Lesson 221 - Q&A – Expanding Heart Space

From: Yogani
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:39pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the web
archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first
lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"


Q: I really enjoyed your writeup on heart breathing (lesson #220).
I've been having good experiences with spinal breathing since
beginning about 6 months ago, and this adds a new dimension. With
regular spinal breathing I often feel like I am opening up inside
into a boundless space. Sometimes it is just a joyous emptiness.
Other times there are very pleasant sounds, like a trickling mountain
stream, church bells, or music like I have never heard though my
physical ears. Sometimes there are golden or multicolored lights.
Sometimes no light at all. I don't know where it all comes from, but
it is usually expansive and very very pleasant. This space seems to
be in my heart, but infinitely bigger than my physical body. I tried
the heart breathing at the end of my practices the last couple of
days. Though I don't consider myself to be very religious, I come
from a Christian background, and imagined breathing Christ into my
heart through my third eye, and letting whatever impurities that are
in there go up and out the eye with the out breath. Well, the inner
space is coming alive with huge waves of love and compassion, and a
sense of indescribable strength and purpose. It is amazing. I have
been walking around like this after practices too. Is this Jesus
Christ inside me? Or is it something else? Whatever it is, I want
more.


A: What a beautiful experience. It is a wonderful example of how
spinal breathing combined with deep meditation and other practices
will open the heart as part of the overall purification of the
nervous system.

This is the "heart space" we enter as our nervous system opens and
our inner sensuality begins to rise. The sanskrit word for the heart
chakra is "anahata," which means "unstruck sound." Sensory
experiences come up in the heart space out of nowhere, and can be
experienced simultaneously everywhere inside. The sounds
are "unstruck," and the inner lights are "unlit." What is in the
heart space just is, as if there is no cause and effect operating
there, just a radiation of the qualities of pure bliss consciousness
coming endlessly from within, and playing on our refined perception –
an eternal fountain of bliss inside us.

By inviting an influence into our heart space in heart breathing,
such as our ishta (chosen ideal), there will be a filling that occurs
corresponding to our openness and intention to receive truth and
harmony. We all know in everyday life that positive intentions (and
habits) expand our heart space and enliven us, and negative
intentions (and habits) contract our heart space and deaden us. With
advanced yoga practices, we are working on the opening on much deeper
levels in our nervous system. So deep that our experience moves into
the celestial realms – all contained within us. There, the negative
intentions (and habits) are melted by the pure love of our divine
qualities coming up from within, so the experiences of heart
contraction becomes less and less, even as we navigate through this
physical world where nothing lasts for very long. We continue to
expand as we naturally identify ourselves more with that inside us
which is all bliss and does not whither away.

If we have a religious background and are inclined to use an ishta
from our tradition, it can work very well for us in the heart
breathing. It will work equally well for any person sincerely longing
for truth through any tradition or belief, because it is the devotion
we have for our ideal that stimulates the purification and opening in
our heart. So too does our devotion/bhakti stimulate all of our
practices through the connectedness of yoga, as has been discussed in
previous lessons.

There is an interesting connection here with the practice of samyama,
which was first given in lesson #150. Our expanding heart space is
analogous with our expanding inner silence. We know that inner
silence (cultivated in meditation) is the vast reservoir of divine
power we let go into with our sutras during samyama practice. In
doing so, we cultivate the expansion of inner silence in many
directions according to the range of sutras we are using. This is
expanding our heart space. We stimulate the expansion of our
heart space in many ways during our routine of practices. The heart,
while not often mentioned in the lessons, lies at the center of all
we are doing in advanced yoga practices. This local spiritual energy
center we call "the heart" eventually becomes everything.

The opening heart is the means by which our inner silence, inner
sensuality and ecstatic bliss expand gradually to encompass all of
our surroundings in the physical world. Then do we experience the
entire world through our senses in the same way we experience the
heart space in these early stages of inner expansion, as you have
described. Eventually, all the world is contained within our own
expanding heart. Our outside becomes inside, and our inside becomes
outside -- a divine paradox. That is unity -- Oneness. Then when we
breathe out from our heart space, all the world is purified.

This experience may seem to be very mystical. Yet, it is rooted in
the neuro-biological transformation of our nervous system that we
cultivate through our daily practices. We are wired for it. We are
all mystics in the making.

The guru is in you.

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