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The secret rhythm of the universe is the rhythm of love, which moves the stars and the planets.
Love is the source, center, and destiny of experience.”
Dante Anam Cara: A Celtic book of Wisdom
by John O’donohue
Namaste Friends,
Geez. Full moon for sure! Lots going on these days. We came home from our yoga retreat in Spain to find our country in another government shut down.
Whenever our leadership is in disharmony it shakes the timbers of the whole establishment. As Abe Lincoln so eloquently stated a couple hundred years ago, “A house divided, can not stand”.
The ripple effect moves quickly, not just economically but also psychologically.
People get fearful and scared; they become irritable and anxious, and act from a place of scarcity and lack rather than from a place of generosity and servitude.
Our Spain retreat had a theme called “ The 8 Paths to the Heart”. We wanted to offer our attendees some inroads to their true Selves, or to their spiritual heart, called the Hridyam in Sanskrit. Our spiritual heart is different than our emotional heart or our physical heart. This “heart” is our eternal spirit that has always been and will always be long after we leave our bodies; it connects us to everything in creation, and is the divine intelligence or God-head energy that we all have. It is this “inner sun” that holds all the guidance and wisdom we need in order to access the infinite joy and bliss of our existence.
The yogis call it the “unnameable” because words can’t really describe its essence. Its energy, consciousness, and power are beyond our basic human comprehension. If we are to understand it, we must merge with it. We must trust that there is something greater than our little human ego selves moving through us, and for us. And even harder than trusting this unknown, unseen omnipotent essence, we must train our often times belligerent egos that feed on fear and doubt to be in service to our High Self
During the retreat each day we unpacked one the “paths to the heart” as a way for each of us to potentially access this higher realms of our consciousness. The idea being if we can center ourselves in our spiritual heart, then we can better navigate the difficulties we encounter in our daily life, and ultimately transcend the polarities that we encounter in our human experience.
The 8 paths were as follows:
- Belonging & Connection
- Creativity & Passion
- Confidence & Discipline
- Gratitude & Generosity
- Truth & Honor
- Trust & Faith
- Seek & Surrender
- Love & Devotion
Each of these paths relate to the chakras with the last one being the ultimate state of consciousness. As an example, for some of us the way to the heart is through connection and belonging. If we feel seen, heard, appreciated, and that we serve a purpose within a community, we can more comfortably relax into the more unknown realms of our existence knowing we have the safety net of your tribe to fall back on if needed, or for support to explore deeper parts of yourself. And even better, if we can explore with other like-minded seekers of the path and we don’t have to go it alone, its way more exciting and way less intimidating. But when we feel isolated, separate and alone-we are scared to do anything, let alone explore the portal into Universal consciousness.
Each of these paths has a different, but related approach to the spiritual heart, or what many philosophers have coined as the path to Self-Realization. These paths are not from the Vedas, these are my own ideas or pathways, but the yogic teachings do have an 8 limb path that offers guidance to the spiritual heart as well. They are found in the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali. This is my twist on spiritual path.
I wish I could discuss each of them here, but I already am longwinded when it comes to these monthly writings, so I will just sum them up to say when we choose to walk the spiritual path, we come to realize that we are so much more than what we see in our human form; that we are actually the entire Universe in a single focal point trying to realize itself from our own unique incarnation, and upon this realization we become profoundly and deeply contented and peaceful. We step into the deepest hue of Love. That is self-realization or enlightenment.
I love this quote from Carl Sagan:
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
Or this one from Thich Nhat Hahn,
“Enlightenment, for a wave in the ocean, is the moment the wave realizes it is water. When we realize we are not separate, but a part of the huge ocean of everything, we become enlightened. We realize this through practice, and we remain awake and aware of this through more practice.”
That last part of his quote is key. We achieve self-realization, enlightenment, samadhi, nirvana… through our spiritual practices-and we must be disciplined and devoted to these practices if we want to transcend the fear-based programming we have inherited throughout the centuries and centuries of control mongering, manipulation of power, the thirst for greed and dominion, all the things we see still happening in our modern day society.
Until we learn to attune to our own inner authority, we will forever be the victims of human suffering. And your inner authority is the same supreme consciousness that constitutes my inner authority. We are all waves in one ocean. We are unique individuals, but we are not separate from one another. Spirit connects us all.
So to hate or despise your fellow man is like pouring poison into your drinking water. Our avarice, greed, and hate is what is killing us. Yet we continue to do it.
We can point our fingers at the politicians, the religious organizations, or the social infrastructures that perpetuate the hatred, and most certainly we have been in war on this planet everyday for 5000 years largely due to these factions of society, but change has to start within ourselves too. We need to work on our own individual internal disturbances as well. We need to be right with our own spiritual heart.
Our retreat group was comprised of an exceptional group of individuals. Everyone “took to heart” the task of looking deeply within themselves to see if they could dismantle some of the blocks they have either consciously or unconsciously put up against having access to their wise, loving inner elder. We shared, laughed, cried, and helped each other feel our inner suns glowing bright. We did our spiritual heart practices with morning disciplines of meditation, mantra, and yoga asana. We journaled and asked hard questions of ourselves-called svadhyaya in Sanskrit. And we also played hard too-lots of amazing meals, swimming in the ocean, dancing on a catamaran, paella cooking classes, walking through the ancient towns of Spain, shopping, hiking, and laughing out loud.
We don’t have to be the monk on the mountain to know our true selves, but we do need to use discipline and balance our desires by surrendering and trusting the wisdom and guidance of our spiritual heart. If we can learn to reroute our fear and loathing of ourselves into trust and loving ourselves, we will know peace.
Michael and I took a few extra days after the retreat in Ireland to see some of the ancient megalithic stone circles there. We spend our “vacation” time studying these ancient stones. We sit with our backs up against them or hug them like a dear friend and try to get the cosmic downloads from the beings who put them there in the first place. Some of these stones are weigh 5 tons and they are standing on point 50 plus of them in a perfect circle with exact coordinates to the equinoxes and the solstices. They are said to be 6000 years old. Whoever was working with these sites were attuning to the sun and the moon and the Universe. They knew the power of the cosmos and aligned to it. We have vastly lost touch with this sort of focused consciousness-and in losing touch with these teachings of the cosmic kind, we have lost touch with ourselves.
While in Ireland, I was reminded of a Gaelic word- Anam Cara-it means a soul friend. Sometimes it can be a romantic friendship, but moreover it is finding another person to share your spiritual questions, ideas, musings, and discoveries with…these friendships help us to discover our own beautiful, divine loving hearts and bring them to the surface to shine like a beacon for others to find their own light. These soulful connections are essential to our return to the natural order or cosmic rhythm of life-to return to a time where we follow the wisdom of our spiritual heart, our own wise loving inner elder.
Remember the first path of our 8 paths to the Heart, is finding connection and community of like minded people. Seek out people who are searching for the ways of spirit, and the spiritual heart. The community at Karma is robust with loving seekers. At a time when our governments are arguing, and the world is raging with war and dissonance, it seems like a good time to turn to our spiritual hearts and find our fellow anam cara travelers. We have some big stones to turn upright and stand on point once again. We just need to follow our inner sun.
I will leave you with a quote from John O’Donohue, he was an Irish poet and author of several books, including a very beautiful piece called, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom of which this is from:
“In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control.
The more love you give away, the more love you will have. One remembers here Dante’s notion that the secret rhythm of the universe is the rhythm of love, which moves the stars and the planets. Love is the source, center, and destiny of experience.”
Stay in your hearts,
Much love,
Katrina
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