Welcome to Heartcentre - The Way of Love

THE JOURNEY OF LIFE ~ Our Friend in Spirit

The theme for today is the journey of life. On the one hand, the journey is simply an unfolding within the One, so there is no beginning and end. However, in order to understand the journey of life, we talk in concepts and metaphors, and many of those are very linear so you need to excuse the linear metaphors but it is all we have with words, otherwise I would really be talking in circles and that wouldn't make much sense.
The metaphor which has already been brought into the circle is that of a river. It is an excellent one because in many rivers the initial movement of the river is in response to the radiance of the sun, the melting of the snow. The season of winter dissolving and initiating that first drop – if ever you could find the first moment of time. It is not possible in a geographical sense, nor is it in the mystical sense, but we will just explore the images and excuse the inaccuracies.
Let's follow the course of a river and find as many lessons and parallels with the natural human experience as there are with the natural flow of the water. The more intense the responsiveness of the snow to the warmth, the more steady the flow of the river. That becomes a yardstick within yourself. How responsive are you to the warmth, the love of Spirit, to the guidance of Spirit? These are important questions to contemplate on in your reflective moments because they will always elicit some inspiration for you, some direction for you in your daily life.
So the river flows on – it takes its various turns, and very often it is at a turning point that it accumulates debris that reshapes the river. That turning point is in response either to an obstruction or a perceived obstruction. There may be a boulder in this river that causes the course of this river to change. The instinctive human response is to declare a protest at the presence of this obstruction because of the pain this is often incurred when you come up against the hardness and the immovability of some events, situations in your lives.

WHY HEARTS BREAK

Sometimes the boulder needs to be so hard because that is the only way that your heart would break. Sometimes hearts can just be eased open in response to the radiance or the love you experience in life and sometimes hearts need to be broken open as a way of revealing the true matter of your spirit. The true matter of your Spirit is a core of love.
Although when you experience yourself as up against that boulder, when you open and ease your way around it, that opening allows a flow again. You will, believe it or not, experience a profound gratitude because somewhere deep in your being you know that nothing less than this would awaken your heart at this deep level. You know that you could have just scurried your way through, superficially, if it had not been for this particular life event.
They are very humbling moments when you see your heart unveiled, where you see yourself or the truth unveiled in that way. That very process of unveiling accelerates the awakening and allows you to proceed through the journey with more grace. Once you have had one experience like that, it then alerts you to the possibility of there being further life experience which may be clad in a very painful or apparently unwanted, unacceptable form, but you know that if you allow the deepening that it invites, it will be a blessing for you. Because any life experience which deepens your love, your compassion, your understanding is a blessing for you and for others.
One of the images which occurs to me is how often at the bottom of a waterfall there is a calm pool. Nobody really cherishes that moment of going over the waterfall, however, everybody seeks the peace and calm. It is an interesting image to remember – that the natural flow of life is both. It is not all waterfalls and rapids, and it is not all still pools and it is not all frozen snow. There are places in the river where there need to be calm gathering points. It may be in a pool at the bottom of a waterfall or it may be logs which have seemingly blocked the path. In that calmer place, things grow, reeds and lilies can settle. You can't grow water lilies in a waterfall, but you can in a pool.
Look for those areas within yourself which offer you the capacity to grow your inner being, to brighten the light within you, to deepen your capacity to give and receive love. That replenishment is what you can do within yourself, using the metaphor of what may look like a blockage in the flow it is actually a creative and fertile location.

NOURISHING YOUR INNER GROWTH

If all the river was flowing quickly, there would not be the opportunity for there to be little pockets where a new tree could grow, for example. A tree which will then help to maintain the banks of the river. They are the places of reflection where you take stock of your life. In many ways, Heartcentre is that for some of you – where you step out of the flow of your daily life and you step into a deeper current that can hold the consciousness of what is the essential ingredient of your life. You forget that actually what you are is a drop in this river and you identify with all the bits and pieces that you see or that you are seen to be and you think that is you.
If you either skim across the top of life or can't take those times to pause in the curve of the river, then you miss out on being able to have times when you really put your roots down into some place in your life. That is also an important part of the journey of life because sometimes to really be of service your need to be focussed, you need to know where you are that day, where you are going to be the next day. Otherwise, so much energy is going into the planning that you don't get the chance to be, and to be with your true purpose which is to be bringing that consciousness into this world and to be of service.
Then, naturally enough, the flow of the season will change again and there will be an added flush through and you will move on with that. You need to be able to move as the Spirit moves you, and to learn how to differentiate between an inner impulse to move, and where you, through your own will, uproot yourself even before you have had a chance to make the most of that life experience.

