Resting in the Heart

    

“Rest the mind in the heart" is a profoundly simple instruction repeated verbatim in the Shiva Sutras, the Vijnana Bhairava, and the Orthodox Christian Philokalia. The alchemy practiced by cats, Taoist masters, and breast-sated infants. In the democracy of the heart, there is no difference between purring, chanting "Om," or gurgling “Mama.” Yet it's really not a practice at all, but the surrender of practice, where doing yields to Being. 

 

To stay safe, you might regard resting in the heart as a method of relaxation or stress management. But if you have courage, you let it be the portal to a New Creation. "Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation; old things have passsed away: behold, all is made new." (II Corinthians 5:17)

The Heart is not just a beating organ for aerating your blood. It is a doorway. You could only pass over the threshold of an ancient temple after removing your shoes. Shoes represented the beliefs and assumptions covering your pure Christ-Consciousness. You had to remove the dust on your feet and the clutter on your mind before you were permitted to enter the sanctuary. So you descend from the cluttered mind into the heart, the sanctuary of Presence.

 

Your breath is a well, a portal into the depths of the earth. As you exhale, descend to the subterranean darkness. The nadir of prayer is the trough between heartbeats, the furrow between outbreath and inbreath. Thus the scripture asks:  "What does it mean that he ascended? It means that he first descended into the depths of the earth" (Ephesians 4:9). 

To descend into the depths of your heart is annihilation, and re-creation. Enter naked, unshod, into the potent tenderness in the ripe core of your chest. This is the space where old stars dissolve and new ones are born. It is the black hole at the center of every galaxy, the zero-point in each proton of matter. All the information of the universe concentrates in this Bindhu of Unknowing, this Cross where opposites converge in silence, this Ayin Soph of infinite possibility in a dot of nothing.

At the instant of eternity, the Big Bang happens in your heart. Where did you think it happened?

Now hear the words of the Vijnana Bhairava: "Exhalation goes out, inhalation comes in. At the stillpoint where they merge, one enters the space from which Creation comes forth and into which it is absorbed… The supreme Goddess, whose nature is to create, constantly expresses herself as outbreath and inbreath. By resting awareness in the space of the heart, between the descending and ascending breaths, one experiences Bhairava, the source of creation."

My teacher once said, "Blessed are you when you are confused, for then you descend from the mind into the heart." We easily learn to disregard the chatter of thoughts when we meditate. But can we disregard our expectations? They too are just thoughts, yet we cling to them as beliefs about the future. Through expectation and belief, we attempt to mold a timeline, etch it in stone, replacing cosmic intelligence with the neat little blueprint of our mind. We may even think, "I am manifesting my intentions." But we are actually spoiling the innocence of the heart, wasting the opportunity to be touched and guided by Grace.

Inscribed over the gateway where Dante began his journey of descent, and ascent, were the words, “Give up all hope, ye who enter here.” Though this has been misunderstood as a curse, it was truly a positive sign. For only when we abandon expectation, relinquish the future, and surrender to the Uncreated, does our mind descend into the heart. Our mind cannot possibly foresee or plan the New Creation. We must breathe the New Creation afresh with each exhalation. This is why the most wonderful things happen when we least expect them, and almost nothing planned in advance turns out to be interesting. The great artist Marc Chagall one said, “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”

What happens when you plan your life perfectly? If you’re lucky, your plans fall apart and the unexpected happens - which is when real creativity, real inspiration, blossoms. But on certain rare occasions, the event goes precisely according to your plan, and thus it is completely un-eventful. Who wants to repeat in the world what they have already done again and again in their head?

 

So abandon hope, descend into the inferno of the heart, and breathe forth the first day of a New Creation. It was precisely at the point where Dante reached the deepest pit of the abyss that his direction instantly reversed and the ascent toward paradise began. This is our experience in the descent and ascent of every breath. 

To breathe an unborn freshness through the heart is the original meaning of the word “courage.” Surrender to the terrible sweet current of beauty. There was never any future. There is only the bursting of Presence into new dimensions of an eternal hologram.

Nothing real can be expected. Reality will never emerge from a bundle of old stories, reeling out the karma of repetition. We must discover the real in a perpetual Now of awakening. This very moment is the soft-petaled rose of the Mother's grace, a silent explosion that annihilates every name and form we ever thought or knew. In the desolation of hope, the undoing of ideology, miracles are born.

Miracles are real, but they are born and dissolve each instant. Only the eye of the heart is quick enough, alive enough, to catch them. This is how you walk barefoot into a New Earth: left step, right step, breathing out, breathing in, destruction, creation. Slowly, nostrils flared, scenting the miraculous, moving through Presence like a panther, one foot, then the other, creation, destruction, each a step from fullness to fullness. This is not a metaphor.

When you descend from the gray world of mental concepts into the rainbow energy of the heart, you literally walk into the real earth. Don't worry about how it gets fleshed out. You have already created it. The manifestation sprouted as a subtle flame on the altar of your breastbone. Now just let the elemental spirits, the angels of fire, water, wind and soil, gather their atoms around your breath, and lay down wild fecund meadows under every footstep.

Image: Heart chakra, changeyourenergy.com