Last year, during a memorable visit with one of my most impactful teachers, I learned to articulate a fundamental aspect of my practice. In my favorite way of story sharing, we sat in my sacred kitchen - the birthplace of more than babies.
After briefly catching up, we dove right into what felt important - our hearts. She shared with me a wise message in the words of a dying man and I recounted a story about forgiveness, another about healing, and one about a birth I'd recently attended. We agreed about the immensity and power of love and then she said something else which shifted the conversation. I resonated so deeply with This.
Some time ago, with this teacher, I had immersed myself in an intense group exploration of midwifery and promised to "understand everything," including and particularly the unimaginable. At the conclusion of that immersion, I accepted the name, "Heart of Power," which conveys my understanding that Love is the root of existence and that knowledge of the root is where my power or shakti comes from. The name, my acceptance of it, and my promise are in spiritual alignment with.... what?
"Widen your gaze!" she exclaimed. A head-to-toe shiver left goosebumps and a forest of erect white arm hair in its wake. I shed tears. Stephen Buhner, refers to this experience as Goethe's "Pregnant Point," for which I named my practice. Loosely, to look at or experience with a soft focus and an open heart is to understand something....everything.
I know for certain that the heart of power is a devoted practice of surrendering to love and that knowledge comes from a source that is not my cerebrum. "Understanding everything" - famine, genocide, rape, the many faces of human suffering - cannot be accomplished by a thinking analysis.
What is called for is "Ishvara-Pranidhana," or what my teacher called "widening my gaze." A softening of vision, of heart....a surrender to love, oneness - to this I am aligned. Om Nameh Shivaya Gurave.
My practice, "The Pregnant Point," is an expression of that alignment and cultivates those shifts where we open to a deepened heart perception. Literally, what we see and believe morphs into something more. The shifts are divine gifts and may also be cultivated.
We are free to bring our attention back to this fundamental: We are love at our simplest, most pure particle and at our collective, most complex expression. Namaskar. XXOO
