ROSALIND PEARMAIN shares feelings and experiences about how consciousness evolves in the heart through human life, and how meditation allows us to access those subtler states of fluid being we knew as children.
When we see our natural world in documentary films, we are stunned and awed by the exquisite beauty of form, process and intricate complexity in biological systems. I wonder if we could see the unfolding of consciousness within human beings, we would be even more deeply moved. It could be something more dimensional than a tree growing, a crystal forming, a choir or symphony in harmony, and all in its formation creating such a beautiful wave form, a vibration, a mellifluous cadence to enhance the whole universe.
I imagine that we come from a fluid and entirely connecting flow of being-love. At birth, our soul flower enters into the density of our human vehicle of sentience. It affords a solid shock of sensory waves – the new field for our consciousness to re explore.
This field of consciousness is our shimmering, vibrant space of many felt domains that reveal our world to us.
The sphere of heart mind manifests the embodied experience of the present moment.
There are many embodied and visceral sources of experience and knowing that unfold through our awareness each day.
For a baby, they are merged into a unity of senses, feelings, emotions and the gathering grasp of meaning – always within a relational connectivity.
As language slowly offers a shorthand for these moments, we are able to exercise a more instrumental grasp of our consciousness and share this with others. At the same time, increasing coordination and motor skills open up possibilities of spatial experience in speed, in trajectory, in weight and lightness, and emerging control and direction.
Also our intellect gathers increasing discernment to apply to understanding.
Meanwhile, our sense of self is becoming more sharply edged. It is also sensed as a vulnerable, small craft floating in a vast ocean of life and the universe. It seeks to feel more secure and more solid to face its unfolding challenges.
Reflecting on this wondrous journey through childhood, we can be very moved by the openness and curiosity in children, without judgment, and the sense of their consciousness offering a space of such expansion, discovery, joy and intensity. Being immersed in the present moment allows for loss of self in the action of the game or the story.
Knowing is about body experience; moving as a snake or a bear is the most immediate way for young children to access consciousness of the experience of the animal through their heart-minds.
Yet it is a field of depth and feeling. There are terrifying monsters as well as benevolent heroes, and there are many limitations and disappointments to face as well as fun to enjoy.
Reflecting on this wondrous journey through childhood,
we can be very moved by the openness and curiosity in children,
without judgment, and the sense of their consciousness offering
a space of such expansion, discovery, joy and intensity.
As adults, increasingly we have learnt to use our shorthand maps to navigate life experiences. As left-brain devices, they give us abstract, cognitive schemas to shape and organize our present experience into predictable patterns. But the vaguer, felt, implicit background of the present moment of consciousness is often increasingly ignored in the rush of life pressures. Yet these implicit, tacit areas of consciousness are our underlying ground of relation, of meaning and depth to our evolving sense of being. They are just as important as the linear flow of doing, thinking and reacting. These moments of being may be tasted in nature, in rest, in connection with each other, and in response to music and beauty.
Meditation starts to reverse some of these processes. It allows us to put to one side the automatic categorizing and naming of the contents of our awareness into words and concepts. It allows us to sink through and dissolve the fixed patternings and shapings of our experience into more subtle and precise feelings and qualities. Different sensory experiences may be far more synaesthetic and intertwined during meditation – as they were in our infancy. We rediscover an openness and feeling base to our field of consciousness. The exquisite and mysterious heart as the subtle organ of perception and consciousness is central to this field of consciousness. It seems to operate both as a radar system and an organizing and synthesizing matrix. It integrates and brings our field of awareness into a coherent and resonant equilibrium. Its dynamic spaciousness contains everything, whether positive or negative. We are reminded of the joy of that present centered mode of awareness that we tasted as children.
As we open ourselves to this deeper, subtler ground of awareness of the heart, we start to resonate with our divine Source within. With Heartfulness Meditation, the frequency of Transmission helps to purify our heart and dissolve layers that have obscured this presence from our conscious awareness. As the sense of self becomes less hard-edged and more diffuse in this being-feeling-sensing state, we intrinsically feel nature more directly. We feel a kinship of humanness through heart connections rather than mind thoughts. We are part of things like a wave rather than a particle. Our field of feeling consciousness expands – with loving prayers and suggestions, and in meditative gatherings across the world.
This process has a quality of beauty that calls us further. It is more transparent, more delicate, more refined; reminiscent of the world we came from perhaps. Many of us recall special moments as children, where we were transported in awareness by pools of stillness, depth or wonder unexpectedly opening in nature; or in moments of worship; or in the atmosphere created by pious people with whom we came in contact. Some children’s storybooks provide a taste of these ethereal and more transparent worlds in the realms of the Faery and other magical places. We find wonderful transformational elements, such as a fire of roses in The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald, or Lothlórien in Lord of the Rings. Music is also an element that transports us to more subtle landscapes within the heart mind field.
Many of us recall special moments as children,
where we were transported in awareness by pools of stillness,
depth or wonder unexpectedly opening in nature; or in moments of
worship;
or in the atmosphere created by pious people with whom we came in
contact.
There are also the different myths and stories from different cultures that illustrate deep spiritual themes, inspiring heroics and ennobling struggles. They offer a colorful play of the human drama through the ages. They give a rich psychic ground for our symbols, imagination and intuition.
There is a kind of tension in life’s journey between the earlier eagerness to embrace the total experience of being embodied and alive and the later one of savoring simpler, subtler, beautiful essences. This is very well understood in the approach to Japanese Noh theatre.
Something inspires us to follow a spiritual way, where we direct our consciousness more and more towards the deeper, softer and plainer sense of being within our core. Something attracts us towards finer feelings and increasing balance, away from the turbulent waters we have encountered in our consciousness. We seek resonance with our inner Beloved and a larger field of consciousness is revealed by that presence at the most subtle level felt by our hearts. This can be radiated around us to include the whole field of our heart-mind consciousness.
We are no longer an isolated particle in a sea of energy. Instead we feel deeply connected with the Source of creation, with the hearts of others, with nature, and both the suffering and inspiration of humanity.
There may be glimpses of a higher perspective – how within a meditation group each one’s field of consciousness is combined to create a higher frequency of love. This can affect the whole world like a circling necklace of jewels.
Each human gift can grow and contribute to a heightened resource of synergy, more and more aligned with the divine Source. And the resulting higher vibrational frequency affects not only this world but others, too, where the laws of space and time are perhaps in a different key and there are different joys and illuminations.
How extraordinary to be afloat in this cosmic sea of consciousness, guided by our beloved, wise and revered teachers and sages, deeply grateful for life, for being within our heart Source, for being in this unfolding mystery.
Article by ROSALIND PEARMAIN
Rosalind Pearmain
Ros lives in Abingdon near Oxford, UK, and has worked with groups of all ages during her working life. She has always been interested in how we can change and transform. In recent years she has been teaching psychotherapy and qualitative... Read More
