gifted my words back to me, to take this beautiful and powerful form, as you see in the quote image at the top. I hope you enjoyed and found value in our interaction that I chose to share, in similar fashion of her post.

Please visit Tamara Kulish to know of her expansive work of books and journals published in the area of self-discovery, personal development, finding happiness and fulfillment. Her blog posts are a treasure, each one, with her honest authentic sharing and inspiring perspectives.

Relations & the Balance

Photo : Yosemite NP, CA by myself

If you manipulate your way in changing the other person in a relationship, you will not feel the joy when that change comes. The thrill will go away quickly and the change won’t last.

If you manipulate your way of being in a relationship, the other person will reflect back the changes in you in the most beautiful way. This is a slow process of skillful transformation. Everything changes. You get to keep the authentic relation forever or let go. Let go of the expectation or sometimes the relation itself. You experience the most peaceful joy. It comes from finding yourself, discovering how you relate to yourself and strengthening that bond first.

Photo : Distances by myself

It is our patterns that shape our relations. Let go of the blame of how people distanced from you. It is important to address what is the pattern in you, and what addiction of yours were they serving? Validation, approval, connection, filling up some emptiness – what is it that you were needing?

In the space that is consciously created, the real ones always stay or return. Because you returned back to yourself and allowed them to find themselves.

No judgment, all compassion, kindness and love, for oneself and others. All healthy boundaries.

P.S. 2020 became the year of deep reflection for how I relate to myself and others, seeking another level of balance in my personal spiritual journey and authentic relations. The nature of some family, society and worldly relations managed to create dissonance while also refining my appreciation for simple happy times with my immediate family.

If you feel inclined here are some of my other posts on relationships from different times. I appreciate all thought processes shared on my posts. All exchanges of perspectives are a growth for all.

Relations – A leaf that loves the Tree

Relationships …a choice or a privilege!

Relationship Illusions & Truth of Soul

A true Relation

A Good marriage is the Best

Don’t Blow Up your Life

Truthful Commitments

Is there a Perfect Spouse?

Looking Back to Look Ahead

As we prepare to step into the New Year I felt drawn to revisit my old posts that came at a similar time. It was like visiting the previous versions of me and how the felt sense of life has kept evolving for me, year to year. This year I feel fairly removed from feeling the years as separate blocks of time. The year ahead feels like a continuum, a knowing of how I am going to be changed as a person yet there is no rawness of curiosity in it. I feel focused and open for new directions.

Following post, first posted on Jan 5, 2017. I loved repeating this to myself, so I shed some more layers of confines I place on myself. 

Step into the New …You

It is too long that you stayed in that shell …to keep others comfortable.

There are some around you who have always loved you, with whom you are amazing and it is easy. You feel safe being yourself. Then why walk on eggshells in the rest of the world? Why numb and dumb down the goodness and brightness in you ? Sometimes to the point that you feel like the most ungracious or insensitive person?

Nobody realizes that you are trying to be just the opposite, or simply trying to fit in. You value them too much …more than yourself! They are getting used to that …your misery even. And you are getting comfortable with that. In your mind you are being nice to them …stop …just stop!

They are taking your appreciation and praise, for everything about them, as your weakness, or worse jealousy. When you soar higher than what they perceive you to be (and you are still nowhere in your perception) …what will you take their unappreciation of your journey as? How will you look at their lack of acknowledging of your existence?

Look at those who really ‘see’ you. You seem to do everything right towards them.

Break the shell, crack open …Do what it takes! It’s worth it! They will find others who feed their comfort. Yes, give them the shock …stop hurting so much!

They will have to step up, to be able to understand you and cheer you in your growth. They will have to know the pain you pay as your dues. The grace you are showing as you choose to crack open and take flight.

You in your truthfulness will mourn your perceived loss of some of them, because you truly cared about them. That’s why you kept them comfortable while you suffered being trapped in an unwholesome reality.

Yes, I know you also have done some things wrong to some. Those too will reach out to you or you to them, in your growth. Just that you are not accountable to all of them this very minute, so don’t judge yourself so hard.

Go ahead take that step, a small change, break open, fly. The ones ready for growth will grow with you, or even break some towards their own growth. Some will fall away, as you both cannot see eye to eye now.

Forgive yourself, forgive them, love yourself, love them, allow yourself to Be, allow them to Be. Trust me, trust me, trust me it’s worth it. When you feel stuck and choose to wiggle out, it hurts, it’s worth it.

The ones who care for you and the ones you care for, will have to accept you as you are today. Let them know you want ONE with them, you are one of them. But be stronger on your own path. Some of them Never let go!!

Break out of anything you are keeping yourself in …one step at a time!

Following post, first posted on December 31, 2017. I have picked lines of the poem to share here because I feel exactly the same in a very different way, as I look back to 2018 and head into 2019. Title is linked to full post.

Looking Back in Time & Curious Ahead

My family at a beach on Kauai island, Hawaii – December 2017

Looking back 2016 had felt like a poetry
It’s rhythm evident towards the end
Miraculous intensities as if waves undulatory

Looking back 2017 feels like chunks of prose
Blocks of emotions riotous, faced to fend
Unbeknownst intensities dealt to come to close

Now I see tremendous success in simply Being
The freedom and liberation is sweet
Without the need to justify with achieving

A lot of life is hidden in the slow living
Follow into the next choice after deep listening

All the voices in my head that created turmoil
Most many of them were not mine

When I decided to do nothing
Exact things happened that meant something

Universe is becoming my family
Soul interactions touching me deeply

And there’s us souls committed to each other
Deemed as Family for this lifetime
We hold hands together in joy and trust
To make it through with our individual soul calling

Each of you dear one who reads
I wish you too a curious & glorious 2018 (now 2019)
May you find a ground steady as you tread
The waves of life with each twist and turn

May we all embrace the beauty with mirth
Of this finite vacation on planet Earth

Following post, first posted on December 31, 2016. Title is linked to the full poem.

Times that become the year

My family at the Sand Dunes of Death Valley, CA – December 2016

I will be on a break from this blogging space for a month from now. If I don’t respond to any of your comments this is why. When I return I will resume my visits to your wonderful works that I am going to be missing 🙂 My heartfelt Gratitude & Love to all of you and this precious virtual space where we often have our most treasured conversations.