Heal Your Heart

Just as the physical heart pumps life sustaining blood throughout the body, the spiritual heart takes love in and gives love out. When our heart is unhealthy, we are cut off from giving and receiving blessings. A hardened heart is a sickness leading to decay and death.

Learn to receive with a soft heart. "God is seated in the hearts of all," Bhagavad Gita 10:20. "Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest," Koran 13:28. "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh," Ezekiel 36:26.

***

    Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

      Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

      Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

      Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Last Night as I was sleeping, Antonio Machado, translation by Robert Bly.

The Lens of Love

"My eyes are the eyes through which God sees." -Vilyat Inayat Khan

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” -Meister Eckhart

Whether or not you believe in God, you may believe in goodness, truth, beauty, honor and other human values. Humanists and religious people share many values in common. The quotes above may appeal to humanists, since they believe that any would-be God must live and work through humanity. 

If there is a God, and God is love, and mine are the eyes through which God sees, when I see myself, I must love myself. When I look at others, I must love them.

When I look at the world through my divine eyes, I must see that the world is good: "Then God looked over all that he had made, and he saw that it was very good!" -Genesis 1:31

I had a yoga teacher who often spoke to her students about their practice as a continual effort to clear the lens of perception, to remove the fog and the dirt, so that we could see clearly. I've heard my pastor say similar things about faith. My father has also spoken to me many times of seeing others through the eyes of love, rather than judgment. The following verses from The Yoga Sutras and the Christian Bible echo these teachings as well as the opening quotes above:

Sutra 1.41 from The Yoga Sutras: Just as the naturally pure crystal assumes shapes and colors of objects placed near it, so the Yogi’s mind, with its totally weakened modifications, becomes clear and balanced and attains the state devoid of differentiation between knower, knowable and knowledge. 

1 Corinthians 13:12: For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face; now I know in part; but then I shall know even also as I am (King James translation).

For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim (blurred) reflection [of reality as in a riddle or enigma], but then [when perfection comes] we shall see in reality and face to face! Now I know in part (imperfectly), but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood [by God] (Amplified Bible translation). 

The Sanskrit word prema means Divine Love. The Sankrit word maitri and the Pali word metta mean unconditional benevolence. The Greek word for Divine Love is agape.

Would that we could see ourselves, each other and our world through a consistent lens of Prema, Maitri, Metta, Agape. 

Your yoga, your meditation, your prayer, your mindful walks, your alone time, your worship...may all of these practices focus your gaze and refine your vision, and may you always see through the lens of love. 

The Yoga in the Mirror

"Recognize that the other person is you," is the first of Yogi Bhajan's five sutras, and a founding principle of the practice of Yoga. A critical step on the path to self-realization is seeing ourselves in others and others in ourselves.

You have heard and read that Yoga means union. The state of Yoga is the realization of unity within and without, a felt understanding that we are not separate from God, from the Universe or from one another. In the Christian Bible there is a verse written by the Apostle Paul, describing the feeling of this union: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord," (Romans 8:38-39).

Yogis, Christians, and mystics from other traditions believe that love and unity are the true nature of reality. Based on this belief, when looking at others, we see our own face, and the face of God. But when we stop to look at the world, even just at our own hearts, there is so much strife and division. Our experiences of unity are fleeting--abundant evidence of separation and conflict appears to contradict Yoga.

Lofty ideals and spiritual experiences aside, how can we practice recognizing the other person as our self? In our day-to-day experience, is there a practical way to see ourselves, perhaps even God, in our human interactions?

In movement practices like dance and postural yoga there is a concept called mirroring; the student replicates the movement of the teacher and vice versa. The mirroring technique is also used in psychotherapy as a tool to enable the therapist to empathize with what the client is feeling. Infants mirror their parents and all of us subconsciously mirror one another. In our brains, we have specific neurons, called mirror neurons, that fire both when we perform a specific action and when we observe the same action being performed by someone else.

To further our physical, mental and spiritual growth, we can apply the practice of mirroring to our relationships and other experiences. Growth is rarely easy, and sometimes it hurts. Other times, it feels exhilarating. Using our relationships as a mirror, we'll experience both ends of this spectrum.

When we see something we dislike in another person, we experience a negative emotional reaction. This unpleasant feeling is a cue to look more deeply and recognize in that person an aspect of our self we need to heal in order to be whole. On the flip side, when we notice qualities we appreciate in someone else, it makes us feel good inside; we may feel attraction, admiration and affection. These feelings are also a prompt to appreciate the same qualities within us, to love within ourselves what we love in others. This is a blissful path to self-love and acceptance, experiencing the moments when we can say, "that's me! I love this because it resonates, because it's familiar." Carl Jung once said, "The meeting of personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."

Ultimately the practice of mirroring leads to greater depths of empathy and compassion. The field of neuroscience has proven that our mirror neurons play an essential part in our human ability to empathize. For those of us who feel spiritually inclined, mirroring can lead to a more personal experience of God, a fervent search, seeking Him/Her in the faces of everyone we meet, in each interaction.

On a very concrete level, we can use mirroring in our postural yoga practice, in our breath work and in meditation. When we feel an aversion or an attraction to certain postures, it's a cue to go deeper, to explore and find out which aspects of our self we need to integrate, eg. do inversions scare us or do they feel exhilarating? are we restless in deep forward bends? why might we enjoy twists or arm balances but dislike standing balancing postures? which thoughts tend to recur in meditation? Most importantly: can we accept all of this with empathy and compassion?

Try some conscious mirroring, maybe for one day, or one week. Whenever you can remember, stay tuned into your feelings as you work, as you interact, as you practice yoga, and find the reflection of yourself in all you see. Use all of your experience on the path of integration. All you see and do and feel is valuable on your journey to wholeness, to unity, to Yoga.

We are the mirror, as well as the face in it. 

We are tasting the taste this minute, of eternity. 

We are pain,

and what cures pain, both.

We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute,

so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?

I am your mirror, and here are the stones. 

-Music Master - Rumi

Image credit: Mirror Me by 60's Girl, Deviant Art