Dear Puran and Susanna,
Thank you for your work on the Four Dimensions of the Heart. I am interested in coming to one of your workshops. My question is have you worked with people with heart arrhythmias? I have atrial fibrillation and it seems to be moving now from “transcient”, where most of the time I was not having episodes to “persistent” (more and longer episodes). It is possible if I sign up for the workshop, I will be having an AF episode. I read and enjoyed your book, “Living from the Heart”.
Best Regards,
Marilyn

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Wow - things have been so busy I’m just getting around to writing about the kick-off to our book tour in Houston, TX, Oct 13-14!It began with a lunch date with Scott Cluthe, host of Positively Incorrect, on Sirrus/Lime Radio. He interviewed us for a full hour on his show the previous week. He took us to his favorite Mexican restaurant. Puran and I agreed to do a monthly show with him. Scott has over twenty years on the radio speaking on matters of spirituality.Because of all the work our local IAM teachers, Liz Smith and James Cummings have done, the sense of community was palpable. The general public seminar and the Unitarian Church focused on meeting lots of old friends and new friends who came as a result of the brochures (which arrived the day before). What was wonderful with Liz and James was that their desire for community manifested in the creation of a warm and open group. The feeling in the instructor training was like we had known each other for years despite just having come together for the weekend. We feel certain that the group of new Heart Rhythm Meditation Instructors will energize Houston! Each geographical quadrant of Houston will now be covered, a particular desire of our local teacher Liz.Puran and I were excited and nervous at the same time. Part of the nerves was that the entire Saturday was professionally filmed by IAM member, Doug Drane. The book tour is off to a great start, and will continue through the spring. What an odyssey! Susanna 

We arrived in Kansas City and were met by our host sponsor Shari Sippola and teacher Linda Turner. Linda flew in from California to assist us in our Continuing Educational Unit (CEU) program designed for psychotherapists, nurses, social workers, marriage and family counselors. We’re excited about sharing the benefits of Heart Rhythm Meditation with these professionals, and creating a new approach to therapy (more…)

An exclusive interview with Susanna.

My son, Asatar, recently attended the San Francisco Green Festival, which is a huge 3-day event with thousands of vendors, exhibitors, and speakers, all focused on creating a sustainable future for humanity. The following is his report on one of the events, a talk by the well-known environmental author and activist Paul Hawken, author of (more…)

Dear Puran:
I have pre-ordered Energize Your Heart and look forward to reading it.
I have been trying to sustain a HRM practice but find it difficult to sit in meditation during allergy season whether it be due to distraction from a runny nose or just simply not being able to breath due to nasal congestion.
I have a multipart question regarding this.
1. Do you have any suggestions for how to practice when these types of symptoms exist?
2. Is it possible to utilize the HRM in some way to alleviate the symptoms?
3. I have read a theory that allergies are the immune system overreacting to stimuli that it doesn’t really need to be reacting to and that this could be due to an emotional issue from the past. Per this theory, clearing the emotional issue allows the immune system not to be so overprotective and therefore not overreacting. If this is true, would it be possible to use HRM in some way to cure allergies at the root emotional level?
Best regards,
Alan

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Hi. Just a Buddhist in disguise - kind of sensitive subject, that I want to keep separate from RL.Been a Buddhist for a while, sitting daily. I’m comfortably biologically male. But I live alone & my few friends are more likely to be female than male.I’m just wondering if anyone else has noticed a change in thought, a change in emotion, as a result (?) of sitting and practicing negation of ego ? Call it getting in touch with my feminine side if you like. I have no desire to become a physically constructed female. Just finding myself seeming to understand and associate with female emotion, than male.

Don’t forget, look at the Yin/Tang symbol - it has a little female in male & male in female. A little black in the white & a little white in the black.

I’m beginning to think this is an object lesson in escaping duality.

Teagan

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Is it right for someone who does not want to live attached to materialism to attain wealth? Is there a justification? How can we balance these two desires?

Burcin Cevik

An interesting discussion on this topic is taking place at Intent Blog. Here’s a quote with Deepak Chopra’s response to this question, taken from an article written by David Beers, author of Blue Sky Dream:

“You need accept no limits, physical or financial. Noting that the title of one of his books is Creating Affluence: Wealth Consciousness in the Field of All Possibilities, I tell Chopra I was raised by my Catholic mother to curb material longing, to remember Christ’s teachings about the rich man and the eye of the needle. Growing up blue-collar in the Depression era, this teaching no doubt afforded her people some comfort. Chopra replies that “wealth is an expression of the spirit” and that because those without money always obsess about getting it, “the solution is to help everybody have wealth.” But is there a conflict between desiring wealth, and seeking God? “Why should material success be an impediment to spirituality?” he responds. “Keep increasing your desires until nothing satisfies you except God. Wanting material wealth is part of that.”

Materialism is generally seen as the belief that the material world of the senses is all that exists, and that there is nothing beyond it. As such, of course this view is incompatible with a desire for spiritual attainment, for there is no notion of anything spiritual in materialism.

Yet what we usually mean by materialism is merely seeking to improve the material circumstances of our lives. We’d like to have more comfort, or have a bit more freedom, or the ability to surround ourselves with beauty, or to pursue our interests more fully, or have more time, and so on. We all must solve the economic problem: how to secure our livelihood. And we all make a choice of how to best do this with our limited time, and in a way that is consistent with our principles.

What if, instead of imposing a conflict between spirituality and our desires, we could see our desires as coming from the One Heart that is within us, yet holds all beings and all things. The One Heart gives rise to our own desires, for its own desire is for progress, fulfillment, development; in short, for the living manifestation of perfection itself. What dimension of the heart is your development taking place in right now? Take our Heart Index quiz for some insight on this.

love,

Puran & Susanna

My husband has a heart pacer and it will be triggered if his heart rate goes below 50 beats. Will this be a problem for him during meditation? He is thinking that as he relaxes his heart rate will go down, inducing a deeper state, but which will be made obsolete by the start of his heart pacer. Is this correct?
I would appreciate an answer on this subject as we are very interested in exploring this meditation technique.
Thanking you for your time and attention,
M.-A. Cardinal
Ottawa, ON

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Mark Oppenheimer has written an interesting piece for the NY Times magazine this week called “The Turning of an Atheist”. The article is about the elderly philosopher Antony Flew, and his back-and-forth position on atheism or ‘deism’ - between belief that there is no God versus what he describes as the belief that there is an intelligent Supreme Being who does not intervene in human affairs.

Oppenheimer presents Flew as a sort of good-natured pawn in a political struggle between two opposing sides, one side which believes there is no credible scientific evidence for the existence of God, and the other which believes, well, perhaps there is, if not proof, at least some persuasive science-based ideas.

We do not wish to intervene in this debate, except to note that the kind of passion that motivates both sides is the heart, the home of all that is most sacred, most holy. Whether one worships God, science, reason, the Universe, Energy, empiricism, Christ, Buddha, or nothing that can be named, the feeling of worship resides in the heart. We want to be able to see in what you worship, the essence of what it is we worship, so that in the end, there can be no argument about belief. What is sacred to you is sacred to us, even if we call it something different.

Also, we’d like to invite you to consider whether your current beliefs are helping your heart or holding your heart back. Some beliefs change over a person’s life; others remain constant. As our understanding our ourselves, the nature of reality, and our relationship to each other and to the unity of being changes, our beliefs must also change to incorporate our new understanding. Yet we often cling to our old beliefs, like a snake that refuses to shed its skin.