The Dharma of following your heart

"The heart is the same as the angelic body", declares Kahn, "The world of feeling is higher than the world of thought. ...if there is anything by which we feel ourselves, or we know ourselves and what we are, it is the heart and what it contains. And once a person understands the nature, the character and the mystery of the heart, he understands, so to speak, the language of the whole universe." (The Mysticism etc. p252)

This is a lovely summary, which says simply that in order for us to return along this arduous and yet effortless route back to rapture, awe, gratitude, bliss, harmony, ecstasy, or what have you, it is only necessary for us to find, and be, and live, and love ourselves more completely than we ever have before. That is all.

I am not suggesting nor promising that by following our hearts we will attain anything more than our true selves. But what is more important than that?^{^[20]}

From the point of becoming our true selves we begin to live neither apart, nor in conflict with, nor in servitude to God, the Spirit, Reality, or whatever you choose to call it. From that point on we attain to a symbiotic relationship with the true life, and from that symbiosis the fire of two separate candles are married into one great harmonious flame.

Now let us pass the torch one last time, before we proceed the next step further.

"If you want to be wise, practice growing wonder-full. Open your heart-mind to the unknowable nature of Nature, including yourself. Consider yourself happy to be a grain of sand on the cosmic beach, necessary for your part and that is all. Get comfortable with all the possibilities that can occur when you speak the truth of these three words: I don't know. Embrace the insecurity of mystery and its faithfulness also. Fall in love with the wonder of not-knowing. Fill yourself with it. Then breathe out your blessing into the world with a smiling heart."

[20] For is it not the case (if I may interject a giant leap here) that it is only the true self which may then follow the higher calling, or, the Will of God, so to speak? Is it not the case that only by following our hearts do we find out who we truly are (hence the Indian term for religion- dharma- means: your intrinsic nature), and only then can we give our complete selves over to the service of Heaven. And is it not also the case that life will occur differently for everyone, since we are individuals and not clones, and therefore it is of the absolute necessity to follow our own hearts, regardless of what anybody else says or does, for that is when we begin to lead our own true lives, and to be our own true selves, and only then do we come to have a sense of why we have come into this crazy life, and what we have come to do to honour this gift.