HeartSouls - Essaything

We are not meant to walk here on this earth, in this plane and place, behind our intellect. We are not of this world. We came here as embodied spirits to walk behind our hearts. The heart is the traditional seat of the soul, not the mind. The heart, or HeartSoul as I like to call it, helps us navigate this place as we are meant to do. The mind is meant to function as a rudder. The Captain, our Heartsoul, is the one meant to steer our bodies through these seas. Another metaphor: the mind can twist the door handle and open it just a crack, but it is the HeartSoul that must choose the door and decide if or when to walk through it. Sometimes a door that is pushed slightly ajar by the mind, even under the direction of the HeartSoul, is never meant to be walked through. It is enough in some instances for the door to be opened enough for a peek. In contrast, when the mind/intellect/ego chooses which door to open and walk through, we find ourselves without inner stability. We are not talking about worldly/cultural stability. After all, we can see how our spiritual heroes (like Jesus, Ghandi, Mother Teresa, St. Francis, the Buddha among many, many others), lived lives that looked disastrous contrasted to the comfort that could have been theirs had they simply made choices more in line with the accepted norms of their respective times. No, the HeartSoul will steer us into waters that are often deep and brooding, stormy and seemingly dangerous. But when it steers, peace pervades, a deep sense of wonder and well-being that, when we are aware enough to sense it, infuses all Doing. The mind, on the other hand, would open doors indiscriminately and walk through them or open the doors that make mental sense at the time according to the emotions that arise in the instant. This creates the deep instability and fear upon which this culture feeds. I meditate to practice pushing the Controls back into the hands of my Captain, my HeartSoul. So no matter what my life looks like on the outside, the Peace that is an overriding characteristic of the nature of my eternal Being will be ever more present. I don’t always succeed, but I am getting better at it.    

Ourstory - Poem

Ourstory

An aural fixation
Indifferent stagnation
Bled our broken nation
Of soul(s)
With echoing headphones
We wandered alone
Walking in crowds
Yet tragically cowed
With minds disbelieving
Constricted chests heaving
But still barely breathing..

Aghast and severed
Tarred and feathered
Tired and tried
Defeated, we died

But
Awakened, alive to
Great Stillness
That thrived
When all became Broken
And we saw the Great Token
Put here for our healing,
And long lost feeling
Returned to our limbs.
And then…

With minds alive
And hearts aflame
And Gods unnamed
And peace and
Joy and beauty and
Soul-filled connection
A soulful collection
Of humanity
Reconnected
Recollected
Our Oneness
With all
Life...

We stepped out of “control”
(Which poisons the soul)
Embraced the light chaos
And loved what He gave us
Returned to the Mother
Embraced our lost brother
That Samaritan “other”

And thrived.

We.
Thrived.

So what will it be?
Are we ready?
Can we drop the noise?
Can we stop
And listen with our feet
And hear with our eyes
And taste with our skin
And feel with something other than
Our transient emotions?

Can we open the box of our experience
Blow light into it
Find the gray humor called compassion
Find that dark memory-energy that squeezes
In just the wrong places
And allow it to fly out of the cage
Where we now
Guard it and
Bless it and
Feed it?

Can the sky be our TV?
Can our child’s laughter be our radio?
Can the cold wind be sacred, too?
And the splinter?
And the broken car?

Can we walk animated with our Eternal I’s
Letting them tell us what we need
Rather than the politician
The marketer
The songstress?

I know we are here
To hear
All the way
To Here.

We can do this.

--Eric Marley
June 2014