The Heart is as Bright as the Sun

In the turbulence of catastrophic climate forces, of opposing armed ambitions or conflicting ideologies, and in the swirling undercurrents of the outgoing retrogressive tide, where is the point through which strength comes to guide and empower our way through? The awakening heart knows. The mind can assess facts and strategize, and can as easily become the instrument of baser instincts as of spiritual impression – and sometimes a cloudy mixture of both lesser and greater impulses can glamourize a precariously false path. But the pure in heart know the way.

These are the ones who seek only to serve the Life we share in all its manifest forms. They want no more for their individual selves than what might equally be shared wherever there is real need. They are guided by a greater Heart and Mind than just the individualised fragments they embody. When a true heart guides a refined mind then a world of beauty and divine order emerges – just as intended by the One in Whom we live and move and have our being.

The passing civilisation has developed the wonderful instrument of the mind and has used it to create the astonishing inventions in which a global culture is beginning to express. And as consciousness expands with it, so the heart also opens us up to what is divinely possible and intended. The mighty forces of our global climate remind us that a greater power, a greater Life, is ultimately directing events.

Our human attempts to usurp this power can bring even greater destruction, pain and suffering such as we see played out in areas of over-exploitation and conflict. But we are approaching a point when we realise that cooperating within the Life of the great Being expressing through our world, can vivify the heart and that brings us into joy, a deeper belonging, expanded understanding and the power of realisation. Rather than “dictating terms” from an individualised perspective, many are now beginning to hear the inner divine Self which will guide us home, safely through the lines of force and into our true being. As the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, conveyed:

As my prayers became more attentive and inward I had less
and less to say.
I finally became completely silent. I started to listen—which
is even further removed from speaking.
I first thought that prayer entailed speaking.
I then learnt that prayer is hearing, not merely being
silent. That is how it is. To pray does not mean to listen to
oneself speaking.
Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent,
and waiting until God is heard.”Soren Kierkegaard

In that point of attentive silence, divine power may be sensed. We become a centre of its radiance on our own scale. On a greater scale, tropical storms, such as Typhoon Mangkhut and Hurricane Florence, are a whirling of forces around a still point at the centre, the eye or heart of the system. They are generated by rising ocean heat and the Earth’s eastward rotation, “two great lines of force”, yet at the centre is a still and silent point of identity moving through time and space. Similarly, the heart of our solar system is our Sun which radiates life-giving power yet also generates the heat that can destroy. As tiny reflections of this great Principle, we too radiate life through our environment and the heart moderates according to need. The Agni yoga writings explain:

Just as the sun is the heart of the system, the human heart is the sun of the organism. There are many sun-hearts, and the Universe represents a system of hearts; that is why the cult of Light is the cult of the heart. To understand this abstractly means to leave the heart out in the cold; but as soon as the Light of the sun-heart comes alive, the need for the magnet’s warmth will make it shine forth like a true sun. It has been said: ‘Let your heart lead you in crossing Santana.’ That is how you can make the concept of the heart resistant to the cold. You can look upon the rhythm of the heart as the rhythm of life. The Teaching about the Heart is as bright as the sun, and the warmth of the heart speeds as swiftly as a sunbeam. Everyone has felt astonishment at how a ray of the rising sun can instantly insulate everything from the cold. The heart can do the very same thing!
I am speaking of the warmth of the heart now that it is especially necessary. A thought surging forth in aspiration sets space on fire, while the warmth of the heart is a constant hearth. Courage dwells in the warmth of the heart—remember this! The manifestation of the dark forces acts like frost on a sown field. Only the heart’s warmth provides a radiant shield. But just as we conduct tests on light waves with delicate care, we should approach the heart with caution and solicitude.” Heart 62

Something new is being brought to birth in the warmth of the human heart and impulsed into being through the pressure of great forces. They stir the heart to life – like a newborn awakening to the wider world outside the womb. If we look back over our own lives, over the history of our human kingdom or the life of our world, we might see how moments of great challenge and catastrophe, though devastating to endure yet drew forth, or brought to birth, new capacities, strengths and realisations.

Viewed in this way, living is a constant birthing process wherein the rhythmic pattern of pain, relief and expansion can bring a new and deeper sense of identity and being. Perhaps all our lives are participating in a great birthing of a new human Presence, refined through tests and trials into a realisation of ourselves as souls, the same essence as all souls within the plane of Soul in our planetary system, and so receptive and radiating the purpose of our Planetary Being through our own place within that Great Life.

Thus can our living bring the joy and achievement of new Being into the world. We seem to have been designed for this – in our inherent human nature – to strive to be born into something greater, to seek the eternal joy beyond momentary hardship or happiness. Perhaps this is the discipline of living a human life. The Tibetan Master indicated this:

Have you ever thought, my brother, that just as there is a discipline of pain and of sorrow, there may also be a discipline of joy and of achievement? This is a thought worthy of attention. Men need these days to learn this new truth, and its perception will greatly change human consciousness. That which is bliss is today here or on its way, and the disciples and aspirants of this present time must be taught how to recognise and implement it.” Discipleship in the New Age. Vol. II, page 671

So many human hearts around the world are now implementing this new sense of life by nurturing it in all its forms, even as the old civilisation tries more desperately to maintain its stand. We have learned much from our past experience, we are surely wiser for it and can recognise its limitations. Now we are shifting into a completely new gear – from exploitation of form to nurturing the life within. At this point we enter Life-sharing. Merle Stubbs explained:

Life-sharing is much more than personal sharing and also more than soul sharing. It is only possible if we can glimpse the vision and then let go of our partial recognitions, ideals or formulations which may have been good and useful in the past, so that life itself may flow and flow abundantly. May we as disciples be involved at this time in a lesser work than cooperation with the Christ’s true mission: that we might have life more abundantly?” Journey of a Lifetime, Chapter Eight, page 90

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