The Power of an Open Heart

When heart is contracted, the knowledge in the soul assumes the nature of ignorance. Once this contraction ends its unique essential nature shines again. Tantraloka, 13:213

Engaging in sādhana (spiritual practice) is the conscious choice to allow the grace that is ever-present in creation to reveal itself in us. Revelation is the very purpose of our human existence, and there is no higher aspiration in life than to seek to recognize that God dwells within us as our Self. Over the past fifty-plus years of teaching, of supporting students in their wish to know that divinity, it has become clear to me that one aspect of spiritual work is of vital importance: that true sādhakas must not only make contact with a place of higher consciousness within themselves; they must be able to maintain that contact as they engage their life.

The immersion into higher consciousness requires a significant shift in our awareness. When we commit ourselves to spiritual practice, we are asking for a profound revelation—for the experience of the highest truth to unfold and become permanent, to find nondual reality in the midst of whatever we encounter in life. That’s why we must not only find freedom inside, we must master the capacity to express that freedom in every moment of our day. I use the word “master” intentionally because it really is a cultivated capacity.

Making contact during meditation is, in some ways, the easier aspect, because if we practice long enough, we do begin to still our mind, to internalize our awareness enough to feel our center. Whether we make contact with that place once, or every day in our meditation—by simply turning our awareness inside and allowing this inner awareness to reveal itself—the clarity inherent within us begins to shine forth. We feel that resonance whenever we close our eyes, and it does get stronger over time, as we repeatedly find our center. But I am perpetually amazed by the fact that we lose contact with that experience in our daily life, as we engage our job, career, relationships, etc.

Living From Higher Awareness

What we therefore must do in our sādhana is penetrate through the dualistic awareness that there is contact and non-contact. It is only our misunderstanding that leads us to a sense of there being an inner space and something else outside of that space. A key aspect of spiritual practice is to acknowledge that we do function in this dualistic consciousness. Our self-reflective awareness is what enables us to see our state and choose to change it. With a deeper understanding, more internal clarity, and a true commitment to our sādhana, we then engage our lives in a manner that can really transform our experience and our consciousness.

So we undertake the various practices given by our teacher, which are designed to transform our consciousness into an experience of unity, of oneness. This is the mastery of being able to, at every moment, not only remain in contact with our center but to express, and even expand it, with our eyes wide open. We learn to extend from the openness we discover in our meditation.  Over time we find that we can not only stay centered and remain in that awareness, we but can expand that openness as we engage the world—which includes facing the trials and tribulations of our life.

We become able to hold on to a higher awareness in any situation, not just in environments that don’t feel challenging. Oddly enough, we each believe that our own lives are the most difficult—that our problems, challenges, karma, conditioning, and history are unique. Then, we use that as a valid reason to explain why we can’t find a state of openness when everybody else can. My teacher Rudi said it very poetically: “Your shit aint special.” Although our individual tensions are not unique, we do need to move beyond any limitations we find in ourselves in order to live in a higher state of consciousness, and that’s precisely why we commit to spiritual practice.

The Power of the Heart

The capacity to feel our center can also be expressed as feeling our heart, and there are various dimensions of that heart—from our individuated heart to the heart of God. Tantric tradition describes these aspects as the triadic heart of Śiva. God’s heart comprises both Consciousness and energy, which can also be understood as prakāśa, the light that illuminates life, and vimarśa, the self-reflective capacity of that light to know Itself. The light that illuminates life is the power that gives life. It’s the power that created, from within Itself, all manifest existence. And vimarśa, the self-reflective power, is the capacity to know Itself as that creator.

Our own heart is both a single point and a space without boundaries. We can focus our awareness with such precision that we can find a singular stillpoint within, which is like a cosmic door into God’s Heart. We move out of all expressed manifest diversity, through that point of stillness into the infinite unexpressed. When we do that, we learn that there really is no boundary to the heart or to Consciousness. Only in our minds do we feel either to be inside or outside of our body.

The reality is that everything resides in the body of Śiva, the body of God, which is complete in both its source and in its expression. When we have the direct perception of this, there is no duality, because we see that all expressed life is created out of one source, not separate from that source. All existence is within the infinite field of Unity, as God’s own experience. When we expand our heart big enough to encompass God’s Heart, it becomes an experience that we live from as we engage in the joys and challenges of daily life.