It's All About Love

 Over the years I've come to realize what the heart is about. It's taken this long. Early on, when I was young, I repressed my anger because I ddn't see the point in getting angry. Often, I would get angry at being corrected or ridiculed and I knew that if I got angry, it would only make things worse. Then I would be laughed at for getting angry and not having a sense of humor.  So I didn't allow myself to get angry and I grew cold and aloof. Not that I didn't GET angry, I just didn't allow myself to SHOW it. 

When I met my teacher I thought he was just about perfect. But he was human too and didn't really know what he was doing. He was experimenting with how to get people to open up, to drop their ego (his words). I've read about other examples of this, such as the relationship between Yogananda and his teacher Yukteswar. But it was Yukteswar doing the criticising. With Stephen he thought all of his students should be doing it to each other and they didn't have the depth or the compassion. Not sure Stephen did either. I'm sure he did sometimes.

At any rate, that experiment didn't seem to yield too much success. I don't think amateur psychiatry is something to be trifled with.  Maybe a definite chain of command like they have with Zen teachers is more productive. It needs much more thought.

What doesn't need thought is what it feels like to know you are on the right track. Like I said, I used to repress my anger. But anger is just one emotion that comes from the heart. The emotions are one aspect of the heart chakra. It's an energy center. Your whole being is an energy system and your mind/intellect is what balances it. Not an easy matter.

One day I was with someone and I just blew up. I exploded emotionally. I didn't know I was capable of that, I had spent my life controlling myself. Now I was out of control. So I went right back to work at controlling myself again. I could stop myself from exploding in anger but I couldn't stop the tears. Nor could I understand them. So I thought of them in a dramatic way. Gave them huge significance.

But really, it was the heart center opening. It needed to not be dramatic, just a part of my day to day feeling of things around me. A way of loving life. Sometimes I'll hear a song that is done so beautifully that it brings tears. Or see something beautiful. There's no thought, it just happens on it's own. That is how the chakras are. There is an intelligence there, the chakras don't need mental thought. You might think about it later but they are alive and active all on their own and don't need you to think about them for them to be at play.  Once this is fully understood there will be a shift where the mind will be in service to the soul rather than the soul just being these emotion expressions of the mind.