“I don’t like
that. It should not have happened.”
Here’ s a technique for getting perspective. Put your mind in outer
space and realize that there’ s nothing out there but 99.999 percent
emptiness. Ther e’s just empty space between all the stars. Your nearest star
after the Sun is 4.2 light-years  away . To get an idea of how far that is,
imagine holding  a light beam above the Earth. Now , let it go for one second. In that one second the light circumnavigated the globe seven and a half
times. Travel at that speed every second for 4.2 years, and you’ll reach the
next star. There’ s pretty much nothing but empty space in between. We call
it interstellar space . That’ s how it is between all the stars, all over the
universe. How would you like to be out there and see nothin g? Because
that’s what 99.999 percent of the universe is. What you get every day is a
miracle! There are colors, shapes, and sounds along with all the amazing
experiences you’re given with each passing moment. Yet all you do is say,
“No, it’s not what I want.” Of course it’s not what you want. That’ s not the
point. Instead of comparing the moment in front of you against the
preferences you’ve built up inside your mind, why don’t you compare it
against nothing? Since that’ s what makes up 99.999 percent of the universe. If you do this, you’ll find yourself being thankful that you get to have
your daily experiences. They are certainly better than empty space. That’ s
how a wise person lives. The alternative is to suffer because things are not
the way you want. Previously , we discussed Buddha’ s first noble truth: All
of life is suffering. Now we get to the second noble truth: The cause of
suffering is desir e. In other words, the cause of suffering is preference,
deciding how you want things to be and getting upset when they’re not that
way. Not surprisingly , it turns out Buddha was right. Events don’t cause
mental or emotional suffering—you cause yourself mental and emotional
suffering about the events. If you are not doing that, things are the way they
are. Always remember , it took 13.8 billion years of everything unfolding
exactly as it did for the moment in front of you to be the way it is. A perfec t example of how we cause ourselves mental suffering  is how
we view our bodies. When you’re young, you look a certain way. You get
older , and you look another way. What’ s wrong with that? It’s just
miraculous. You watch your body change all by itself. That is a natural
process, and it should not cause suffering. Likewise, in this life you go
through many different experiences. They should not cause suffering.Experiences are not suffering. They are experiences. But if you decide how
you want them to be, and they’re not that way, then you suffer. Suffering is
caused by the contrast between what you mentally decided you wanted and
the reality unfolding in front of you. To whatever degree they don’t match,
you suf fer. What we’re exploring here is deeper than most people want to go, but
it is the truth. You have set up in your mind what you like and what you
don’t like based on your past impressions. Now you honestly believe the
world should be that way. Obviously , that’s not a belief founded in reality . As long as you do that, you’re going to have a very hard time in life. We now have a pretty clear view of the personal mind. We have seen
that the first layer of mind is the one that receives the senses. The second
layer is the samskaras we did not let pass through as life flowed into us. Based on this foundation, we built very personal thought pattern s of like and
dislike and how to get life to unfold the way we want. These impressions of
what we liked and disliked are so powerful that our consciousn ess becomes
completely absorbed in the model of life they generate. In fact, we focus on
it so completely  that it forms our self-concept. “I am the one who likes this,
doesn’ t like that, and I’m dead serious about getting what I want.” We are so
distracted by this model that we’re not even aware of being back there
watching all this. But we are—how else would we know it’ s going on?Chapter 18. Willful and Automatic Thoughts
You’re in there, and you have the ability to create a thought. Right now say
“Hello” inside your head. Say it over and over again. It’s doing it, isn’t it? If
you had not purposely said that word, it would not have been in your mind,
would it? You clearly have the ability to willfully make your mind create
thoughts. In general, there are two very distinct types of thoughts: willful
and automatic. The first one we’ll explore, as its name indicates, is a
thought that you willfully create. You can willfull y create thoughts in two different ways. You can create
auditory thoughts through the voice inside your head talking to you, saying
“Hello,” or you can create visualizations in your mind’ s eye. For example,
right now, visualize a boat. Do you see it in your mind? Now  visualize a
