‘Assuming the support of others‘ for these last few days has unwound me substantially. I saunter to my inbox; I arrive at meetings in happy anticipation of good conversation; I am less hesitant and non-committal about decisions and communications; I am readier to speak my truth and ask for what I need, or believe to be fair; I have more confidence that any social ‘reading errors’ on my part will be met with compassion and understanding; I arrive at human interactions with less guardedness; I am able to expand outwards in a spirit of love and encouragement with greater authenticity… It’s lovely. I’m very happy. I’ve been in good spirits and high heart.
What next, dear voice of my inner being? What next would we work on and learn?
How is your heart space?
Excuse me…? My heart space… is slightly impacted, turned in… I guess. Since you ask.
You have been singing to open up your chest, and vibrate your chest. What effect has that had on your heart space?
I simply haven’t been conscious of it in that way. But I do note I have been very happy and free. Keep singing?
Keep resonating in the heart space.
Tell me more…
The heart space is the place of growth, and the unwinding of the internal helix within. This is the last bastion of ‘openness’.
Openness to what?
To love, to peace, to wellbeing, to light, to unity. Think of the open heart space as an unfurled lily, or a massive stargazing observatory with its roof wide open.
It needs softness and stillness to allow the heart space to relax into unfurling, right? This morning my beloved G (who I can hear scrubbing the bathroom next door before breakfast…) brought this profound concept of his into our conversation: “stillness as sacrament“. Beautiful. Let me remind myself of the definition of sacrament: ‘a religious ceremony… or a rite of passage that infers some blessing or grace on people who receive it.’ (Ref)
Stillness as a sacrament, or ceremony or rite that infers blessing or grace. Yes.
Can stillness open my heart space?
Try it…
[Stillness…]
Yes… When I go into that stillness, I get a strong image of that heart space opening up like an astronomical observatory roof with a lens/aperture type roof. In terms of images, the closest I can find is this amazing football stadium roof… but the underlying sense for me is of a telescope, an observing device, being revealed when the roof retracts back. Is this to say that I get a clearer view on reality when my heart space is open? Is the heart an outward-observing telescope in some way?
The heart seeks to see beyond the hurly-burly of the mind’s immediate ‘concerns’. In fact, truthfully, the heart does not believe in ‘concerns’. The heart has a much broader, all-encompassing view of things than the mind. If the heart is a telescope out to broader horizons, the mind is a magnifying glass, blowing motes of dust up into monstrous distortions.
Here is an observatory, without an aperture roof, in Tenerife…
Note how the sturdy frame acts to protect the precious telescope inside, and to create a revelatory action. Our point is that you can open the roof of the heart, to make use of its telescope, at any time.
Explain how this relates to peak experiences.
When the astronomer opens the roof to look at the night sky, she is astonished by what she sees. It takes her away from herself, and reminds her that the universe is enormous and majestic.
And yet, in that same moment she can potentially become dolefully aware of her own insignificance. However conversely, with a microscope in hand, the biologist (or some such other microscope-wielder) realises how masterful and magnificent she is next to the tiny flea under her inspection.
In this metaphor, the astronomer longs to be uplifted by the transcendence of majesty around her. Whereas the biologist you describe would inflate herself by comparing herself to a flea (and finding the flea wanting at the same time).
I get it, that it’s something to do with being able to perceive majesty and beauty…
Including perceiving the majesty and beauty in the flea! If the flea under the microscope can give you as much a sense of wonder as the night sky through a telescope gives you, then you’re away. The notion at hand here is that the heart-centred state seeks to bear witness to beauty, which is abundant and eternal. The mind-centred state seeks to bear witness to self, which is time-bound and a construct of the mind itself – a very useful construct in human society and for paying the bills and attending to one’s responsibilities, it might be added! But it is the everyday. The more we learn to cross back and forth, seamlessly from the everyday to the eternal, the more access we have to peak experiences.
And stillness gets us into the heart-centred state. Stillness is enough to allow the protective aperture of the heart space to unfurl and to let the powerful, witnessing observing eye to rove about.
And this telescopic eye can focus on the eternal, on beauty.
We’ve spoken about this plenty now. This exercise is for practising:
How much, in coming hours and days, can you enter stillness as sacrament long enough to allow the heart space to open up, and the heart to gaze out?
I am practising stillness as sacrament (to let the heart space open up and the heart gaze out)
With my thanks to G for the beautiful phrase ‘stillness as sacrament’