The Path of the Heart

The Path of the Heart

By Gita Saraydarian


Before I went off to college in 1981, I went to my father’s study to say goodbye. He stood up, gave me a hug, and then took a book off his shelf and gave it to me. The book was “Heart”, published by the Agni Yoga Society, and in it was inscribed his name and the date1947. I took that book everywhere as I traveled and lived in different places all over the world. It is still on my desk today and it is one of the most moving books that I have ever read. Whenever I need a lift, I read a passage from this book. The first paragraph especially is deep and inspiring. I would like to share my thoughts about a part of it.

“To behold with the eyes of the heart; to listen with the ears of the heart to the roar of the world; to peer into the future with the comprehension of the heart; to remember the cumulations of the past through the heart; thus must one impetuously advance upon the path of ascent. Creativeness encompasses the fiery potentiality, and is impregnated with the sacred fire of the heart. … How can the manifested rays be radiated if the flame is not affirmed in the heart? It is precisely the quality of the magnet that is inherent in the heart. The highest creativeness is imbued with this great law. Hence, each consummation, each union, each great cosmic unification is achieved through the flame of the heart. By what means can the foundation of the great steps be laid? Verily, only through the heart. Thus the arcs of consciousness are fused by the flame of the heart.
(Excerpted from Agni Yoga Society, Heart, paragraph 1)

People are afraid to live by listening to their hearts. We often equate our heart feelings to be silly, romantic, illogical, and sentimental. We do not really listen to our heart because we do not understand it. It takes a lot of maturity and spiritual understanding to know how the heart operates and to learn to trust it and its voice.

Our heart is the strongest instrument that we have inside of us. Our heart does not even belong to us; it is a gift given to us by the Universe so that we have an instrument by which we can contact every living being in the Universe.

This Agni Yoga teaching is a blueprint for the way to live and respond to people from the depth of our hearts.

What does it mean to relate to the world with our heart? It means

We have holistic understanding of life.
We have forgiveness for others and ourselves.
We are not judgmental and critical. We clear up the lines of communication.
We are a loving parent, a nurturing mentor, a good teacher, a good friend.
We see the human frailties in ourselves and in others; we are not blind.
We see the human potential and we can wait for them to bloom; we are patient.
We are not identified by the world’s values or the values of others; we have deep principles that we live by.

How does this come about?

First, by developing the ability “To Behold with the eyes of the Heart”

How do I see the world around me? What part of my being do I use to see? When I look at a family member, a friend, a stranger, someone of different color or culture or social class, what do I see? How do I distinguish the person from myself? Do I separate or do I see myself in the other, or the other in myself?

When we love someone, we see with different eyes. As soon as we fall OUT of love, what happens? All the stuff that was so cute and wonderful is now an irritant, a big deal. Instead, we can keep the eyes of the lover, see the beloved in the other, and let the heart condition how you see.

This is easy with people we love and like. But can we do this with those who have wronged us? When we are wronged, can we use the eyes of the heart? If we can do this, we will be able to see immediately the bigger picture and the causes of what truly happened.

Second, by developing the ability “To listen with the ears of the heart to the roar of the world”

When I hear something being said to me, what do I really hear? With what part of my body do I listen? Do I listen with my hurt, my subconscious recordings, my yearnings and expectations? Do I listen with fairness, with neutrality? Do I listen to hear what I want to hear or what is being said? How often do we not hear what is really being said?

In this sentence, we connect the ears with the heart. What we hear is not always accurate. There is much that is said around us that has many levels of meaning. Sometimes people say nice things but they mean really bad. Sometimes a hurtful word is said carelessly, unknowingly. Sometimes a person hides behind the words and really does not say what he means. So, when we connect our ears with our hearts, what happens? We start to listen to motive, coloration, tone, timing, purpose, and choice of words. More than 80% of what we say is heard and understood not based on the words we say but by what we really mean. We sometimes think others are fooled by our words. Or, people may think that we did not really understand their meaning and they fooled us. In reality, we are never fooled once we get in touch with our hearts. We will hear exactly what is being said, what is being implied, what the motives are. In addition, when our ears and our hearts are connected, we will be understanding and take the right actions. We will learn the art of truthful communication.

The world is roaring around us: Television, newspapers, cell phones, internet; gossip, ugliness, wars, droughts, dangers, disease and death; all kinds of roars are occurring around us every minute.

