Follow Your Heart

Attempting to convey the pure awareness from stillness into language feels like placing a first footstep onto a virgin drift of glistening snow. I cross it anyway, because I want to get you and share the experience of the beauty and, of course, in doing so I have taken away from the untouched nature that first captivated me.

I am a person "with a good mind," but perhaps there is a downside to that when one's ultimate goal is to break free from illusion. A truly good mind recognizes its own limitations and can offer its services more humbly. Mine, however, has seemed bent on contorting in every possible direction to make sense of it all, like a dog chasing its tail to exhaustion. At the same time I know that my self-identified mind will never grasp the totality of spirit, because you cannot make something concrete which by its very nature is not. To pursue the path of "reason" as an entertainment is fine, but to opt for this as the way to inner peace is less than optimal.

How then does one carry stillness into appropriate action in the world? I can only describe what happens for me as paying attention to resonance. That coupled with a return to innocent perception, or seeing with physical eyes that don't categorize based on preconceived assumptions, leaves me free of inner conflict. Do I do that all the time? No, but I certainly know what the difference feels like.

I describe resonance, which I sense in my heart-center, as a type of energetic oscillation that is expansive and deep like the ocean. It contains true, unidentified power and engenders reverence. It is also what I feel when I am physically present with the ocean of this earth. It requires nothing and it offers everything. It is indestructible and ever present, although at times it feels fragile and fleeting.

I also describe resonance as a sort of magnetic attraction. It's not a choosing based on reasoned assessment, although that doesn't need to be absent. However, the bottom line determinant for me is, Does it feel right? Does it keep the inner osciallation in accordance with the expanded state? I'm working on not needing to apologize or compromise my joy because I can't give a good reason for my choices. I'm sure everyone has been around someone who is blissfully in love and irrationally giddy about everyone and everything they encounter. How often have you thought, They'll get over it and get more real? I know the type of love described does often change, simply because it is contingent upon something outside of us, but what if "getting real" came to mean operating from resonance?

Life works best for me when I align thought and action with this inner sense of peace. I could call it my spiritual GPS. We all know it, but some have denied it more than others. I think there is a fear of how anything will get done, or move forward if reason gets tossed out the window. How will we judge right action if there are no rules to apply? I'm not too worried about it, because my experience tells me that the intelligence greater than what can be managed by my human mind will have no problem with the details.