contemplativeinquiry

I tend to feel most centred and empowered when using heart language. By ‘heart’ I don’t mean the physical heart, or even the heart chakra, but the mystical Great Heart, a place of ultimate stillness, where the microcosm of the human heart opens to the macrocosm. Some people, for example in the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, think of this as the consciousness that underlies all forms, the divine mind, the Self (1).

There are those, like the Sufi teacher Kabir Edmund Helminski (2) who, for the very best reasons, make a separation between Heart as “the subconscious/superconscious mind and all the faculties that are non-intellectual” and the thinking mind activated by will and reason. For me this creates a separation and dualism. In my world Heart includes the reasoning mind, and continues to hold it at some level, even though the existential angst of the reasoning mind itself may defensively lose connection with the greater whole.

I do however share the view that Heart is accessed through the growth of a sensitive awareness that allows us to be receptive and whole by entering in to a more spacious ‘I’, a more integrated quality of presence. Through a fine balance of passive and active attention we can view the present moment through the eye of eternity, a viewpoint from which many wounds can be healed, many mistakes forgiven, many losses accepted. Whilst Great Heart cannot be grasped or understood through consciousness alone, “we can see with its eyes, hear with its ears, act with its will, forgive with its forgiveness, and love with its love” (2).

1: Sally Kempton (2011) Meditation for the love of it: enjoying your own deepest experience  Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True

2: Kabir Edmund Helminski (1992) Living presence: a Sufi way to mindfulness and the essential self   New York, New York: Penguin Putnam