One of my favourite blogs is 'Macy Afterlife: the Beacon'. Mark Macy is a world expert in afterlife communications, and an assiduous commentator on the human condition, and posts loads of well-researched and insightful information about humanity and its current dilemmas. Inspired by teachers from both the spirit and earthly realms, and by his own experiences, Mark is deeply committed to the evolution of human consciousness, and frequently writes about the necessity of inner transformation.
In his post, 'Cleansing and Clearing the Cluttered Mind', (http://macyafterlife.com/2015/01/11/cleansing-and-clearing-the-cluttered-mind/) Mark explains why we get so caught up in those attitudes that keep us imprisoned in our fears, doubts and negativities, and cause so much suffering and conflict in the world, and how we might begin to release ourselves and see more clearly. Below is some of Mark's advice for getting back in touch with our true Centre, the sacred portal to the Divine - the heart.
Go to the Heart
When we move our awareness—our thinking process—from the head to the heart, we’ve moved to a place that is free from life’s dramas… a place where gratitude, empathy, forgiveness, love, and other noble values prevail.
The heart is the seat of the soul… and the soul is a small sub-ray of that brilliant source of living light… a piece of God. When we move the mind’s control center into the heart, we’re at a place where it becomes a more natural process to connect with God.
Granted, moving your awareness from the busy brain down to the peaceful heart might not come easily at first. After all, the mind has gotten accustomed to setting up shop in the brain, directly behind the body’s main sensory input stations (eyes, ears, nose, and mouth). The heart, by contrast, is more like an intimate park of flower gardens, rich lawns, and wooded areas. Coaxing the mind to leave the busy office for a while to set up shop in the park might be met with some resistance at first.
Tell the mind it can bring its laptop, if that helps. :-)
Or, better yet, try a simple technique. First, get comfortable somewhere, close your eyes, and locate your awareness… there, behind the eyes.
Then, once you get the sense of your thoughts happening in your head, here’s the tricky part: move them to the heart. It’s not something you can force. It might take some gentle coaxing. Try one of these techniques:
- Think of your mind as an elevator. Move your awareness to the back of the head, into the elevator, then proceed slowly down to the heart. It’s not as though you stay in the head and just think about the heart; it feels like your awareness—your thinking process—is moving down… down to the heart.
Or, another technique…
- Think of your mind floating gently on a lake of living, nourishing water. You can live and breathe in the water… so you drop anchor down to the heart, and you pull yourself… your mind… your thinking process… slowly, steadily down through the wonderful, nourishing water… into the heart.
When I first began my heart meditations, I found both of those techniques helpful. With practice it became easier and more natural to move to my heart without them. I’d just close my eyes and steer my thinking down to the chest.
Now I don’t even have to close my eyes. I can move to the heart while sitting at the computer or driving the car or standing in the checkout line.
Source: http://macyafterlife.com/2015/01/11/cleansing-and-clearing-the-cluttered-mind/
Two years ago, I might not have understood what an important post that is.
My own inward journey into the heart began well and truly last year, while I was drawing and writing about mandalas. Spiritual and sacred writings are full of references to Love and the Heart, but on the spiritual level, I had never really been able to get beyond them as principles and ideas.
Yes, I loved my fellow humans, philosophically, that is, and now and then I was stirred by deep, unexpected waves of love for strangers, but I found the talk about 'opening the heart', 'softening' the heart, heart-centred awareness and all that a bit cloying.
Why not simple compassion, an emotion based on intellectual awareness of our common humanity, and the realisation that 'there but for the grace of God go I'? Surely that was enough? ..... But no, Not for everything.
Then I began studying shamanism and drawing mandalas, and somehow, things began to shift. It soon became obvious that in every mandala, which I drew intuitively without any conscious intention on my part, the whole meaning and significance of the mandala was in the centre.
My mandalas became for me a journey into the centre of myself, my own heart, what I truly felt about the world, life and everything, and no matter how plain it appeared in a mandala, everything that I felt, and that sought expression in that mandala emerged from that centre. I don't mean visually. I mean in my direct experience of that mandala.
Even now, a year later, I look at those mandalas and am drawn back to the centre, for there is hidden the bottomless well of emotion that gives all ideas and beliefs their true significance and meaning. Though the centre may be nothing more than a big dot, a circle or a simple pattern, everything else in the mandala emerges in response to it.
Then in one particular shamanic encounter with a real life hawk, I clearly saw how heart and mind work together, not as different ways of perceiving but in synergy, as the two wings of understanding that give us the power to soar (July 2014 post, 'Everything teaches if we know how to see'.)
What I suddenly understood was why I was so easily distracted from my goals, and had such difficulties staying focused on anything ... because “my heart was not in it”.
Focusing with intellect alone is not sufficient. True focus and strong intention come from the heart, from a yearning towards, a passion for, a love of what is being sought, observed or studied.
Which brings me back to Mark, whose second step for creating inner peace is to "Forge a conscious connection to God" using this simple mantra:
"Dear God, our oneness is the cornerstone of my life."
Say it with feeling, for the journey into our own holiness (that is, whole-ness) begins, the mystics teach, with our earnest desire, our intense yearning for the Sacred.
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