Reflections on the Heart-Lake

The first time I tried silencing the mind, having no thoughts for one minute, I realised just how busy the mind is (in fact I spent most of the minute thinking about how I wasting trying not to think!). The nature of the mind is to ceaselessly produce thoughts, so it is quite limited in the peace it is able to receive. Whereas the spiritual heart (not to be mistaken as the physical heart), a spiritual energy centre right in the middle of the chest, is able to receive boundless peace love, joy and delight.

Another way that the mind is limited is its ability to identify with reality as a whole, with the vastness of the universe. This makes the mind's identification incomplete, because it is constantly separating and dividing reality in order to perceive and analyse it. For example,to  the mind may only identify with a certain group of people, rather than take the whole of humanity as their world family. Or again, it may relate with a certain object, whereas the heart reaches out to everything that has been created.

Our hearts are all encompassing and share a very close relationship with a higher part of our nature, which is the soul. The soul resides within the heart and by concentrating and meditating on our heart centre we bring to the fore the light of the soul.

Definitely our minds can be illumined or enlightened but it must take help from the heart which in turn is guided by the soul. It can be likened to the Grandmother teaching the Mother and the Mother teaching the child. So in that order the mind, like the child can be filled with wisdom.

Another way in which we can view the nature of the heart is in the anthology Sri Chinmoy often uses, where a child is often naughty and people come and complaint to the child's mother about her son’s poor and mischievous behavior. But because of the mother's tremendous heartfelt feelings of love towards her child, she sees no fault in him and says “how could my son do such a thing, he is such a good boy. No, no that could not have been my son. He is so kind and good”. Again another example is, a mother may have defective son and her friends say to her, “your child is blind and deaf”. But the mother sees only her child’s beauty and perfection.

The path of the heart is a very full and colourful journey, and is also known as the sunlit path. So when we meditate on the heart, our experiences are very rich and beautiful. If you can think of a child, or think back to when you were a child, you can see how very spontaneous and bright they are, and how they very much are living in the heart. With heart meditation we easily again can access that space, and still live regular lives. But we no longer are victims of unwanted thoughts, fears and worries. So you can expect to have more energy, clarity, fulfillment, happiness and inner peace.