Dear friends,

We’re excited to share with you our next retreat, February 17-22, 2008, in Santa Barbara, CA. This is a wonderful opportunity to deepen the work of the heart. We’ll share meditation, movement, and time together in a beautiful setting. This retreat is all about building and deepening relationships. The path of the heart is the path of love, and part of the purpose of our lives is to learn how to love each other deeply and fully, abandoning all fears and doubts as the flow of love comes through us.

The closest and finest relationship in life is with one who understands, and this is only experienced by love.”
~Hazrat Inayat Khan

You have noticed, surely, that there are different types of hearts in the world, and that your heart is different from others. The type of heart you have determines the life you have.

• Some hearts are broad, some are deep.
• Some hearts soar into heights of joy while others dive into the inner depth.
• Some hearts have great power; others have a beautiful harmony.
• Some hearts can accommodate whatever environment they’re in,
• While other hearts can change the environment as they like.
• There is a full heart, and an empty heart,
• A heart that has all it can hold, and a heart that longs for something beyond.

I hope you can join us!

love,

Susanna

Dear Puran,
I read with great interest your posting and agree totally with your integration of the heart rhythm as the key to a more complete spiritual awakening. However, I have a dilemma, I am presenting a class this Saturday on The Soul’s Journey by Hazrat Inayat Khan.
The first half will go into the incoming soul and and is similar to re-birthing, I am quite comfortable with what I have to work with in that regard having worked with Murshida Vera Corda for over 25 years. The second half is on the outgoing soul. In my opinion, one of the important offerings we have, is to ameliorate our western cultures fear of death. It has been said often by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan that meditation is a rehearsal for death, and I was planning on structuring the meditation on the samadhi practice and thereby demonstrating that one doesn’t need the body to experience life. You seem to have strayed away from this method and I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the process of overcoming the fear of death in relation to the meditative process you have described in your posting.

“Live lives and death dies” — HIK

“The process of dying is so serious that the dying person is beyond the reach of the living person, so it is better to leave them to their own higher thoughts, what they are feeling at the moment.” — HIK

Baiss (more…)

Dear Puran.
I have been practicing the heart meditation on my own for a while and I’m having a great experience. One day I could see a heart beating in every object and element around me. Thank you for sharing such a great way to find our unity .
My problem is, each time I do the fire breath I feel heat in my body, which I understand. Sometimes I feel my head very heavy which is OK. But my concern is that lately I’ve been having an increase in my sexual desire immediately after the meditation and sometimes during the meditation. Is this a normal feeling? Or am I doing something wrong to attract negative energy around me? Most of the time I feel close to Light, to God ,to LOVE during the meditation. I worry because my intention is pure but why is this happening?
Please reply.
With Love
Nour

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This is a very exciting article which we already know instinctively, but here it is demonstrated through science. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and nurture your friendships even more.

http://www.anapsid.org/cnd/gender/tendfend.html

The article basically says that men and women respond to stress in different ways, and that relating to friends releases the hormone Oxytocin (sometimes called “the love hormone”) in women, though not in men, because men release more testosterone when under stress, which combats the effect of Oxytocin. The study reminds us not to compromise our relationships when under stress - that’s the time we need them the most!

Susanna

Where is your growing edge? What is it that you need? What is your obstacle, what is that problem which you must solve, but you haven’t yet? We’ve seen that this need often manifests in the areas of health, relationships, and goals, so we make each of these a major focus of our work.
This “pressing need” is a message to you from your heart. It’s the heart’s longing to grow and develop in its fullness. We see this pressing need as an integral part of your spiritual development; it is not a distraction, it is the work itself. Our interest is, how can meditation help you?
Susanna

Here’s an interesting excerpt from the book “Why Marriages Succeed and Fail” (1994) by John Gottman and Nan Silver.

Gottman talks about the “Four Horsemen”, referring to four kinds of emotional interactions between couples that his research indicates are most closely correlated with divorce; these are: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Gottman distinguishes criticism from honest complaint, which he says is vital for a relationship. Criticism focuses on the negative, and locates the fault in your partner. Contempt is a lack of respect for your partner, as seen in insults, hostility, mockery, and body language which is dismissive. Defensiveness is a state of victimization, where you feel wronged by the other and feel the need to deny, invalidate, and otherwise push away what your partner is saying. And lastly, stonewalling is a refusal to give any of the verbal or physical cues that indicate honest listening, instead being silent.

This is interesting to us because these are essentially the same as the emotional states which close the doors to the heart: contempt, blame, indifference, and pessimism.
The solution is to open the heart, the most joyful and terrifying action you can take, which will heal and transform every part of your life.

Puran & Susanna

Hi!I’m so excited that I have finally found this site so that I might share with you…and you with me. I am a teacher in the inner city of Buffalo N.Y. I love my job. The children that I teach come to school with all kinds of baggage. I don’t think I ever opened my heart to share any of my experiences with anyone. (more…)

Here’s an interesting article which shows the difficulty of trying to change your heart with your mind.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk

This woman wrote a book on her experience of trying to follow the self-help advice of several major books, and how it made her life worse.

Don’t try to follow someone else’s idea of how you should be. That approach cannot possibly be right for you. Even if the actions are right, the approach is wrong, because only following your own heart is right for you.

Also, don’t follow your mind. This sounds like a paradox — what do you follow if not your mind? Well, you must follow your heart. It will lead you to the unexpected, the terrifying, the new, toward your longing and your fulfillment.

Susanna