Resting the Mind in the Heart

Resting the mind in the heart is the beginning and end of your pathless journey. We meet in this breaking, where all our pronouns dissolve into Thou. At first you think your heart is just a blood pump. But as you rest here, golden wholeness enfolds your body. Your cardiac plexus is the densely lit center of a boundless energy field, as real as the gravity at the center of Andromeda. The nerves pulsate with your gentlest breath, effortless yet unutterably powerful, infusing your heartbeat with a primordial song, the sound-current that created the universe, Shabda, Mantra, Word of God, like an unstruck gong. Flowering at the center of your flesh, yet transcending matter, this bridal bower you call your heart is not an abstraction. It’s atoms vibrate with glory, the very substance of grace extruded from the Void. The radiance of each heart cell spreads over you an ever-expanding lotus-like pavilion of forgiveness, where minds estranged melt in friendship, sickness heals, stress dissolves, and those who are ready to depart meet their dearest mothers. Under a momentary shadow of aloneness, you may feel that your heart is small; yet in that humble hermitage are many mansions. Your heart outshines you. No longer in your body, your body is in your heart. Hridaya, self-luminous as the sun, beaming joy through time and space, comforting your ancestors for seven generations past and to come, threading each neuron to a star, entangling galaxies in the wonder-woven garment of God's infinite light, which is your physiology. Why not bathe in your own heart? Illuminate your home, the city, the meadows and hills, the planet, the sky... I'm pretty sure this is why you are here.

Photo by Kristy Thompson