bigger boat, and an even bigger one. See the Queen Mary in there. That boat
would not be in there unless you purposely willed it to be. Once again, we
see that you clearly have the ability to make your mind create thoughts. There’ s another category of thoughts besides willful thoughts:
automatic thoughts. These are the thoughts you did not purpose ly decide to
create—they just pop into your mind on their own. You may pay attention to
them once they’re there, but you did not willfully decide to create them like
you did with the boat. The vast majority of your thoughts are automatically
generated. You’re driving down the street enjoying your day, and your mind
starts creating thoughts by itself: “Why did I have to say those  things? If I
hadn’ t said them, we might still be together . Well, that’s unlikely—we were
having problems before that.” You’re not willfully making your mind create
these thoughts. This is that voice inside your head talking on its own. If you
doubt that this is happening by itself, try stopping it for any length of time. The mind’ s stream of thoughts will return in no time.Let’s say somebody was supposed to call you at three o’clock and by
three thirty they still haven’ t called. What happens during those thirty
minutes? Your mind creates thoughts by itself. You are not willfully
deciding, “I want to worry about this. Okay , mind, start creating worrisome
thoughts. Did he have an accid ent or is he standing me up?” You’re not
doing that. Your mind is doing it all by itself. They’re not even  meaningful
thoughts—they’re destructive thoughts. They are ruining your thirty
minutes. The question becomes , if you’re going to end up waiting thirty
minutes for the person to call, why do you want to make yourself miserable? Well, technically , you’re not. Y our mind is doing it for you. If you pay attention, you will see that the mind creates most thoughts
on its own. They go on all the time. Just watch yourself in the shower . Watch yourself when you’re driving. Watch yourself whenever you take a
break from work. You’ll see the mind is constantly creating thoughts. Even
when someone is talking to you, the words may be coming in through your
senses, but you’re not totally listening to them. You’re also listening to your
mind’ s reaction to what’ s being said. You’re thinking, “I don’t agree with
that. I would never do it that way.” Your mind just made the discussion all
about you instead of what the person is saying. If you watch those
automatically generated thoughts, you’ll see they range anywhere from
funny to frightening. Regardles s, is it so smart to have all that noise going
on inside your head all the time? If you bother to pay attention to it, you’re
going to find out that it’ s not. Where do those thoughts come from? Why does the mind  create
thoughts by itself without you willfully doing it? We’ve actually already
discussed this. When you store a samskara, an unfinished mental and
emotional pattern, that pattern will not sit quietly inside of you. Anything
that ever got stored inside your mind, because you resisted or clung to it, is
trying to release . It’s an energetic reality , like Newton’ s laws of motion. The
energy cannot stay in there unless you continuously assert an opposing force
of will to keep it in there. That’s why it keeps coming back up. Mommy
yelled at you twenty-five years ago, and that hurt you. Now suddenly
somebody menti ons their mother yelling and all these emotional and mental
issues come up inside of you. Why? That blocked energy is always trying to
come up, every single millisecond. Just like in a dammed-up river, the
blockage is trying to release its pent-up energy. It is not comfortable stayinginside you, so you have to const antly assert your willpower to hold it down. How much ener gy are you wasting keeping all this garbage inside? Just as your body is always trying to expel impurities, so your mind is
trying to get these mental impurities out. That is what’ s happening when
your mind creates its own thoughts. Sometimes you will be able to trace
those thoughts back to their source; other times it’s not so easy. The
important thing to realize is there’ s always a reason why your mind creates
one thought versus another . Let’s go back to the example of someone being late with a phone call. Your mind could begin creating worrisome thoughts about what you might
have done to upset them so much that they aren’ t calling. But that is not the
meaningful question. The meaningful question is, why did that possible
reason come up versus any other? Turns out, when you were ten years old,
somebody once said, “You’re right, I didn’ t call you. It was on purpose
because I didn’ t like what you did.” Now years later, when somebody
doesn’ t call, that comes back up. What if years ago when a person didn’ t
call, the reason was they wanted to surprise you by personally coming by
with a special gift. Now when someone doesn’ t call, you feel all excited