APPRECIATE THIS MEDITATIVE MOMENT

A tiny example of that is in meditation. Many times you will be sitting quietly in meditation and you will be having a beautiful moment, and before you consciously register that, you have stood up and walked right away from that experience, rather than appreciating the clarity of this meditative moment and taking it to its higher level, and thinking 'this is a moment when I am conscious of the blessing of life' and then offering that blessing out, if you are already overflowing with love. Offer your blessing out to this world rather than feeling 'I have had my moment of wonder and now I will go and have my breakfast'.
There are so many choices you make with what you do with your energy. In order to live a more spiritually fulfilling life it helps if you make choices which assist you strengthen that inner vibration and how you offer that to this world. Essentially that vibration is love, manifested in all its different and beautiful forms.
Then there are times where you go down a river and you find yourself in a little side-flow. Sometimes it is worth wondering how you got there, but more often than not it is better to see how you can draw yourself back into the main flow. The main flow meaning: back in alignment with the Divine Current within. So when you feel that you are in a little billabong, cut off from a sustaining life-force, when you feel you are running dry, then you know you have closed your heart at some level to that Divine Current. Once you recognise that, you can lead yourself back into alignment with your true self. Sometimes it is easier to do this through going into a quiet place within. Sometimes it is easier to do this through meeting with a spiritual community; through taking yourself to powerful places in Nature, oceans and waterfalls, cliff edges and forests, rose-gardens – all these things help to attune the heart to beauty and to peace and bring you back into love.
It can be the boulder or it can be beauty. You can use every life experience actually, when you have the intention to polish your heart, to help you open your heart and to help you remain attuned to that Divine Vibration.

USE WHEREVER YOU ARE TO STAY AWAKE

Everything that you see on either side of this river – imagine the different terrain from the snow-capped mountains through the tropics to the beaches – is nothing compared to the inner landscape. In one day you can experience the whole journey that might take a drop of water literally years.
There is something so perfectly circular about the river finally becoming one with the ocean and then the radiance drawing up the water out of the ocean and then it falling as rain. There is something so deep in that metaphor, and so explicit that it is worth contemplating. If you are by yourself, if it is raining or you are by the ocean, use wherever you are to help you stay awake to the inner reality.
For example, if you are driving along and you are caught in a traffic jam, you could think 'this is just like being in a log-jam in a river. What could this be a metaphor for within myself?' Instead of putting on the radio, you could put on a heart and mind opening way of approaching your situation. Sometimes you may just want entertainment, but if at that moment you are wanting to deepen your spiritual perspective of life, you can perceive everything through those eyes.
This river is also a source of nourishment for the fish, the birds, the farmers – and how can you make your life a source of nourishment, so that you are nourished by it and it can also nourish others? That is where service comes in, that flow of energy; that receptive and generous flow of energy. There needs to be balance for that flow to really be effective. There needs to be enough coming into the river, it cannot just be drained for agricultural purposes totally. There cannot be a wall, there needs to be a dam with a flow.
The challenge is how to keep that flow happening within your life circumstance, when you feel that you are running dry. How can you revive that inner flow? Honestly, the first thing is always the intention. Once you recognise that your inner vitality is flagging, once you recognise that you are being irritable or not how you would ideally like to be, then that provides an instant point of reference for you to go through a check-list of all the things you could do that would help you feel more open-hearted, more at peace, more loving, more accepting.
You need to recognise when you are out of balance, then hold the intention to bring yourself back into balance and then do those things which create balance. Just having the intention is not enough. Just having the intention to eat a meal does not nourish you. It is having the intention to eat the meal and then eating - that is where the nourishment lies. That is where the fulfilment is, it is in acting upon your inner impulse, it is doing those things which you know will restore balance, which will recharge you spiritually.

