Recently I returned from a longer trip in South Asia. I wanted it to be a research into sacred sites of peace and power, and their influence on the consciousness and meditation. My intention was also to learn about myself and to get knowledge and wisdom I previously did not have. Spiritually, I found the trip very good, giving me lots of new understanding, situations to learn from, and breakthroughs into my inner work. However, it is beyond the scope of this article to write about what happened. I will only focus on one aspect of it – the role of the heart in that recent journey.

Many of us heard statements such as, ‘Listen to your heart’, or ‘It is important to connect to your heart’, and the like. For a while I didn’t properly understand these sayings, even though I was aware of intuitive hunches having its source in the heart area. It was only later in life, as I continued pursuing the inner work, and later on doing long travels, that I learned what that really means.

Ancient spiritual traditions have said that the heart is the temple of the Divine within us. It is the place where we feel the energy of love. The latter may not be bound to heart only, but it is the source where we feel it, and later, if sufficiently developed, it radiates outwards. The heart is multi-layered, which means that there are different aspects of it in various dimensions. Physical heart is the material aspect, or counterpart, of the heart center. However, this heart center is also present in higher levels. For example, it also exists as a heart center on the astral body, as well as other higher bodies too. In that case, people know it as the heart chakra.

People establish connection with their hearts as they start looking inwardly, and that connection has more than one level. Some have it naturally, as if they somehow inherited it. In majority of cases it comes with inner purification (of our defects such as anger, lust, pride, etc.) and with strengthening consciousness, which seems to be very much related to the heart center. By doing these things, the person would spontaneously start feeling the heart more.

Feeling the heart more means that we start feeling love more. Gradually, as our senses get transformed by inner purification and we start noticing the beauty around us, we establish a tangible connection with our hearts. We may notice this in different ways, but perhaps the most common may be to feel in our hearts that which we see outside of ourselves. For example, we may sit on the beach and observe the sea and the sky, and as we do it, we start feeling the sea and the sky within us. At that moment we understand that it is love within our hearts that is connecting us to that sea and sky, and everything else that surround us in that moment.

By developing the heart in that way, intuition surfaces from its depths, from where it slept for so long. We come to understand that love and intuition are one sole thing, or very interrelated. It is a strong feeling, which through the energy of love is telling us what would be the best course of action to take. The more we progress on the path to awakening, the stronger that voice becomes. Sometimes it will tell us things we don’t really want to follow, but deep down we fully grasp that spiritually it is in our own best interest to do so.

During my recent travel in India I was presented with many situations where that voice found its way through. Situations where, would it not be for that voice manifesting itself through the energy of love, I could have gotten annoyed to the point of taking action that would harm both myself and others. Instead, I did listen to it, allowing to be encompassed by that energy of warmth and guidance, and as a result I felt the situation and everyone involved within my heart. It was connecting me to my surroundings and other beings in it, providing me not only with direction, but also with the sense of calm and compassion.

“Connecting to ones own heart.” Such a simple statement, yet with so much meaning.

H.D.P, April 2017.