about what might happen next. These impressions get left insid e you. They
will continuous ly try to release pent-up energy, and they will end up
determining the thoughts your mind creates on its own. This is the nature of
almost all your automatic thoughts. They are not to be seen as some
important truth or great insight into what is really going on. They are simply
your mind attempting to cleanse the patterns you have stored in there.Chapter 19. Dreams and the Subconscious
To get a better understanding of how stored mental energies get released,
let’s turn to a favorite topic of psychology: dreams. What are dreams? The
traditional Freudian concept of dreams is that some events happening
outside leave unfinished impressions in the mind. A little boy wants a
bicycle but doesn’ t get one. He goes to sleep and dreams he’s got a bicycle. The original bicycle event didn’ t sit well, so the boy pushed it away in his
mind. He suppre ssed it. When he went to sleep and was not controlling his
thoughts as much, the mind was free to release what it had not been free to
express while the boy was awake. We all experience this type of dream
fairly regularly . A charged event from the waking world finds its way into
our dream world . You are not willfully doing this. It is the mind trying to
release built-up ener gy patterns. There are all kinds of dreams . Freud called the dream we’v e been
discussing basic wish fulfillment . It is a samskara formed in the waking
mind releasing energy by creating the thoughts you watch while you’re
asleep. These thoughts that make up your dreams are not that different from
the automatic thoughts going on in your waking mind. They are certainly
much more vivid, especially in their imagery . This is because when you’re
sleeping, the mind can focus completely on creating the thoug hts. It is not
busy being distracted by the senses or the many other layers of thoughts and
emotions going on. In addition , you’re not willfully pushing the thoughts
away . This is why the mind is much more creative when you fall asleep. It
can create an entire, complex world in full 3D and Technicolor . Most people
can’t do that when they’re awake, though obviously , their minds are
perfectly capable of doing so. Once you stop suppressing uncomfortable experiences, one thing
you’re going to realize is that there really is no subconscious mind, per se.The conscious mind and the subconscious mind are actually the same one
mind, and the only reason we see a difference is because we artificially
created a division. To understan d this, imagine looking around a room of
people and saying, “The people on the right side of the room I like; I’m
comfortable with those people. The people on the left side of the room,
however , I’m very uncomfortable with them.” Having stated this, imagine
you never again look at the left side of the room because it makes you
uncomfortable. What you’ve just done is separated the room into the part
you’re comfortable with and the part you don’t want anything  to do with. The latter part exists, but no longer exists for you. That is exactly what
you’ve done to create the subconscious mind. The part of your mind you’re
not willing to look at is what we call the subconscious. Fortunately , these artificially divided parts of your mind will merge
once you stop suppressing. You will get the rest of your mind back, and you
will be able to use its full power. Imagine how much mental power you
waste by pushing all that mess into the subconscious. Then you have to keep
it down there for the rest of your life. It’s really amazing what a mess we
make because we can’ t handle the moments passing in front of us. The thoughts we push down into the subconscious play a role in both
our waking and dreaming states. The reason your mind is creating your
automatically generated dream thoughts is the same reason your mind
creates your automatically generated waking thoughts. In both cases, you
are not willfully creating this mental activity . It is happening on its own as
part of the mind’ s attempt to release blocked ener gies. The common thread between your waking and dreaming states is that
it’s the same consciousness that is aware of both. You who is watching the
dream is the same you who watches your waking thoughts and experiences
the outside world. This is why when you wake up, you can say, “What a
dream I had.” How do you know? You know because you were there—the
same you who is aware while you’re awake. Interestingly , because it is the
same you, there can be a lot of spiritual growth in dreams. Meher Baba,
another great yoga master , said that you can work off karma in your dreams. He said that by going through an experience in your dreams, it is actually
beneficial to your spiritual evolution. You’re at least allowing some blocked
energy to release that you didn’t allow while you were awake, and that is
