Heart’s Healing Path

         Last week, while guiding a group meditation, I received an insight about the connection between the heart, the emptiness and the energy of universal love.

         We started the meditation with a focus on the heart – a grand central station, which receives and radiates love.  The heart is like a divining rod or a gyroscope for love.  When we ask the heart to guide us toward universal love, it leads us to the emptiness – the deep quiet at the center of being, which is the wellspring of all love.

         From that inexhaustible source, love flows freely and naturally to the heart, where it radiates as we intend.

         Sacred emptiness - where the center of each being and the center all being come together - is the source of all love and all healing.  Spending even small amounts of time in this deep quiet renews and restores us.

         Sitting in meditation - hands on my lap, with palms up and fingers relaxed and apart - I invite the universal energy to gather in my hands.  For me, this produces a tingling.  Others may feel a temperature change.  When inhaling, I imagine this palpable love energy flowing from my hands into my heart.  When I exhale, I follow the breath, guided by love, into the quiet within.  Each exhalation takes me deeper into quiet.

         A slight variation skips the hands part.  I breathe love energy directly into my heart, then follow the out-breath from the heart into the quiet.

         Distractions?  No problem.  Gently - patiently persistent - we begin again and again and again. 

         We each have access to the deep quiet, the emptiness within.  It’s the wellspring of universal love, the source of all creation and re-creation, our resource for healing and re-programming.  

         The heart knows the way.

Hunger Games

         For several weeks, I’ve been on an extended hiatus – spending hours late into the night reading science fiction, following sports, skimming news headlines, studying the bridge column, chuckling over the comics, solving Jumbles.  These and similar activities were entertaining, but not deeply satisfying.  The enjoyment did not bring joy.  I was entertaining myself, but not nourishing myself.

         My soul has been hungry – and the more I fed it poorly, the hungrier it became. 

         Sleep suffered.  Exercise suffered.  Spiritual practice suffered – as did my writing practice.  Weekly Wisdoms have become “periodic posts.”   (Actually, Periodic Posts may be a more appropriate title for this blog.) 

         So, what am I learning as I review this period of spiritual hunger and see the cycle I’ve caught myself in? 

         Mainly this:  Slow down and listen!  Don’t run from the hunger.  Attend to it gently from the wisest, most loving part of myself. 

         When I slow down and listen, I can feel the difference between a sugary treat and food that really nourishes.  At the spiritual level, I can feel the difference between what deeply satisfies – and what doesn’t.  I can feel the difference between escape and true connection.

         The quiet feedback from deep within is a trustworthy guide.  In my case, it calls me to care for my body with good sleep, nutrition and exercise.  It calls me to nurture my soul with regular meditation and QiGong practice.  It invites me to soften to the beauty of each moment and surrender to the mystery of oneness. 

         When I listen deeply - caring for body and soul - all those other entertainments, done moderately and mindfully, can shift from escapes to sources of joy – no longer hunger games.