Learn to Meditate - The Spiritual Heart

Part 5 – Meditation and the Spiritual Heart

The ever-mounting flame Of my heart’s aspiration-cry Is the source of my life’s Ever-increasing joy and delight.

Happiness is love bubbling forth into the newness and fullness of true life. When we have a happy heart, we move forward. We dive deep within. We fly. Progress is in movement, And this movement comes only when we have joy and we become joy. When we are happy, we are making real progress.

- Sri Chinmoy

Visualisation Exercise

“The Heart-rose.  Kindly imagine a flower inside your heart. Suppose you prefer a rose. Imagine that the rose is not fully blossomed; it is still a bud. After you have meditated for two or three minutes, please try to imagine that petal by petal the flower is blossoming. See and feel the flower blossoming petal by petal inside your heart. Then, after five minutes, try to feel that there is no heart at all; there is only a flower inside you called ‘heart’. You do not have a heart, but only a flower. The flower has become your heart or your heart has become a flower.

After seven or eight minutes, please feel that this flower–heart has covered your whole body. Your body is no longer here; from your head to your feet you can feel the fragrance of the rose. If you look at your feet, immediately you experience the fragrance of the rose. If you look at your knee, you experience the fragrance of the rose. If you look at your hand, you experience the fragrance of the rose. Everywhere the beauty, fragrance and purity of the rose have permeated your entire body."

“Just as you can concentrate on the tip of your finger, or on a candle or any other material object, you can also concentrate on your heart. You may close your eyes or look at a wall, but all the time you are thinking of your heart as a dear friend. When this thinking becomes most intense, when it absorbs your entire attention, then you have gone beyond ordinary thinking and entered into concentration. You cannot look physically at your spiritual heart, but you can focus all your attention on it. Then gradually the power of your concentration enters into the heart and takes you completely out of the realm of the mind.”

“To reach the spiritual heart you have to feel that you do not have a mind, you do not have arms, you do not have legs, you have only the heart. Then you have to feel you do not have the heart, but that you are the heart. When you can feel that you are the heart and nothing else, then easily you will be able to reach your spiritual heart during your meditation.”             

 Extracts from Meditation by Sri Chinmoy

Key points of exercise

• Visualise the flower clearly at the beginning.
• Bring the flower into your Heart Centre; identify with it so you do not feel any separation from it.

Purpose of this exercise

• To find your spiritual heart centre.
• To start the gradual process of opening your spiritual heart centre

Aspiration and Enthusiasm

Two indispensible requirements for progress.

• Aspiration, in the context of meditation, refers to man’s thirst to know and realise the Highest Truth. Aspiration may be likened to a tiny flame that needs constant protection to prevent it being blown out by the winds of doubt, frustration, lethargy etc. Deep meditations and direct experiences of inner peace and tranquillity stoke the flame of aspiration. When the aspiration flame is strong we move swiftly on our spiritual journey.
• Inspiration also plays a key role in fuelling our aspiration. Reading spiritual books and keeping company with other spiritual seekers, especially those who practised for many years will inspires us. If we have a meditation teacher this is a source of great inspiration.

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