There is the roar of audible noise; there is also the roar of emotional accumulations in the emotional world that we feel and hear; there are the roars of mental thoughtforms; there is the roar of your soul and of the Teachings of Great Ones; and there is the roar of your striving, your fears, your hurts, your wonders.

What are the roars of your life? Do you have so many physical roars around you that you cannot hear anything else? Do you have emotional roars? What about mental roars? Cultural roars? Fear roars? What are the roars that we humans operate under day in and day out?

So, can we respond to all these roars with our hearts? Can we connect our ears and our hearts and then listen? What happens when we listen, truly listen, with our hearts?

Listening is an art form. We do not know how to listen. We listen usually with our own prejudices and expectations. We swallow what we think we heard.

Listening with the ears of our hearts means to be fully conscious of what is being said, what is not being said, and is implied. It means to be able to hear everything and still be of kind heart and understanding. When I listen with my heart, I say, “It’s OK, he does not know what he is really saying.” Or, I say, “Let me listen carefully, let me not react, let me see where this person is coming from, what he is really saying.” Or, I will say, “This person is saying nice things, but I feel like he is not saying all there is to say. What is being left out? Why is it being left out? What do I understand from this? Let me wait and see what happens.” So, my heart makes me slow down, listen, give the other a chance, and let life work itself out for me. I do not need to immediately jump and react to everything.

Third, to be able “To peer into the future with the comprehension of the heart”

If we can do this, it means we have achieved a level of spiritual maturity. The future is tomorrow, next year, next life. It is everything that is ahead of us, from the next moment on.

What does it mean to develop the capacity to look into the future with the comprehension, the understanding of the heart?

The heart is holistic. It is not divisive. It knows. If we can see what the future results of our actions will be, we will be better guided to what we should do today. The heart knows; it is connected to the universe and it understands the great laws that operate in the universe.

Just think for a minute, how will your life change if you can see into tomorrow and judge it with your heart? Immediately the criticism will stop, the fear will stop, the judgment will stop, the unhealthy living will stop. This means that we will graduate from simple action and reaction to a more complex living based on the law of cause and effect. When we can truly live, daily understanding the effects that are generated from every action that we take, it means we are able to peer into the future with the comprehension of the heart. The heart will immediately know when you are doing something and what kind of results it will have in the future.

As we use the heart to comprehend the future, we are guaranteed not to repeat the mistakes that we have done in the past.

People who take substance abuse recovery seriously are religious about how they treat themselves and others. They have learned the causes and effects. They have taken inventory of their life, their relations, their finances, and their health. They decided to come clean, sober up, and go through the 12-step program. What is this program? It is a way to look at cause and effect and to use the heart: forgive, ask for forgiveness, understand your humanity, and go on with life.

Fourth, to be able to “To remember the cumulations of the past through the heart”

One of the trickiest parts of our being is how we remember things. Have you found yourself telling a story of what happened to you and you are really embellishing on the events a little bit? We rarely remember everything exactly as it happened; we exaggerate, we forget, we add things that will bring us into a better light. We either exaggerate on how great it was, or how bad it was. We mix into our memory of the past all of our expectations, misunderstandings, feelings, motives, and our level of maturity on which the events were recorded at that time. We forget that we are only seeing one part and even then, in a limited way.

Why is it important to remember the past through our heart? Because we do not want to record into our mechanism the false, the mixed up, the not true. We do not want to make ourselves the victim and identify with it. What happens when we believe we are the victims? We act like victims. We speak as a victim. We do everything as if someone owes us something and we are poor and pitiful. When we are victimizing ourselves, we cannot go beyond the event. We never grow, we never get over it but instead, we do grow in creative ways of self-deception.

Conversely, if we think of an event and remember it only as a perfectly positive event and do not really see all the complexities in it, we also record a false impression of the event.

So, the heart is truthful; it does not lie; it does not exaggerate, it does not manufacture. It does not want attention; it wants the truth, without condemnation. What good are experiences if we condemn all of them and not learn from them?

What a gift we can give ourselves to use our hearts with which to see, to hear, to see the past and to see the future. What a perfect tool to use to find out who we really are and where we are going.

Creative living to me means to find fresh ways of expressing ourselves in life, based on the truth of what we see. As we sharpen the senses of our hearts and learn to trust our heart, our life will take on a new level of creativity and joy. With our hearts, we can remake ourselves and re-create ourselves into the real person we want to be.

Gita
August 6, 2007