It was another lively morning for the attendees at our monthly meeting of the Wit & Wisdom Social Club. We were pleased to welcome returning guests Rose Ballotta and Alisa Wen. Several of our regular members were absent from the table because they’re away on holiday or on a business trip, but Karim Premji had a different reason — he was celebrating his 60th birthday today with his family. Happy birthday, Karim!

Vasu Desikachary chaired the meeting. We started as usual by going around the circle to see what’s on people’s minds, and one theme popped up repeatedly — the darn hot weather we’ve been sweltering through. Al Brown was the first to mention it; in fact, he’s looking forward to the return of winter. Mario reminded us that compared to the heat in Athens, Greece, where the temperature can climb into the mid-40s Celsius, we’re not suffering at all. Another thing several others commented on — speed traps when driving on some of our much-used local through streets. A $96 fine, days later in the mail, for going a couple of km/h over the limit?? — it’s nothing but a municipal money grab! (Fight back. It’s time to download the Waze app onto your telephone.)

Manisha Melwani was next on the agenda, with a talk titled “What is Spirituality?” Manisha is a spiritual seeker and author who has learned from the long lineage of Vedanta teachings by the great Himalayan teachers from centuries past. To quote from her website, Manisha”… is deeply committed to empowering people with spiritual solutions to overcome their challenges and enable them to lead happier, more fulfilled and purposeful lives.” Well, that’s what she gave us a taste of today. If I can try to distill her message into a few short words, it is that there is only one spirit, only one life everywhere, expressed in numberless different ways. Essentially, there is only oneness. Her talk included a powerful quote from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience”; and another from Mahatma Gandhi: “Man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.”

I need to provide you with ways to access more of her powerful messages. Manisha tells me that copies of her book, originally published as “SO YOU’RE A SPIRITUAL BEING — NOW WHAT?”, are available from her directly at a discount. Information about the book, including the link to obtaining a newer edition with an added chapter, is available on her website here. You can subscribe to her bi-monthly SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS NEWSLETTER by clicking on the link here. (I’ve subscribed; so should you.) In order to quickly find the information we heard today, she advises us to go to the archives on her website and search for articles at the bottom in 2013. (There are over 250 articles in all.)

Thank you for sharing your insights, Manisha. With you and Kumar on board as new members, we’ve got the ‘Wisdom’ part of our club name well covered.

But we’ve got the ‘Wit’ part of our name covered too, thanks to Mario Keriakedes, who has developed into a master at the subtle, and challenging, art of improvisation. You might think it’s simple to have someone point to you, receive the message, and then throw it on to the next person. It takes practice, however, to get that little ritual moving quickly and smoothly. But then add in some cognitive dissonance by having to say your own name as you point to that other person — now it’s hard not to get tripped up. After several other challenging games Mario wrapped up his latest improv session with advice from “Dr. Know-it-all”, who was expounding on how to train cats to go skydiving from an airplane. Sounds crazy? — well, it’s even crazier when Dr. Know-it-all is actually three different players who can only follow each other with one word each in order to have the good doctor share his/her demented expertise. Sure it’s great fun, but there’s a bigger point to it: we participants are learning to become adept and fearless when thinking on our feet.

That’s it for this meeting report. Our next monthly meeting is scheduled for Saturday, August 23rd, at the usual time and place. I hope to see you there!