From Head to Heart

Any form of meditation that only has the mind as foundation can only lead to dead ends, stale states of indifference that bypass the "sweet, spacious and loving serenity" underlying the chaos where we live. Only a proper approach joining mind and body in the solar plexus and heart can really boost spiritual transformation. As an old spiritual proverb says, the longest journey a man must take is the eighteen inches from his head to his heart.

This motion from the head to the heart and plexus must start as the constant act of inhabiting the body, letting go of thoughts and emotions, of releasing tensions or at least allowing them to be in space, until they dissolve naturally. 

Wisdom that seems to be suggested in a passage of the New Testament: ...have the same mindset as Jesus Christ; who in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of the servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he emptied himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Philippians 2, 5-8). 

When this act of "letting go" and "openness" takes place, we are aware naturally and the "magnetic centre" of heart-plexus reconciles mind and body, connecting us to a deeper level of feeling.

Even though this attentional type of meditation is not deep contemplation, it can lay the foundation for moments of deep insight, in which one is simply taken, effortlessly.

This is without doubt the best way of starting the day, sitting to enjoy the miracle of spacing in the loving heart, rather than sitting to suffer and struggle against thoughts.

Those interested in this subject will surely find interesting the following talks by the teacher Cynthia Bourgeault, even though it´s just a very basic level: