Heart Center

• Sometimes life can knock you around. Spiritually speaking we recognize when we are not grounded because it is easy to be disturbed – be it physically, mentally or emotionally. When we are grounded or centered we are present to a condition of relaxed and effortless balance. Situated within any center is found inherent stability and at its core a pinpoint of perfect balance. This can be contrasted to finding oneself off center and ungrounded where external influences easily perturb us and much energy is needed just to metaphorically stay upright. The essence of the heart center is therefore twofold.  It includes the compassionate, feeling nature of our being but one that emanates from a central core whose innate nature contains the gifts of balance and stability. It maintains poise even in the midst of turmoil allowing our thoughts and feelings to be harmoniously blended into expressions of wisdom. Whatever comes forth from the heart center has a kind of purity and selfless character. It does not require guarding to ward off worldly disturbances and because of that it is only out of the heart center that we can express love in an unconditioned and undefended way. It is good to be grounded. Better still is to be grounded or centered in one’s heart.
• Heart Center is the gateway through which I shift to the present moment, to compassion, loving kindness, and love for all sentient beings including my own humanity. It is that consciousness which is limitless in capacity for accepting “what is” with equanimity, to see the world with “soft eyes.”
• Heart Center—when you can distinguishing yourself from the noise within, the never ending chatter of commentary, judgement, assessment, agreement, disagreement, wanting, resisting, excluding, and brutality, where you find yourself is a quiet place of nothing, and in that space of nothing, the noise settles down. It gets really quiet inside.  There is nothing to change or resist—fix or alter. In that space, where everything is perfect as it is, in the quiet, there you find your heart center where God put your true eyes and ears, where you see only the expression of Being.
• If I were an architect I could draw the plans to this great shrine called The Heart Center. This Holy place with glass elevators that move vertically up and down, opening to expanses on every level from the highest to the lowest with no preference for one from the other and each floor greets you with Yes. The stillness at The Center has an overflowing fountain, outpouring to all who enter. The Sun itself shines down on this fountain and the rays of light fan out in all directions, honoring all religions, cultures and paths and the truths and limitations inherent to each. Yes.

Joy

• Joy is about radiance that moves throughout the body and can be seen by all. It’s a deep feeling that is vital and alive; as well as a condition of happiness and contentment. Joyful is truly how we are meant to be.
• Certainly there are things or experiences that bring happiness; like when we acquire something we have desired, or life’s events go exactly the way we planned, or we are present in grateful celebration with others. These all evoke happiness … but generally of a kind, which primarily satisfies our more worldly self. As good as such experiences might be, eventually the proverbial question arises, ‘Is that all there is?’ It is helpful to reflect that at a deeper level it is possible to be happy without any underlying cause, a happiness as it were, that reaches and touches our true innermost self. Those on a spiritual path may be fortunate enough to feel this special kind of happiness more so than others. In these instances the word joy might be offered to distinguish this state from ordinary happiness. In joy there is a happiness arising simply out of being and not so much from doing. It is a formless and unlabeled happiness. Much like unconditional love is love given without restriction, joy as ‘unconditional happiness’ is happiness mysteriously received without apparent reason. The bliss this pure happiness brings is simply known as the ‘Joy of Being.’
• Joy is the feeling of “my cup runneth over,” feeling blessed and full. It is the feeling of “All is Well” with the world with perception becoming clear and bright. It is bells ringing and fireworks exploding in celebration of life.
• JOY: the heart’s natural dance at its connection to self-expression, the opportunity to create life, and to celebrate in itself. That experience is joy.

Meditation

• Meditation is practiced in many varied forms yet it seems all meditation is done with the common idea of reaching an inner stillness. What arises in the stillness may differ with each method. The hoped for state within meditation is one where the incessant voice of the mind is somehow quieted while we remain in a place of alert and peaceful awareness. The focus of such awareness can be anything that shifts us away from our normal mental dialog and thus offers great variety in how meditation is done. Most commonly meditation is seen as coming to rest in a place of no thought, or more typically releasing any thoughts that arise. But it can also mean the opposite, an activity akin to ‘contemplation’. That is, entering into a state of inner stillness with the deliberate desire to hear the whisper of one’s inner voice. Mediation in this form is closer to a surrender into intuition and a loss of the dualistic mindset. Its focus is the gentle looking at of something from all angles to discover its ‘unseen before’ aspects or to ‘allow in’ what had been resisted in unconscious judgments. When done with sincerity, contemplation can unravel paradoxes or provide guidance and wise counsel. Whether to escape from attachment to recurring thoughts or to dissolve resistance to an unanswerable concern, both types of meditation have their separate beauty. They share in common the experience of ‘deep’ time … a space in which any sense of the passing of time is absent and we are peacefully and deeply plunged into the present moment.
• Meditation is a space that exists in the human psyche that transcends the experience of duality that the eyes portray. In this space, it is possible to connect beyond physical space, beyond separation, and dissolves the illusion that I am over here and everything else is over there. In this space, everything exists. This space is accessed through mediation.  Meditation is a doorway from illusion to pure being.
• Meditation is like a gym for the soul. It is the process of learning to hear the inner voice and developing the “muscle” that allows us to shift states of consciousness in our daily lives. Unfortunately it is not often seen this way. Rather it is viewed as a period when we removed ourselves from the world to retreat into the quiet space of our soul. While this is an important and valuable practice it is only half the journey.
• Quieting the mind of all the self-talk and chatter that endlessly fills us and when one is successful at doing so a “real self” can begin to emerge, but not sustained, once we go back to that everyday chatter. I feel it helps us get to that place where our intuition is stored and truth lies. Meditation is soothing to the soul and gets us closer to it.
• Meditation is the act of receiving the Self. There are many techniques that range from breathing and focusing on the inhale and exhale to very sophisticated pranayamas and paradoxical breathing routines. One of the best forms of meditation is listening. If one truly listen to another deeply they become ONE with the other and it is an act of pure mediation. Meditation is the act of receiving the Source and the Self. The stillness…the peace that goes beyond understanding is there.

Spiritual

• Spiritual is the immaterial, the non-physical, coming from some other dimension more intuited than known. People talk of being spiritual rather than religious, which I suppose means they are not identified with a religious institution, but they do experience a spiritual dimension in their lives. Is the spiritual that voice that we hear in our heads, our conscience speaking to us, synchronistic events, which seem to just happen, life unfolding in unanticipated ways? The sound of silence in Muir Woods, the experience of the trees’ energy, the communion with fish in the ocean? Perhaps it is the word for mystery, for the unknown and unknowable dimensions from which we come and to which we return.
• On one level being spiritual, or having spirituality, refers to a kind of growth or maturation process, often a lifelong one. There is a temptation to include the word ‘personal’ growth or ‘personal’ maturation process. But that shift in viewpoint may actually stray far from the mark. Spirituality, as a kind of maturation spoken of in most traditions, really is about the diminishment of the person, the self, or the ego. It is about a growing recognition of the inner, non-material Self and a movement towards a more enlightened way of being that is at one with ‘what is’. Of course the ego is quick to take up the spiritual quest, and identifies with such an honorable task of being a spiritual seeker. But inevitably the ego is cleverly playing a role, while quietly keeping score of all the wonderful spiritual experiences it has vicariously lived on one’s chosen spiritual path. This is not to dismiss such experiences as they truly have value and allow us to feel one step closer to our goal of expanded spirituality. And yet, unless we are conscience enough to recognize when our ego is masquerading as Self, it can all be an empty ride. It is not necessary to make the ego any less for doing this. It is only important to recognize that, as humans, the ego is always at work. It is the ‘doing’ part of our nature and has to be part of the process of change. All spiritual traditions recognize this partnership is at work. Always taking a step back to reflect, true spirituality constantly maintains a vigilant discernment over our actions and beliefs. It asks the tough question of who or what has grown from any given experience. And what is the yardstick? Ultimately the measure may be expressed in the presence of some kind of humility in the aftermath of our most powerful spiritual experiences. These times may be marked by a desire to change but in the humblest possible way, meaning by that in a way that does not intensify the ego. It is said that failure is the currency of spirit, the price to be paid for spiritual deepening. In a paradoxical way, real success along a spiritual journey includes a good share of failures. While failure is not something our egos readily embrace, our spiritual essence does not seem to have any aversion.
• What a difficult word to reduce to words. It is really a way of being or a state of consciousness (all of which probably need further clarification). Spiritual is a state of being where I am living in, choosing from/with, and feeling the energy of that which transcends and infuses everything.
• Spiritual: when your orientation to life begins to have the circumstances of life show up for you as related to spirit, like when your car won’t start and you get present to a need to slow down, or perhaps spirit is guiding you to a different timeline for your day, then you have begun to live your life inside a spiritual context. Being spiritual imbues the happenings of life with a spiritual flavor.
• Spirituality is a safe and peaceful place for me and has no limitations of what is spirituality.