healthy .There is a great deal we can learn about ourselves from the dream state. If what you stored in the subcon scious was more traumatic than simply not
liking what happened or not getting what you wanted, what happens? Some
things are much harder to deal with than just preferences. There are
samskaras that are so deep they can’t even come up in a dream. If they tried
to release, you would wake from a nightmare in a very disturbed state. In
other words, your consciousne ss isn’t able to experience the event even
when it manife sts in a dream. You resist and become so uncomfortable
about it that you wake up. So how does this ener gy release? Unfinished energy stored in your mind is always trying to release at
one level or another . If the release would wake you from a dream, your
mind, all by itself, symbolizes what it’s trying to express. Instead of
dreaming about the car accident  that killed your younger brother , you dream
that there are birds flying high overhead and an eagle swoops down and
takes one of the small birds away . You’re willing to watch that, but you’re
not willing to watch a car accident with someone you love dying. This is all
very real. Your mind is doing you a favor . Your brilliant mind did that in an
attempt to stay healthy and release at least some of the pent-up energy. That’ s what the symbology of dreams is about. It’s truly amazing how
brilliant your mind is when left to its own resourcefulness. Just as your body
is always trying to heal itself, so your mind is always trying to release these
impurities that are stuck in there.Chapter 20. Waking Dreams
At this point  you can certainly appreciate the tremendous power of your
mind, especially in regard to creating dreams on its own. Creatin g dreams is
not a willful act; your mind has the power to do it by itself. But as you’ve
seen, your dream s are not the only mental objects that your mind creates
automatically . The voice inside your head that talks all day is the exact same
expressive power of mind that creates your dreams. It would not be
incorrect to call that dialog in your head your waking dreams . Every
personal thing that voice says is because of the samskaras you have stored
inside. Your mind is trying to release those blockages during the day while
you’re still awake. For example, you see somebody running and that voice
says inside, “I wonder what he did wrong? It’s like my brother when he ran
away . What is this guy running away from?” The problem is that this
current situation has nothing to do with your brother , and this person could
be running for exercise. Your mind is using this opportunit y to release
energies that are pent up inside. That’ s why so much of the mind’ s dialog is
negative. The vast majority of energy you have stored inside is because of
things you didn’ t like. When subsequent events happen that stimulate these
negative samskaras, the new events are automatically experienced as
negative. In essence, the negativity keeps compounding. If you really want to see how your preferences manage to make life a
negative experience, go build a house and decide to paint the kitchen walls
white. Do you know there are more than fifty shades of white? Just wait
until you try to pick which white you want. In other words, there  is only one
tiny window of color choice that will align with your preferences and make
you happy . All the rest will get you upset. Just look at the odds you’re up
against. There are billions of things that can happen in life that don’t match
your preferences, and there are only a few that do. Under these  conditions,the probability that life is going to be a negative experience is extremely
high. This is not because life is negative. It is because the only thing that
isn’t negative to you is that which exactly matches your preferences. It is so importan t to understand this. You have set up a system in which
you can’t win. You have expanded what can bother you to include all
experiences that remind you of what bothered you before. What is more, life
almost never totally satisfies you because everything has to be exactly what
you want—to a T. This shows you the power of past and present preferences
—the more preferences you have, the less you will be okay . So far, we’ve learned a lot about mind. We began with an
understanding of empty mind. Then we discussed the here-and-now layer of
mind, which internally renders the images being received by the senses. On
top of that layer  of mind, the real trouble begins. You in there, the conscious
entity that knows you’re there, used the power of will to keep certain images
from passing right through. This resulted in the layer of mind called the
samskara layer . It holds the impressions you stored from your past that are
the basis for your personal preferences. As if it’s not enough that you built
this entire structure in your mind, you then committed your life to thinking
about how to serve it. Your consciousness is pretty lost, constantly focusing
