Hi! I am Parul. My ancestors are from South Asia, I was born on Turtle Island in Tkaronto, and I currently live on the island of Bali in Indonesia. I use poetry, prose, poetic frames to unravel entanglements of our thoughts, feelings and experiences. Call it an evolving decolonization practice that is liberating the many intelligences our existence contains.☝🏽 I read you this newsletter, or you can read it yourself! 👇🏽
In my last letter I wrote about gentle, deep healing. How ancient practices of Ayurveda offer detoxing tools that soothe and reset all your bodies — spiritual, mental, physical, emotional. They had thousands of years to fine tune these practices and develop an ingenious method that sits alongside the nervous system, the centrefold of your beingness.
Somehow old wisdom has been pushed aside because
science > ancient knowledge
I know I did not embrace Ayurveda as a kid. I rejected “home remedies” my mom offered me because they were not scientifically backed. Weird things like:
Put your first morning spit on the stye of your eyelid. | This works omg.
Add kala namak (black salt that is infused with sulphur and smells eggy) on your fruit, especially on hot days. | This mineralized salt supports water absorption aka electrolytes on a hot day. Necessary.
Eat 10 almonds soaked overnight before you go to school. | Soaking nuts releases more of its nutritional value.
I was questioning this wisdom. Wisdom curated over 1000s of years.
TBH it came from a place of rejection of my culture. I know it. It was when being Indian wasn’t cool, and assimilation was in style. It was before the woke era and pre-social media. As much as social media causes terror on our mental health. It is also a place where individuality, culture and ancient knowledge are now being celebrated and shared.
Fast forward two decades. In the process of exploring ancestral history for Our Ancestral Futures, a project where I am collecting Vedic indigenous wisdom and sharing it back in the form of poetry, I was offered this nugget from one of the ancient Vedic bodies of knowledge:
“Even if people have been doing it for thousands of years, if there is no logical reason it should be abandoned.” — Mahabharata, 12th book, 257 chapter
Fuck yes.
Take that people telling me what to do for the sake of tradition. Don’t tell me to do it because everyone else before me has.
Side story: I was the ‘but why’ kid growing up. I would ask you a question like why is the sky blue, and follow up to your answer with why… at least 5 times. My parents and old people around little me were not fans of this line of questioning. Maybe I was a reminder of the fact they may have been following something with little understanding?
Little did I know asking why several times is a great tool for developing your idea or finding the root cause. It is actually a technique called the five whys.
Coming back to the quote. It makes so much sense. It is natural. It is organic. It is human nature. Questioning things from a place of genuine curiosity is not a quality that is rewarded in school or in some parenting styles. But it is a quality that supports the evolution of the human spirit and demonstrates a desire for deeper knowledge.
In my previous questioning I was coming from a place of rejection, a place of wanting to belong. This is where intention matters. Coming from an emotional basis of curiosity vs. rejection creates different ripples, different openness, and different results.
Rewind for a hot sec to 3500 years ago. lol
The Vedic era in South Asian history was a fruitful one. It took place during 1500BCE - 600BCE.
BCE stands for Before Common Era or Before Christ, time as we know is a colonial measurement, more on this later.
It was the birth period of Ayurveda, of most major spiritual texts that India is known for such as the Bhagavadgita, Upanishads, and Rigvedas. It is known as the “mantra period”, and was the era when the Vedas were composed and orally transmitted. These are just a few cute highlights.
This era is essentially the foundation of Hinduism and Buddhism. Two spiritual philosophies that are mistaken for religion.
Behind the concept of religion there is spirituality. Spirtual practices help us understand who we are and give space for our purpose to reveal itself.
Enter the ‘but why’ line of thinking. Also known as jijñāsā ( जिज्ञासा ) in Sanskrit, which means an inquisitiveness that goes beyond questioning, a deep desire to know.
Perhaps this is why many people, including myself, feel spiritual, but not religious. Religion is more constructed and binary, whereas spirituality has movement and flexibility.
No disrespect to religion. Many people in my life are deeply religious.
In my early 20s I felt confused about the relationship between spirituality and religion. I grew up in a religious and spiritual household, and we had many religious figures moving through our home. I asked them all the same question:
What is the relationship between spirituality and religion?
I got a variety of responses, even some who scoffed at my ‘ignorant question”. The best answer I got is from my now spiritual advisor. He shared:
“Spirituality has many vehicles. Religion is simply one of them.”
That was close 12 years ago. The answer still echos in my body, especially when I feel religion being pressed upon me via tradition I don’t fully resonate with.
The philosophy of Vedanta:
“We work in harmony with everything that is here.”
It is not praying at the dinner table for ourselves, rather it is praying from the beginning of the entire cycle of food. Everything is envisioned as part of an ecosystem.
In Vedanta:
everything is you
you are everything
seed nourished by the sun
is the plant that feeds your belly
the sun lives through you
so are you the sun
radiantly alive
composed of star dust
cosmic connector
grounded into this earth
toes rolling in soil
as it grazes grass
eyes caught
in the light of a candle
fire of your soul
flickering in the wind
finding rest on the horizon
the ocean embodies your body
strong and fierce
gentle and calm
you are everything
everything is you
and, or
in the words engraved on Harry Potter’s snitch in book 7:
I open at the close
love 💙💛💚
Parul // @parulbee
letter 017: so... are you the sun?!?! 💁🏽♀️☀️👀🤯