Grace

• The juice that we are spiritually fed by.
• Grace is that which carries us beyond ourselves when we surrender and accept.
• It is a state of being in the flow or the Tao. It is a place where things move in a natural ease and where the river of blessings keeps coming. It is also a place where non-resistance operates and trust and surrender have created the space of its existence.
• I have been reading Adyashanti’s “Falling into Grace” and have come to realize that grace is an event, situation, personal/public interaction that opens my heart, body, soul, and mind toward enlightenment and not necessarily from a place of comfort and joy. Upon reflection, the times when I am struggling the most is grace-filled when the result is an opening to more understanding, more unconditional love, more compassion and ever closer to the Divine.
• Grace is that unearned, sometimes unexpected piece of divine intervention. It is the privilege of being witness to forces that intervene and bring healing or resolution to a need or a deeply held desire. I bow in amazement to the energies that may be sourced within us, from a collective or from the intelligence and mercy of an unseen world.
• Grace is the space in which things can just be what they are, without having to change. In a state of grace, there is no should or shouldn’t be, no right or wrong ways to be. There is only what is, devoid of judgment, and in a space that can hold anything. Grace allows everything to simply be, and thereby, allows the Divine to emerge. The Divine cannot emerge in the resistance of something—for the Divine, there is nothing wrong. Grace allows for divinity.
• The influence or spirit or soul operating in humans that regenerates or strengthens them. This was a hard word—it has taken me a while to decide what to write. Maybe it’s because it really is a religious word and I never really thought about what it means. I know you say grace before eating…and that you can be in a state of grace and I not exactly sure what that mean. Perhaps I should have used the word graceful…however, that’s not what I wanted either.

Spirit

• Spirit is the part of conscious life that mediates/communicates between the body/matter and the soul. It is the consciousness that doesn’t consist of matter…however it is essential to the being as breath is to the body.
• Spirit is my original source and my connection to all that is. It is what fashioned this body and dreamed the playground I am in to expand and grow.
• Spirit is the all-pervading non-physical essence ever animating, expanding and unfolding ‘what is’ into what is greater still. In our scientific mythology ‘what is’ began with a singular infinitesimal point that mysteriously evoked the big bang and the incomprehensible universe. Within our own individual nature spirit expresses itself in thoughts, ambitions and desires to go beyond. In its purest form, these expressions come quietly at special times in life, which we describe as moments of inspiration. Yet the directional sense is not quite right. Inspiration isn’t so much the flowing of spirit in to us as it is a release or outpouring of spirit emanating from deep within. The same power, which causes the rose to unfold and blossom, is also at play in us. Yet the rose does not work or plan at blooming but simply allows its nature to be fulfilled. Perhaps our confusion as humans comes from believing we need to work at our spiritual evolvement. We become spiritual seekers on a mission to discover our spiritual path or find that special practice or wisdom needed for our ultimate maturation. Yet in doing so we may get in our own way and risk becoming the rose bud that fails to open. It happens unfortunately to many of us. There is indeed a stirring inside us eager to reach the outside. We might do well to nourish and honor that singular stirring above all else. It is what spirit intends to be.
• Spirit is an elusive word to me since I have no definition for Spirit and I am unsure what spirit is/is not or even if the human mind can define spirit. So, for me, it is the indefinable source of all that is.
• This is a rather interesting word. One that many have pondered its meanings for thousands of years and one that I continue to explore its depths. Spirit is an energy that flows and animates all of life.  Spirit its the unseen force that we can “feel and sense” but perhaps can never really know.  Does spirit guide us or do we guide spirit?  Is it a dance of energy between the individual the collective and the “everything?”  Is there even an individual a collective separate from the “everything?” I think Spirit is all of that and more.
• Spirit is the life force that flows in all. It is the chi or the breath that we have the honor to experience as a guest in this house of gaia. It is the ONE as all share it, and is unseen to the eye, however, recognized by the senses. It is the pulsing of life that we all share.
• Spirit: is the enthusiasm and excitement you can see in someone’s eyes. It is also that which animates life, whether in a rock, a plant, or a human body. It is the breath of God.
• An individual tried recently to convince me that our “spirit” as he saw it was the combination of our emotions and thoughts separate from our bodies and our bodies of much less importance. I disagreed. Interesting is that emotions are directly linked to our physicality specifically through chemical secretions in the brain that are involuntary. Thoughts are steered for most people by emotion: hence most people’s views are ruled by their emotional context: hence people are in fact the result of the commands of their flesh. It is not to say that one cannot override the commands of the body with the reason of the mind – but that volition can by it’s very definition not be emotional in nature since emotion is run by the body – hence one could argue that the “spirit” is our ability to reason, used voluntarily to override our emotions to act in favor of what available information logically determines is the correct decision in a given situation.

