Rob McNamara posted this on his Gaia blog, a nice meditation on following one's heart. Rob has a Masters in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology from Naropa University. He's been lecturing on Integral Psychology and Human Development at Naropa University over the past 5 years for both graduate and undergraduate students in a number of academic and professional programs including the Transpersonal and Contemplative Psychology programs. He also operates an Integral Performance Consulting practice, working with elite coaches and athletes.
This is another, slightly different look at the warrior's heart.
Following Your Heart
Posted on May 28th, 2008 byRob
The center of your heart does not make distinctions.
The heart at it's core simply is open, radically vulnerable, intimately receptive.
There's no, "I'll take this, but not that."
There's no conflicted stance, no I'll be "sort of" open...but only to the things I want.
Openness as it quietly rests at the center of your heart is in many ways an either or phenomena. Either your heart is Open and Alive in the moment or it's not. Your heart either feels intimately this very moment or it severs itself from the very life that animates it's vitality.
When Open, the heart knows no obstacle. The heart feels obstacles, but unconditionally remains open, receptive, spacious and intimate with every subtle nuance of this moment's presence, this moment's configuration, this moment's articulation of itself.
The problem is the part of you that does make distinctions, does take sides, does stake claims in preferences. When you do this, the basic nature of the heart is severed from how you function in the world. The alive unmediated lovingness of your heart is severed and your life becomes a rote expression of your slavery to the preferences, opinions, likes and dislikes of your conditioned history.
When the cool open spaciousness of the heart is lost within your direct moment to moment experience, you stop feeling with the fullness of your being. As a result, you live your life in accordance to your conditioning. Contracted into your preferences, distinctions and sides you guide your life from a lesser place. You feel less because you're less alive. You are less skillful because you lead your life from a more self-centered perspective. You're less kind in the world because you don't feel deeply into this radiant moment.
As days slip by you continue onward semi-consciously amidst your life. Days turn into weeks and weeks to months. Suddenly years start slipping by as you slumber through each moment contracted around "you." As each moment beautifully flowers into an exquisite dance and dissolves away but your heart's truest most authentic articulation of life remains largely dormant as long as you live a life enslaved to your small self and it's conditioned preferences.
The heart remains ever present, waiting, the authentic articulation of yourself is brought into its fullest life as you release your attachments. As you stop contracting around you, your heart's immense sensitivity and delicate responsive aliveness comes to life. You die, your little box of a self dissolves and something much more precious than you can possibly image takes life right here, right now.
Here's a bow to the Heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment