The Heart

Some thoughts I am having regarding the heart. This is mostly confessional.

The physical organ called the heart is central to my physical existence. But this organ is also my spiritual organ of perception. There is more going on here than beating and moving blood around. 

My entire being comes to a gathering place in the heart. 

When the heart is open with the abiding Presence of the Divine Reality, I am living from the space of who God created me to be. I am the image of God and the likeness of God living in the unity of God-with-me and every person with me and all of creation with me. I am all of this brought together in the heart of my heart. I live from this center and I perceive Reality from this center. I see things as they are, as they really are. My heart is the experiential center of my BEing. This is where I live. 

When my heart closes, a shift takes place. It is actually a cataclysmic shift. I no longer am living from my heart but I am now living out of my head. I am now living in the place of separation from Reality as this is the place where the illusions of the false ego self are formed. I begin to not only create a false reality, I justify this false reality with the constant ramblings of the mind nurturing this illusion. I create a perception of myself that I want people to embrace that is a fabrication of my own making. The tragedy of this shift is that it separates me from Reality and from those around me. I become an island seeking to be a better island than all the other islands. 

My heart closes at the point of a perceived offense. For my personality type (Enneagram 6) it is the perception of being rejected. If I feel like I am being rejected, my entire reality shifts to this illusion and I begin to live from it. Because I feel rejected, I reject as a self-protective mechanism. It is almost a reflex action that I am not aware of. It just happens. At this point the ground of my Being appears to be gone and I am falling into a self-destructive cycle of rejecting. I no longer feel safe. I feel abandoned. And I fear. My fear makes me feel unsafe. I am falling. 

What is especially tragic here is that the self-destructive cycle I enter is my fabrication! I have created this false reality that I am now falling into. I don’t feel safe and I fear that I have created this unsafe situation, making me feel all the more unsafe. 

The closing of my heart cuts off spiritual perception. I no longer see things as they are. I am seeing things through the destructive illusion I have created. In this state, if I am confronted by another closed heart living out of the illusion of the ego self, we are in trouble. Division here is inevitable. We are both living out of the head, dividing and separating reality. 

Here is the grace: If my closed heart is received by an open heart of spiritual perception in another, an open heart that sees past the illusory reality of my false self, my heart will start to open again. Rather than experiencing condemnation from this open heart, I receive acceptance of who I am in this moment. This loving acceptance from an open heart, begins to open my heart. 

Honestly, this is a very difficult thing for me to do for others. For me to keep my heart open when I perceive a threat of rejection is a work of grace. But when I do this, I am living from the greater reality of the unity that is inherent in me. And I am living into that reality that is also inherent in them. I am nurturing that unity instead of nurturing the division. 

It is the work of a pastor and the leadership of the Church to keep an open heart before the vast number of people who are part of the Church and wrestling with the death of the ego self: from those who are ignorant of its existence to those who are in the throws of letting it die. The Church is a group of people navigating this shift between an open and closed heart, from the false self to the True Self. The hard shell of the false ego self maintaining a closed heart can only be broken open by the open heart of the True God-created Self. 

This is the work of God. It is the work of God reconciling each one of us to God and reconciling each one of us to each other. 

Wretched man that I am!
Who will reduce me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord…
There is therefore no condemnation
for those who are sin Christ Jesus.
Romans 7:24. 8:1

I am crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me.
And the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God
who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galatians 2:19-20

I have a pre-existing condition: it is called unity.  This is my spiritual superpower. Before unity the false self dissolves away.