Poets and mystics refer to the heart as the center of consciousness. Quality living is simultaneously existing in this heart center while acknowledging the energies and activities in you and about you.
The willingness to understand precedes understanding. Both willingness and understanding are integrative qualities of bonding friendships. You, as an individual eternal friend of the heart, are understanding the processes which create your self-image that is referred to as "myself." This "self" is an accumulation of images, beliefs, and actions that are being identified as you. These are not you. You are the energy of light that shines through the images, projecting these images upon the screen of your life.
These accumulations of conditions and experiences are identified as you by others at first, such as parents and teachers, and then later by an internalized conditioning process of beliefs, "This is me, this is not me." These image making systems are set in motion through socialization activities which produce "self," not the individual. The individual that is you is a friend of the heart, and can understand and heal your "self." Even though your "self" is a make believe friend, it does not exist. The self is an identity resulting from a process of misidentification; it is a reflection of acculturalization, a transformation from you to "it."
Therefore, a way back to you is by inviting yourself to be a friend of the heart. Once invited, the self may be able to respond with curiosity and perhaps a willingness to venture into the friendship.
In the security of the friendship, identification with beliefs and actions may be understood and resolved. When your intellect and innate intelligence come to a meeting point, it engenders a clarity to co-create a balanced friendship between the two. This is a healing ground for the intellect; it no longer is motivated to control life and is empowered to befriend intelligence, attending to and focusing with awareness and harmony.
When that friend within is truly found to be you, the aptitudes and abilities that you have will flourish. A critical aptitude is the ability to discern the existence of these attachments to limiting beliefs. Past fixed embodied distress will be digested, the nutrients of your experiences will be extracted thereby nourishing the bodies, and the toxins will be released and eliminated.
You as an individual innate intelligence have always been a friend of the heart with the mutually bonding flowing energies of life. As you awaken with awareness, you feel the qualities of these energies flowing through you. It is this friendship between the individual and the universal which causes the physical heart to beat. The individual vibration sings, “I Am Here.” And in response, all of life hums “We Are Here.” If you cannot feel that energy in your physical, emotional, and mental bodies, ask yourself why not.
Loosing one's center of consciousness separates one from the vitality of knowing mutual bonding and the wonder of consciously co-creating with what is happening now. In separation from individual intelligence, one identifies with something or someone external, and therein loses the ability to empower their own passions and their own true expressions of individuality.
Such is the story of Narcissus where he empowered his emotional motives and attached his mental thoughts onto a reflection of his own physical image floating upon a pond's still waters. Believing the reflection to be an image of himself, he empowered a separation from his essence onto that reflection, creating a self-image and a life in pursuit of that echo. And as the wind blows upon the stillness of the waters, the reflection scatters and the image is in search of itself. The mental energy has been placed into a thought-form and an action of searching for a friend of the mind. This self-image is a friend of the mind, not of the heart. It is conceived in the mind; and such a belief can and will deceive the mind.
You, as a friend of the heart, actually remain eternally patient, needing not to follow a belief that states that you should search for an image to replace you. In the heart you know you need not seek security in an image. Nor do you need to search for a friend of the mind when you are befriending the heart. Healing is a process of knowing you as you are.
To summarize, there is an ancient saying, "A friend of the heart will never depart. A friend of the mind scatters as the wind blows."
There is not a need to go to the closet of your mind and pick out another costume, another mask to hide behind, to conform to and act out. This pretense will only present yet another refraction of you to the world. Such actions are based upon an addiction to fear. Fear is a belief system. You are neither the belief nor the ego. Both are energies set in motion to identify with other than you. The ego is but a process of identifying with beliefs and images. It does not exist as a thing. This "ego" process is a culmination of hidden fears. It cannot bond; it can only attach. The light of you is constant and patient, having individual qualities. Remove the resistance to knowing you. Remove the filters and the shades.
How? By attending now.
See Handout of Comparison of Qualities of 3 Different Life-Styles
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