BEING IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF REMEMBRANCE

You may think that is absolutely stating the obvious but it is really one of the big slipping places, where sometimes it is possible for people to think that if they have the thought of Spirit then that is enough. It is a wonderful beginning, however, until you actually open yourself to the deep experience of Spirit, you won't feel the nourishment. You won't feel the replenishment in just the remembering. It is being in the atmosphere of remembrance that allows the vibration of Spirit to actually work its wonder within you.
What I mean by 'the vibration of remembrance' is that you can just remember with your mind but that may not get through to your inner being, your energetic system, and the process of remembrance is broader and deeper because it involves that mental thought settling so that it takes its place in your heart. Remembrance is remembering with the heart, remembering is remembering with the mind. The vibration of remembrance is activating a heart vibration, it is like you get it spinning. Staying with the image of the river – when you start accelerating the flow so you are able to leave some of the flotsam and jetsam behind and move on.
Often this is what the vibration of remembrance does. When you move into the vibration of remembrance you realise what has true importance, your realise what your life is truly about, you realise who you truly are, you realise that eternal self within you and that frees you from identifying with who you think you are or what you do in your work or how you are seen to be in all your roles. You realise that who you really are is a being of love and light.
This strengthens the inspiration to then allow that vibration of love and light to be expressed in all you are and all you do. So that vibration of remembrance feeds and blesses you as you proceed through the next part of your daily life.

Q Sometimes my heart just opens naturally and sometimes it takes a boulder but can we avoid boulders by being more responsive earlier?

Can you imagine moving from the snow-capped mountains to the ocean without any change in scenery? Not possible. You would fall asleep. At the ocean every day is so different: the sunrises, the sunsets, the storms, all these things that nature gives to help keep you awake to the beauty and the essence of life. Boulders are one of those beautiful gifts even though they are the painful ones.
Who is to say that pain is wrong or bad and that beauty and ease is good and right? This is a moral judgement. Of course you are drawn to those experiences which feel more comfortable, but don't forget that you are also drawn to those experiences in life which help you open your heart. That is partly why you are in relationship with this boulder. There is, within you, within these circumstances, a magnetic force. It is like the river is being drawn down as well as flowing down. You are drawn to certain life experiences. You are drawn to have relationships with certain people who have certain life experiences. You don't learn everything from yourself. You learn so much through relating to people who are going through something – how that might impact on you, what you learn, what you observe.
These boulders can be in the form of a person, an illness, loss, being rejected, being misunderstood, being judged – anything which rattles you to the core is a boulder because it is giving you the opportunity to see yourself, to see who you really are and to find who you really are; to find that inner being, the strength and the beauty of heart which is within you.
Do you know, one of the other beautiful things is when others perceive your heartbreak, that in a way provides the leverage for their hearts to open, and so the ripples go on because there is nothing more touching than a broken heart, there is nothing more beautiful? There is nothing more heart opening than to see and experience the rawness of an open heart and the unveiled beauty of that, the tenderness of that, and the outpouring and the sensitive love that comes from that place – there is nothing more beautiful than that.
Hearts can be opened in so many gentle ways as well. It is not always boulders. You will always notice when your heart opens with the pain of life, and you may not always notice when your heart opens in response to the beauty and the ease of life. There tends to be a little more complacency and taking it for granted but when your heart is blasted open, you won't miss it.
It is only a very superficial part of you that says 'I think I would rather miss this life experience than go through what I am going through', because deep down you can experience, as you go through that, the exquisiteness of its gift.

THE ESSENCE – THE DROP REMAINS THE SAME

As well as looking at the journey and the flow of life, notice how the changes in life are at one level, and the essential stability within those changes is at another level. At the spiritual level the essence of who you are, the drop, remains the same even though the circumstances of that drop's existence are changed from frozen to flowing to crashing down waterfalls to hitting boulders to being in still pools to being in creative pockets to flowing through the rainforest to the ocean, and then being absorbed back into the clouds and falling again as rain.
At one level there is incredible transformation in this journey that enriches the life experience of the drop. On another level the essence of that drop remains intrinsically the same. Intrinsically, the inner being, the soul, is love and light and then it has life experiences which accumulate around it. The drop draws to itself a little grain of this, a little grain of that – you could probably do a scientific analysis: some carbon, some dust, some oxygen and various things with which it builds itself up just as you build your self up with your thoughts, with what you do, with what you take into your system with food and with vibration and with judgements.
There is an incredible exchange of energy happening at all times, some of which you are conscious of and some of which just goes by regardless.
The place of stability is within. If you look for stability within the river you will be shocked, furious, hard-done by. Asking: what happened? Or saying that it isn't fair. But if you look for stability within the drop then you will find it. Within the essence of self there is the unchanging essence of the All that Is, seen in this moment in the metaphor of the drop.
The journey of life is the transformative experience you go through ...

