undercurrents (issue #5)
A prayer for the collective and more, by guest curator Niharika Sanyal
For this issue of undercurrents, I am honored to welcome guest curator Niharika Sanyal, a Soul Purpose Guide™ and Facilitator of Work that Reclaims the Heart, based in India. Her work supports people to discover their soul-level purpose and awaken to the love-force of the Shakti within. Formerly, Niharika served as Associate Director & Senior Mentor at Purpose Guides Institute and completed her Masters in Human Development & Psychology from Harvard.
Our Green Dreamer podcast interview just went live as well. Tap into my full conversation with Niharika here on “Returning to the longing in our hearts and intuition” (Green Dreamer podcast EP423).
undercurrents (issue #5) by Niharika Sanyal
1. Something affirming ~ “A prayer for the collective”
My prayer for our collective this year is this: may we all remember why we came here to take form in blood and body on this earth. For the land of your soul awaits, dear one. It lives right here in the heart behind that gate that can be opened if you sit in front of it long enough to whisper an ardent prayer. There is no treasure in the world more worth your seeking than this—the word, the memory, the seed, the image, the song at the very centre of your heart—which has always been the spell to open it. It is this which contains the code of everything that you are, and everything that you are here to birth forth into our beautiful broken world.
Do you know how much the world is thirsty for the very water that you hold so desperately in? Do not let them tell you you are mad for dreaming. For a little madness is good in this world, and you have much of the kind that we so need.
2. Something creative ~ “Come out, come out, let yourself be found”
Here is a piece of poetry by me, inviting each of us to find our place in the world right now.
Each of our unique callings has a medicine to bring forward in these times.
The Earth, she called us here by no accident. We have taken this body here not to transcend it all only, but to go deeper into it, to fully feel our ache for the earth, the grief in our hearts for the Great Mother, and the longing at the core of our beings to fully come alive in her service, in the creation of a new world. So, my prayer for us all is to:
Come out, come out. Let yourself be found.
For the world cries while each of us hides
behind the veils of our forgetting.
Come out and be found
by the questions that are here to find you.
They will be your guides, burning you back into yourself
with the memory of all that you are.Come out from behind the darkness
of that self-imposed cave.
Come out from behind the veil that stands
between you and the land of your soul.
Come out and meet the tuning fork of you
that rings every single time with resonance.
Come out and trust
the tuning fork of you that rings.
Come out, come out.
Let yourself be found.
3. Something shifting ~ “Becoming vessels for healing”
I happen to be the steward of a precious medicine object—an Earth Treasure Vase for Auroville and India, and wish to share about this inspiring project here.
Earth Treasure Vases hail from an ancient Buddhist practice that was created and hidden by Guru Padmasambhava in the 8th century AD. The secret was buried and meant to be discovered at a future time when the collective would be in need of this sacred technology. The practice re-emerged into our world 30 years back when Cynthia Jurs trekked up to a cave in the Himalayas to meet with a 106-year-old Rinpoche. When she met him, she asked him, “What can we do to bring healing and protection to the Earth?” In response, she was asked to bring alive this ancient practice of burying Earth Treasure Vases around the world.
Starting with the birth place of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, the vase has been buried now in 60 significant locations around the world that are in need of peace and balance—serving as acupuncture points for healing, in the body of the Earth Mother—and establishing a kind of global mandala of light. The project is a beautiful example of spirit meeting matter, an example of how subtle and energetic interventions also need to accompany our many planetary interventions at this time, to seed more and more rays of healing everywhere.
Learn more about Earth Treasure Vase here.
4. Something moving ~ “transforming collective human consciousness”
Auroville is likely the largest and most long-lasting intentional community in the world. Inaugurated in 1968 in South India, it is currently home to 3000+ residents from across 60+ nationalities. Considered to be a living laboratory for an evolving human consciousness, and an experiment in human unity, Auroville has been envisioning for 56 years an ideal society, a “place that belongs to nobody in particular”, a place that belongs to humanity as a whole. Although the project continues to be met by challenges of many kinds, its Dream persists.
You can support and read more about Auroville here.
5. Alchemizing thoughts ~ “Decolonising the mind”
What does it mean for a collective to come together for the work of transforming human consciousness? And particularly when that work happens on the soil of a country that has a history of colonisation behind it, a history that has minimised a lot of its ancient knowledge systems? While moving towards true human unity, how do we also include and acknowledge the impact of years of foreign invasion on the mental, emotional and spiritual landscapes of an entire country?
Ritambhara is a project in India that is doing a lot of deep work on decolonising the mind. Weaving mythology and Indic wisdom with rigorous practices in collective shadowwork, this work feels hopeful as an emergent framework for recovering collective roots.
Doing this work has unpeeled my ‘white mask’ deeply. In a journey to recover my roots here in India—a country I grew up in but never connected with as deeply as I did with the West (from which I have learned so much over the years)—I find myself being taken by life on pilgrimage across my country this year. I hope to be returned by this outer pilgrimage back deeper into the wisdom that resides within my own body and bones. And in the process, to serve my community from the well of my deepest authenticity.
(Learn more about guest curator Niharika Sanyal here, and listen to our podcast conversation here.)
I am working to grow paid subscriptions to this 100% reader-funded newsletter so that I can write more consistently. If you’ve been following my work for a while, I would greatly appreciate having your support!
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Other updates…
Due to more enrollment inquiries continuing to come in over the weekend, we have extended registration for ~alchemize~ until May 5th, 10pm PST as a hard closing! If you are curious to engage with a lot of the topics I explore here and on the podcast in more creative, embodied, and experimental ways, join us here in Green Dreamer’s 10-week audio-based program of daily imagination and radical mindfulness (what we call “earthfulness”) practices ~
I was recently a guest on Conscient Podcast with host Claude Schryer, an alum of ~alchemize~, who invited me to join his study group to talk about their experiences, our programming inspirations, etc. Check it out here.
ICYMI, check out my latest Substack essay, “Less transactional, more relational”
What I’m engaging with…
I am looking forward to engaging with this new book, Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community by Camille S. Barton
I am reading “How to help Sudan amid the 'living, breathing monstrosity' that is war,” an article by Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Take action…
To learn more about what is happening with student-led encampments and occupations at universities across the U.S. and beyond, check out this resource here.
To learn more and take action to support the Kānaka Maoli-led movement against the Thirty Meter Telescope, check out this resource here.