Jack Kornfield's A Path With Heart has been on my reading list for some time. I'm finally getting around to reading it. I've given this book to loved ones, referred it out to clients, but now as I read it myself it means hiking up from the valley of my own avoidance. I call it a valley rather than a trap because we are never trapped. The experience of traveling as both human and spirit in this world is to cover a motley terrain of our proverbial peaks and valleys. Often we spiral back to where we've been with new tools and information so we may map a new direction. This book is presently my trailguide!
Kornfield discusses why its essential to move from our heart and what is needed to do so. We often think we're going to cease a pattern, by simply going cold turkey. We're going to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop sugar, stop interacting with a bad relationship, whatever it is not serving us, we're simply going to stop, put on our gameface and battle it. Yet the real battle is within. Our wars are so embodied and embedded into our way of life that "we have changed the name of the War Dept to the Defense Dept and call a whole class of nuclear missiles Peace Keepers!" We have dismembered ourselves due to our own internal battle..talk about repetitive stress injury!
Being present means sitting, emotionally more than physically, with our treasure trove of scars, traumas, patterns and all the icky-poo-poo which is the amalgam of our 'stuff'. The constant projection onto all the people, jobs, objects that are not working for us, becomes the scenery of our lives instead of sifting through what is fueling our struggles with them.
Meditation feels so uncomfortable when we begin to practice. We have to physically be still, leading to restlessness of mind, leading to thoughts, memories, emotions, leading to processing it. At which we can only stand about 10minutes of and become defeated, unfold and distract ourselves with something else. Yet when we go deeper we get to experience everything and when we experience everything, it is the true experience of being in our heart. We encounter polarities all the time…light/dark, north/south, Like/Unlike, mean MUNI driver/cute guy on the bus, sadness/happiness,…the law of polarity is never going to change in this dimension. Therefore the sooner we learn to embrace it, the less struggle we have. This is life as a whole. Kornfield explains this embrace as 'wise understanding'. Because when we begin to embrace, we being to understand. This understanding leads to the higher states of empathy and compassion coming from our heart. As this happens, we release the struggle within. That defiant wall around our heart begins to fall and we are cradled in peace.
When we have a peak in consciousness we begin to ask, "What is my purpose?" As the egoic walls fall away, all of sudden there is more space for our true state of being. Moving from our true state requires no effort, it just is. It's as natural as breathing. It's moving from the source which allows us to be in our fullest potential. We enter this world as beings with enormous potential and spend our lives in distraction from it. The potential of our being can power us in a migration through many passions and experiences in our lives. Can we allow ourselves to go there, free from the atonal orchestra of voices in our head? Only we hold the winning lottery ticket of our lives and we've got to be present to claim the prize!
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