on this false mental concept of self. Fortunately , there is a way out—it’ s called witness consciousness . If
you can learn to sit back and simply watch that voice inside your head, you
can free yourself. This is not about shutting up the voice. Don’t ever fight
with your mind. You’re the one who did this to your mind; how dare you
complain about the mind. If you keep eating food that’s making you sick, do
you yell at the food? Of course not—you change your behavior . Likewise,
since it is these stored samskara s that are messing up the greatness of your
mind, you chang e your inner behavior . The way to do this is quite simple:
release the samskaras you’ve already stored and don’t store any more. Easier said than done, but we will certainly explore how to do this. One thing comp licates our task. The mind is not the only force making
it difficult to find peace inside—there are also emotions. It’s bad enough
that the mind is constantly relea sing stored energy through that inner voice,
but the mind has a little sister , the heart. The heart can create emotions that
make it really interesting to live in there. Sometimes it’s like there are
volcanos going on inside, and other times your inner state is so beautiful
you just want to melt into it. What’ s going on with that? And moreimportantly , what can you do about it? As you might expect, that is exactly
where we’re going as we contin ue our journey into exploring what it’s like
to live inside yourself.PART V: 
The HeartChapter 21. Understanding Emotions
Examining the nature  of the world around us, as well as the nature of mind,
teaches us a lot about ourselves. One thing becomes pretty clear: it’s not
always easy living inside. The thoughts being created by the mind can be
very uncomfortable, and the world coming in through the senses can start a
veritable firestorm within. On top of all this, there is something else we
experience inside that can be even more disturbing than thoughts: emotions. Emotions are very different from thoughts, but most people don’t
bother to separate them. The combination of your thoughts and emotions
makes up what can be called your psyche , or your personal self. The psyche
is comp letely distinct from your physical body . The psyche is the
nonphysical world going on inside you. Clearly seeing the difference between your thoughts and your emotions
is very important. If you were asked to point to your thoughts, you would
not point to your toes; you would point to the area around your head. This is
because thoughts are generated  in the mind which is associated with the
brain. On the other hand, if you were asked to point to where emotions like
love come from , you would point to your heart. That’ s why valentine cards
have hearts on them and not toes—we associate the emotion of love with
our heart. That is understandable because emotions are generated by the
heart. Not just nice emotions—all emotions. If someone does something that
hurts you or makes you jealous, you feel the pain or turmoil in your heart. If
you get inspired at work, you can put your whole heart into the project. This
is not referring to your physical heart—you can’t put that into the project. What we are referring to is your spiritual heart or your energy heart, which
we will soon discuss in great depth. Your emotions are not physical. You can be standing next to someone
who is experiencing joy or sadness, and they don’t necessarily show it.Emotions are not something you see; they are something you feel. In fact,
the words “emotions” and “feelings” are interchangeable. Just like you
experience your thoughts inside, you experience your feelings inside. Nonetheless, your emotions are completely dif ferent from your thoughts. Let’s examine this difference. As we previously explored, your mind
creates thoughts and presents them to you in two different ways. One is
verbally via that voice inside your head, and the other is visually in your
mind’ s eye. Your heart communicates quite differently . Your emotions do
not talk to you verbally . They are not simply a voice inside your head
saying, “I feel so jealous.” The voice says that because you feel jealous. There is a feeling, a sensation— that is what an emotion is. That’ s why we
use the word “feelings” when we talk about our emotions, as in “He hurt my
feelings.” Sayin g this means the interaction with the person created an
emotion inside of you that was uncomfortable. Thus, you have verbal or
visual thoughts inside your mind, and you also have these totally different
things called emotions emanating from your heart. They are actually
vibrations. They  don’t form specific objects like thoughts do. They’re more
etheric. Emotions are more like clouds instead of defined objects. They
come up and can be like waves flowing over you. They flush what we call
your aura or energy body . Emotions are simply the sensation of
experiencing a change in your energy. Like Obi-W an in Star Wars put it, “I
felt a great disturbance in the Force.”
