Don’t forget to turn to your heart often during the day, to your heart center, checking in to see how you are doing and to remind yourself to keep an open heart, to remain compassionate, kind and loving toward self and other. If you live a heart-centered life things become easier; anger reduces, pain resolves, habits and patterns of behavior that no longer serve you gradually fall by the wayside. In heart-centeredness find your true path, your true state as a loving yet detached being, fully present and compassionate yet without judgment, jealousy, or ego driven to the point of loss of self and loss of feeling. In heart-centered focus, all that is is finally in balance, and so are you.
When difficulties arrive step back from the turmoil and contemplate right action. Not all action is right, though the reaction to lash out, to confront, or to retaliate may first arise as the only recourse. Step back into your heart center and wait patiently for calm suggestion. When the heart is allowed to speak its truth you may wonder at what it has to say, but over time you will discover its wisdom. The wisdom of the heart is hard to ignore.
Sit in calmness as often as possible. Breathe. Focus on your heart center and breathe. Slow down everything inside you so that you can feel yourself as a separate and contained being. Let the world outside of you disappear as you breathe, and just be at one with and within yourself. Sitting in heart-centered calmness is the magic pill you don’t even know you need, but it will serve you well to take it as often as you can, for it will not only connect you to yourself, it will also connect you to the divine.
Relax your thinking mind and let your intuition guide you more often. Sometimes the intuition of the heart is more succinct and pertinent than all the rationality in the world. Sometimes the heart knows best.
Emotion is like the wind unleashed in the unruly passion of a hurricane. Experience its power and intensity, but don’t attach. Don’t mistake passion for the heart’s intent. The wind is a passing sensation. How can the wind offer stability? Such an illusion breeds only delusion.
A child’s innocence is not childish. To the contrary, innocence is the only requirement to advance in infinity. Innocence greets oncoming time with total attention, unencumbered by thoughts, needs, desires and entitlements that filter the discovery of what truly is. Innocence is the key to hearing the heart’s true message.
The ego is the master of our time. The ego both generates its own thoughts and attaches to the pervasive flow of thoughts in the universe. The ego also harbors the childish child that seeks to remain the eternal child, driven by the pleasure principle.
Even the most mature thinker might belie the hidden child insisting to live in the sandbox of its thoughts. Be mindful to distinguish the golden child—the child that grows through innocence—from the eternal child, the one who refuses to ever leave the nursery.
For the ego to mature to innocence it must learn to command its attention. Much of the time the ego is asleep at the wheel of consciousness, as the drone of the subconscious flits from association to association and takes it down different roads of thought. Of course, thoughts automatically generate emotions befitting this unfolding drama of thought.
As in meditation, the task for the ego is to become aware that it has slipped into unconsciousness and to bring its attention back to presence in the current moment. Placing attention on the breath is a universal alternative to the focus on thought.
As the mind is cleared of its preoccupation with thought, the ego can place its attention upon the heart. Breathing into the heart focuses attention to the place of truth. Sometimes the heart speaks with a subtle or strong sensation that punctuates a word or thought that spontaneously presents itself as you ask the heart a question. This is an affirmation, either a yes or a no, or a suggestion to explore further.
Sometimes the heart affirms with an outside synchronicity, like a bird loudly breaking into song at the moment a thought appears. Sometimes the heart speaks directly in words of calm whisper. Often there is a definite feeling of rightness, a knowing of what is right to do. Feeling is a weighing function, like a scale, distinctly different from the windstorm of powerful emotion.
The heart is the place for ego and High Self to meet. Ego, however, must be cleansed of its egoism and narcissism to enter the chamber of the heart. Short of this, the ego, like every narcissist, can only hear itself. The ego must surrender to its true purpose, to serve the intent of its High Self, like the knight who serves the ruler.
Freed of attachment to emotion, with the receptivity of pure innocence, and the commitment to serve the intent of the High Self is the path to receive the truth of the heart.
