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Spiritual Development
Abiding in the Heart
by Bill Rishel
For abiding in the heart, I do not recommend
concentrating on the physical heart, nor on any sense
of heart "chakra" either.
I can tell you what has worked for me. Perhaps it will
be effective for you.
My approach to the heart is to pay attention to my
feelings. By feelings I mean something different than
emotions, though emotions are related.
Have you ever walked into a store or restaurant and
gotten a weird creepy feeling about the place? Many
people tend to ignore such feelings but one can
develop a sensitivity to one's feelings and learn to
honor them. This is also called "listening to one's
gut".
So the first step is paying attention to and becoming
very sensitive to one's feelings.
The second step is to learn to pay attention to and
become very sensitive to the feelings *within
oneself*. These are feelings that arise more from
within than in response to the environment. They can
be feelings of apprehension, an ache in the heart,
longing, etc. These feelings can be generally
categorized as "deep feelings". In my case such
feelings would typically be located in the chest area.
What I am emphasizing here are feelings that have the
quality of a *physical sensation*. There will
typically be an emotional content aspect, such as
"apprehension", but also a physical sensation, which
will typically be in the chest area.
When these "inner feelings" arise, my practice has
been to become very aware of the feelings. This means
number one getting away from distracting external
stimuli so one can devote one's attention to the
feelings that are coming up. Secondly, this means
"zooming in" on the feelings. Go into it more and more
until what was once a tiny bleep on the radar now
virtually fills the awareness. Pay especial attention
to the physical or kinesthetic sensations connected
with the feelings. Looking at the emotions takes us
off into the psychological content. That isn't what we
want. The emotional aspect is important for
identifying something we need to go into, but from
that point it is the "sensations" of the feelings that
are important. Sometimes these sensations might be
like a subtle pin prick, or a kind of dullness, or an
ache. As we "zoom in" on these feelings the sensations
start getting richer and more complex. As we continue
to "go in" the feelings start to change as a result of
more awareness, richer perspective, and insight.
Through much deep practice with "inner feelings" there
develops a sense of the "feeling center" where the
inner feelings worked on tend to arise. At this stage
one can begin to go into feelings that have not gotten
blown up into an emotional charge. We are now starting
to develop a sense of the heart as a location for the
emergence of feeling. With continued attention and
practice we can go into the feeling center itself,
just as we went into individual feelings at a former
stage. And at this stage we are also learning the
basics of "abiding in the heart".
"Abiding in the heart" itself is just a maturation of
the exploration of the feeling center, such that we
can now "stay in the feeling center" while engaged in
our daily activities.
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