Someone arrives to join the circle.

... That is a perfect example of what I was talking about: where there is a rather steady flow of life, of energy and something comes in, in this case in the form of our precious visitor, and there is a re-formation of energy. When something comes into your life you need to bustle around that to accommodate that new energy. What you did just now was an effortless, open-hearted embrace and yet often what you do when something comes into your life is to react and see it as intrusive.
When you can respond to a life event as you just did in response to our visitor’s presence, to make space for it in your heart, that is how you harmonise with a life experience. What you are doing is choosing to open your heart to embrace around the new circumstances; it is like embracing the boulder instead of being struck open by it – the result is the same. You end up with an open heart accommodating all. Ideally, that is how you want to be in your lives. You want to have a heart that is so broad that it can accommodate all. That no matter what comes in it is absorbed with love into love.
One of the ways you assist yourself in keeping that open-hearted place is to see that as your point of reference. If you have your point of reference outside of yourself and try to get your stability from that (in this example the circle looking the same) then you will be disturbed by the circle changing, by your world looking different.
The more that you see every human being and every life event as the Divine manifested, the more at one you will realise you truly are, and the easier it will be to harmonise with your life experiences and circumstances because you are seeing everything as you as Spirit. There is less need to resist when you see that this is another aspect of the One, manifesting itself to you. When you are focussing on the One, you are focussing on the point of stability. When you focus on all the different faces and identify with those and try to lock those into some secure place within you, that is when you will be disappointed because nothing remains the same at the physical level in this world.
The river is changing, the drop is constant. Movement is constant, change and transformation are an integral part of the journey. Imagine if this was more celebrated through schools, education, films – that change is a blessing, that the inner life is worth knowing, that expressing one's heart brings joy. These are gifts human beings have and how wonderful it would be if these gifts were celebrated as an integral part of education.
The drop is moving through life, what remains constant is the essential nature of the drop. You cannot make water not be water. You cannot make soul not be soul. It is, it always has been and always will be, more or less, in terms of eternity and infinity.
How you care for the intrinsic preciousness and beauty of that inner drop is through minimising the accumulation of debris around it. Forgiveness is one way to allow the drop to remain as pure as it can so it can keep flowing. If you get attached to a certain part of the river, then your energy starts to become like one of those little suckers on the side of the rocks. Then, you see what's coming! It hurts then, when you have to extricate yourself from that attachment to that place or tangle of weeds, or a beautiful person.

INTRODUCING OUR FRIEND IN SPIRIT
In 1988 Susan became aware of a radiant presence illuminating her meditation. Gradually she started to experience this light as coming from beyond herself. Over many months the presence of this golden light became more and more distinct and was inviting communication - something Susan had not anticipated. This contact developed into a clear communication with an invitation for us to ask questions. This beautiful and sacred connection with our unseen teacher has nurtured and inspired our hearts and lives for fifteen years and continues to be a profound source of guidance, learning and wisdom.

This is one of over a hundred teachings received by Susan through conscious meditation. Our Friend in Spirit is a teacher of essential truth and shares her infinite wisdom and love through her presence and words, guiding us to the living treasure within our hearts and the sacred thread that connects us all.

Our Friend's universal language is free of dogma, gender inclusive, and is imbued with the sweet fragrance of love. Her examples make these simple and practical teachings accessible and relevant no matter whether you are already committed to a particular tradition, or if you have no affiliation. Her words of wisdom and guidance help to awaken that divine spark within; help to strengthen the path that you are on; inspire you to see the essential equality of all human beings and religions; and help you to deepen your understanding of love - iniviting you to integrate love it into every aspect of your life.

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These sayings - which are changed daily - have been drawn from Our Friend's inspired teachings on the qualities of love. We share these wonderful and practical teachings in all our weekly Living Awareness Circles and Retreats.