Excerpts from 'THE JEWEL OF PARADOX:

HEART WORK

I get myself settled down. Seated with my bedding as cushion under my butt and between my back and the wall, I make myself surprisingly comfortable. I sense inner guidance, as a woman's voice, coaching me to watch my body breath, to let my mind rest with that flow and become quiet.

It works. Inside and out, the flow of my breath moves slower, more effortless. This work with the heart is a kind of prayer, my female guide explains. And so a prayer seems to form by itself, framed as we prayed in the Order.

Oh, Lord of Darkness and of Light,
I am here within Your Sight.
In Your shimmering Eye, I pray
To see my heart as it is today.

A higher part of me awakens to my guide, a more expansive, knowing part to follow her guidance through this heart work. My body leads me to hold my left palm a foot or so before the center of my chest. I close my eyes and inner sight turns to that place behind my breastbone that I feel getting warmer.

Something slips in place and the process begins. I'm jolted with a barrage of familiar hurts and pains, needs and fantasies. My feelings and emotions are desperately scattered. Uncertain, searching for direction, for quenching. Their blaring screams make thought impossible.

"This is the realm of the heart that meets and mixes with the outer world," my guide describes. " What you wanted and didn't get. What you didn't want and got. This is the heart realm where the "me/you" and the "you/me" bring their unique worlds together."

"Here, at the outermost level, is the heart-realm of the personality, of the ego." With the awareness I'm now granted, I see that the froth and turmoil, the fragility and limitedness of this realm can only bring me frustration and suffering. And always has. I can hear those sub-selfs screaming, begging little voices. "I want... I need... I must..." Perpetual, pointless, unsatisfiable neediness. This is where I've lived from most of my life, taking it for granted that these endless tantrums were the end-all and be-all of life.

And here I am, my hand and heart in energetic communion, experiencing that part of myself as I never could have before. As a compassionate other, there are unimaginable new ways of knowing and relating with my life, coming to myself from my heart.

"Lord of Compassion, have mercy. Lord of Mercy, have compassion," she leads to softly repeat and repeat till there is an easing at this outermost level. A dissolving, a release that comes with a full sigh. I'm moved to draw my open left palm closer to my heart center.

Again that sense of passing beyond a boundary there, of a profound shift into another place -another, deeper level to my heart. Hurt and longings are here too, but freer of circumstance, less fragmented and fleeting. I recognize that here are the ongoing concerns in life, the ones I've lived and might die by. These are diverse rather than scattered and are signs of my many sides. My consciousness here is reflective rather than worried. These self-concerns are weightier than the personality's, more significant. Less about my fleeting wants than about my longings and callings. There is a more definite knowing of who I am and what I'm about. A sense of more spaciousness for myself, many more dimensions and possibilities of experience, of more purpose and value to me.

"This is the part of you that makes the soul journeys," she explains. I see this second realm of my heart as very bright, very known.
I'm moved to bring my palm closer to my Heart Center again. Again, there is a discreet shift in awareness of myself. This realm, she calls the realm of spirit. Though my consciousness is far subtler, its contents are more tenuous to grasp, mysterious. I'm opened to more intuitive knowing, my inner seeing fuzzier, less concerned with details, more aware of the wholeness of things. I grasp the boundless, infinite dimensions here and the obscure ways of relating them.

My emotions in this third realm of my heart are rich, rising up from the deepest levels of my being, each one gifting me with truer knowing of who I am, what I truly feel, what really matters to me. Though it's the first time I've knowingly experienced this level of my heart, I'm certain that here is the source of meaning in my life. This is where the currents of my gifts and callings run clearest. This is where I can find my Self.
Within its richness and giftings, beyond and beneath it, is a bittersweet longing, a desperate waiting to be really, fully born. Not to be just born in a body, with a name and a history, but being really born so that I am the spiritual being I live and act from. And all that clutter and busyness out there doesn't distract or torment me anymore.

Now, poised before my inner Holy of Holies, the female voice guides me to rest my left hand right on the warmth of my Heart Center. There is a shift into a higher domain of experience that takes my breath away. My awareness plummets down, deep within to this core-center of my heart. My mind is utterly quiet, overcome, entranced. All the experiences of the first three realms disappear into this awing, peaceful calm. "The Heart of your heart," my guide calls this. "God's Heart inside of ours." That's what this is, the utter Source of it all, here in the center of my own heart.

A thirst is quenched I've had my whole life, totally fulfilled in this Presence. Wonderment and joy. I'm drawn upward through it, as if by a gentle tornado, gentle and soothing. The ascending swirl, infinite, eternal. I know I'm Home... Yes, here, at the center, deepest level of my heart is where the Rays of the Sun of Truth enter into my being.
My awareness swells open, its focus expands to near infinity. I see myself sitting here, the space I'm in and all that surrounds me. My view continues to expand, out and out, knowing the Aliveness in all of it. The places and people, out to the surround Ocean. I experience all this from the inside, where I witness it from. And within it, beneath it all, I'm held in this gentle divine swirl, the golden warmth from the Center of my Heart, knowing that it fills and inspires all that is in my world.

The gigantic panorama fades, remains only as a knowing of the Rays of the Sun of Truth permeating everything, here in the Heart of my heart. This is where I find it! I affirm, pressing my palms to my Heart Center with tears of joy. I taste the nectar abundantly, drink it in to quench my deepest thirsts, dissolve in it, until there's only timeless enthrallment.
Realization blooms. This is the Power that lifts me up out of the Cosmic Whirlpool. This is the Longing that lovingly draws me to the Sun of Truth. This is a ray of the Wholelife Energy Bond sourced in my being. Awoken by visions and driven by desperation, I've been prepared, readied to receive from this core-center of my Heart. Without reserve or hesitation.

I drink and drink of this splendor, drunk with it beyond all imagining.

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Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2003