Sanctuary

• Sanctuary is considered a physical place, yet what makes it special is the feeling of safety and security that it offers. In a deeper sense the journey to sanctuary is ultimately not a physical one to a physical place. Rather, at the moment we are able to invoke from within the felt sense of sanctuary, chaos is left behind and we pass through a doorway into a better place.
• Sanctuary—for the most part, we are related to sanctuaries as physical places that have been consecrated, dedicated to the sacred. I automatically envision a place that is cool, quiet, treated with respect by all who enter. In actual fact, although the physical location can pull one towards the sacred, sanctuary can only really exist in our consciousness.  We step into a sanctuary in order to transport ourselves to the place of true sanctuary within ourselves. That place where we acknowledge and nurture our birth of God and the truth of our connection in Him/Her. We are sanctuary.
• The place where my soul is free to dance its dance. The place where I go to see, learn, and know my soul and its dance. The place where I can rest on the suchness of life.
• My home. It has always been important to me to make my living space my sanctuary…a place of calm, serene peacefulness. The dictionary calls it a refuge…perhaps that’s what I mean.
• Safe Haven! Wherever I go I need to make a sanctuary and the older I get the more it is something inside of me that I need to connect with before I feel safe enough to move ahead.
• My heart. It has always been important to me to make a clean, pure and truthful space…a place of calm, serene peacefulness for my self…I like the idea that it is a refuge, as well. Heart seems to be where I find myself as I feel that I have never really had one home…I have been blessed to many and none at the same time all the time while on this earth. It is such a place of visitation…a short stay in a foreign land. Always that has been so for me.
• From without, a place where I feel the Presence of the Divine and can easily be inducted into direct connection.  From within, the stillness that is the direct connection to the Divine.

Truth

• Truth has a ‘solidness’ about it and establishes a grounding or foundation upon which we can live out life. To possess truth gives us a sense of knowing, or certainty, or dependability. Whenever a time of instability enters our life it may be that our perspective of a certain ‘truth’ is somehow shifting … perhaps because it is simply incomplete or too small. Doubt replaces our former truth and we question all – at least until a ‘new truth’ comes clearly into focus. This is pivotal as the new truth may be either lesser – or greater – than before. What happens to us in life significantly depends upon how well we handle our ‘truths’ in times of chaos. By one measure our best moments are reflected in the gifting of an expanded truth.
• Truth is a personal knowing of what feels “true” within your soul and there is truth in “what is” without judgment, prejudice or comparison; and Universal Truth in the laws of nature; and Ultimate Truth that is the Mystery.
• Truth is considered (by some standards) to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence. However, truth like beauty is viewed and judged in the eye of the beholder–it’s an ambiguous word–since what is true for some is not necessarily true for everyone. Integrity is a word I relate to more easily than truth.
• Truth for me is whatever I perceive to BE at the moment I think about it. It changes with time and with personal growth. It is not a stable standard.
• Truth—that which cannot be changed, modified, added to or taken away from and that from which life springs. More than a definition, though, is how do I know it when I am with it? How do I see it when it is all around me but untruth screams louder, looms larger? How do I see when my eyes have spent so long in the dark? SURRENDER.  The truth is waiting on the other side of relinquishment.
• Vibration takes on meaning only when you resonate or are in dissonance.

