The Sacred Pathway to the Heart By Sky Shayne Innes
Evolving to a new order of spiritual emergence.
(As appeared in InnerSelf magazine - Issue 16)
I went for a swim yesterday in the Never Never. It is always special to swim in this river. The water comes off the mountains of the Great Dividing Range and is cold and very fresh. More than this, it is water that invigorates and purifies in a wonderfully healing way. I shared this experience with a dragonfly, a black and yellow-stripped goanna and, amongst the treetops above, the sleepy, gentle call of an owl. I find it hard to put words to such experiences, precisely because they are such pure experience. To experience in this way is to stop and simply be. It’s a way of being that is deeply connected with nature; a way of being that is very organic and unpolluted. There is no ego-identity involved, just an effortless state of being.
Henry Beston, one of America’s classic nature writers, expresses so powerfully the importance of recognising our connection to nature. He says, “Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery, man ceases to be man.” I so appreciate the depth of his insight when he continues, “Man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity.” As a “kind of cosmic outlaw” we feel separate and superior to nature. We feel we have the right to use her, even abuse her in an exploitative manner that is overwhelming in its scale of harm and ignorance. Such ignorance is our fall from grace. In our egotistical ideas of superiority, we disregard Mother Nature as inferior and Earth as mere dirt. Thus, we are lost to the Garden of Eden.
Much of humanity is lost from the garden. We have lost our sense of the sacred. The wisdom of many different indigenous people has a great deal to teach us in this area. It is vital to create sacred space but please understand, there is nowhere that is not sacred in this entire universe. To create sacred space is to bring our awareness to the sacred. When working with my clients I often encourage them to create sacred space physically, emotionally and mentally. Recently I was in Bali and it was such a joy to encounter the daily ritual of offerings in their homes, shops, fields and temples. This process of honouring and respecting is a process of connecting with the divine, which for the most part is overlooked in our daily life.
This disconnect is our fall from grace. Humanity has moved away from the wisdom of the heart to the logic of the mind. The last many thousands of years have been dominated by a masculine energy of action, which has lead to an imbalance of doing and over-achieving. The feminine power of being with its heart intelligence has been lost. Now it is time for us to return to our heart and to live from it.
Consciousness is evolving to a new order that is to do with the presence of love.
This is a new spiritual emergence, without which, will be a spiritual emergency. The sacred pathway is to our heart. There is the aperture through which we access supreme intelligence, the intelligence of the universe. The intelligence of the universe is the intelligence of the heart. Our hearts are the portal to our universal self, our god self. Heart-centeredness is God-centeredness.
One of my favourite quotes from my favourite quantum physicist is, “When heart intelligence arises, it takes out the dysfunction of the mind in an instant.” We can use our willpower and struggle to overcome the dysfunction of the mind or we can experience the presence of love and heal in a natural and inspired way. Heart intelligence is intuitive, creative, insightful and brings healing and even genius. When we experience the presence of love, the past and future disappears into the here and now. We realise that we are not our stories nor our perceptions or beliefs. We are no more important than a leaf or a bug and no less important than the sun or the moon. We are no different from anything else in existence. We are the same stuff – consciousness, light, love, pure energy. The shift is from a ‘me’ consciousness to a ‘we’ consciousness.
In the presence of love, fear disappears and grace appears. This state of grace may take the form of abiding calm and serenity, healing of mind and body, insight, synchronicities and miracles. The issue now is not whether we are right or wrong, this point of view or that one. It is whether we are walking in truth and in love. We cannot be bound by the opinions and fears of others. When we get out of our fear, out of our ego-identity, out of our control and capability and into insight and harmony, that’s when we see the grace of real life-affirming change. Such grace appears, not with your head but with your heart.
The crises we face in these times calls for the transformative power of love. The concept of love’s alchemy is a concept for this time. It heralds a new way of being long forgotten and only now remembered in our hearts. To learn to experience the presence of love is the core purpose of this time on our beautiful planet Earth. This is to learn to experience respect, trust, happiness and creativity; to experience the mystery; to connect one to another and to relate in the most vital way; to dance with joy and exuberance and to shine like a billion stars cascading into the heavens. This is to learn to appreciate every precious moment of life as divine. This is the sacred pathway of the heart.