Wholeness

• There is the fact of wholeness—and by fact I mean what actually IS and can never be sundered, altered, or threatened—and there is the experience of wholeness that by and large is missing. Separation, no matter how real in our experience, is only ONE view of things, and is well supported by vision and our “languaging” of the world. Nonetheless, it is not the truth. This fact is coming more and more to the surface as the world shrinks through technology and the globalization of our collective economy. As Mother Theresa said, “If we are not at peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” It would be insane to think of a person’s body the same way we think of the body of humanity. The arm of a body could never fully express itself or its purpose if it considered itself as disconnected from and independent of the whole of which it is a part. What action would it want? For what? It is only AS a part of the whole, whose actions and being are inextricably, tied it, that it can fully express itself and fulfill itself.
• The union of our lower and higher self, giving expression as a singular voice in the world.
• One aspect of wholeness is the balancing and uniting of our inner male and inner female. When they are integrated we are connect to our higher self. To attain wholeness it’s important that the head, the heart, and the spirit all function in harmony.
• What I know of wholeness as an experience I know from restoring myself when I am not whole. I restore myself when I have not honored the word I have given, when I have honored a thought that is not my Self, when my experience is of lack in myself or another. I think the hardest lesson I have learned about wholeness is that my access to it has mostly been where I’m not it.  Mostly, I want to ignore that experience, fix or overcome it, put up with it or work around it, rather than just letting it be, engaging it fully and looking for its source.  I know that at the source of it, somewhere I disintegrated my Self.  When I get to that source, it is clear what there is to do to re-integrate my Self.  And like laundry, wholeness and integrity are rarely 100% “in” for very long–but it is in tending to their “outness” that the experience of wholeness can arise.  As I practice that, I gain competency and at some amazing point, I believe mastery sets in.  I want to be used by wholeness rather than practicing it. I don’t have to practice being a dad.  Being a dad is what I wake up into and it uses me. To be used by wholeness for me, however, right now takes practice. That is my road.
• Wholeness is a continual process of owning all of who we are and are destined to become.  It is a state when the body and mind are connected to the emotions and spirit. When this occurs, the “rip in reality”(as Marian Woodman calls it) is healed.
• Wholeness is the art and science of loving, living and being; using all for the sake of the form. As we travel through the different states of consciousness, we become whole in different ways; living is action, loving is passive, Being is suchness.  When all are integrated into ONE, there is completeness.

Innate Harmony

• They body in its wisdom practices innate harmony among its countless living members. This happens beautifully without our thoughts or awareness. Consider the manner in which we add the voices of our mind and spirit to this harmony as together this chorus creates the music of our life.
• All things are related, all is one. The interrelationship of everything is the innate harmony which can only be perceived through the heart. Ordinary consciousness seems oblivious of this harmony and sees only separation and differences. Innate harmony is felt, a quality of the sense of feeling, or something intuited, without words. It is the vast sense of interconnectedness, spaciousness, stillness with which the human being is gifted that the deep joy of innate harmony is experienced.
• It’s the internal peace beyond all understanding!
• The coming together of internal confluences of oneself to a place of balance and integration.  It is a place where alignment and clarity are possible.
• Your own true perfect song that resonates from the heart center.
• That all things vibrate to ALL IS WELL no matter what our perception is. Wow a phrase that carries so many depths. On one level it is the calm blissful state. Yet much deeper it is the start of the journey into manifestation. Calm still and very active.
• As children, we are harmonious with all of life. We add no meaning to what’s happening, so it is innate, natural, that whatever is happening, we are simply a part of it and flow with it. This is how we are created–in harmony with all of life. Over time, we learn to add meaning to what’s happening and that meaning is often if not ubiquitously disharmonious with what’s so. We say, “They shouldn’t do X!”  But they do X anyway. We say, “I need to be more Y.” But I’m only as Y as I am. As a result of what I SAY, I take myself out of my natural state of harmony with life.  I start a relationship with how life SHOULD BE and how I SHOULD BE and how others SHOULD BE and I stop being in relationship with how life, others and my own Self are. The good news about all that is that being in harmony with life is matter of giving things up (giving up points of view and interpretations of life) rather than a matter of changing circumstances or life outside the Self. The only thing in life over which we have dominion is our own speaking. There is the access to returning to a state of innate harmony–without struggle.
• Over the years of working with Brugh, Innate Harmony has come to mean the stillness felt in meditation; being present to the moment; the dissolution to “what is;” the feeling of being whole and complete; intrinsically connected to “All That Is;” the knowing of my own Divinity.