You are always having inner feelings, but you don’t notice them until
they change. Notice that you only talk about emotions when they go to the
extremes. “It hurt me tremendously . I can’t believe how you hurt me.” Or, “I
felt so much love. It was the most beautiful feeling I ever had.” These are
examples of extremes in your emotions, and they catch your attention. You
probably don’t notice it, but you have a normal state of emoti onal energy
flowing through your heart all day. When it drops out, you notice the change
and say, “My heart fell out from  under me. I lost my strength.” Your heart
can fall out from under you when fear takes over. Something happens and
the energy just drops. In contras t, you can say, “My heart has wings.” All of
a sudden the emotional energy in your heart rises up and inspires you. These
are chan ges from the steady state of emotional energy that normally flows
through your heart. As you get more and more in tune with your emotions,
you will notice that, like thoughts, emotions are almost always there.Just as with thoughts, the questions become: Who is it that feels these
emotional shifts ? How do you know you feel anger? How do you know you
feel love? You know because you are in there, and you are aware of what is
going on in there. That clarity is very deep, spiritually . You have been so
concerned about the emotions, themselves, you didn’ t realize you are the
one in there experiencing them. The goal of this journey we are taking
together is not to change your thoughts or emotions, it is for you to stay
seated in the seat of Self while accepting these dif ferent shifts that are taking
place. From this vantage point, the emotions can change, you can notice
them changing, but you don’t go anywhere. You remain the one who notices
the emotions, hears the thoughts, and looks out through the eyes. Who is
this one? This is what our journey is about. There is no spirituality
anywhere excep t in the seat of Self. Spirituality is about spirit, and the seat
of Self is spirit. When you sit back in the seat of witness consciousness, it does not
require a willful process of watc hing your emotions. Instead, it’s the simple
awareness of what is going on in there. It doesn’ t take will or effort to do
this. You are simply aware that you hear or see your thoughts and that you
feel your emotio ns. If you pay attention, you will notice emotions can be
like the sensatio n of wind flowi ng over you. Wind can be very comfortable,
like a gentle breeze. Or wind can be frightening, like a one hundred mile per
hour hurricane blowing in your face. Surely you have noticed that emotions
can be like this. It doesn’ t take effort to notice them, but it can take effort to
handle what you notice. Emotions are very sensitive vibrations emanating
from the heart, and as such they can shift very easily . The heart is much
more sensitive than the mind, and we have much less control over it. Without question, when your heart emanates a particular vibration of
energy, your mind will start talking accordingly . It’s very much like a
freshwater sprin g. If you dive down to the source of the spring, there’ s
going to be water bubbling up from the opening. When that water hits the
surface, it creates ripples and all kinds of patterns. The activity on the
surface is very different from what emanates at the source. So it is with your
heart. Your heart is releasing energy of a given vibration rate, and that
vibration rises into your mind automatically . You don’t have to first notice
that you feel jealous and then decide you had better think about it. What’ s
going on in the heart ends up in the mind as thoughts. The samskaras you
stored are trying to release their energy from the heart, and that is causingthe mind to get active. The roots of the samskaras are stored in your heart. That is where the patterns you shoved out of your mind went. They did not
dissipate. They went down further into the source of your energy flow,
which is in your heart. Very few people understand their heart. Many intellectuals just want to
keep it suppresse d because it is much too sensitive and reactive. They would
rather live in the mind because  they have more control there. Somebody
hurts you, you feel an uncomfor table emotion, and you go right to the mind
and rationalize it away: “He didn’t mean it, it’s okay . Don’ t take it so
personally .” That’s if you’re being positive. Otherwise, the negative mind
starts in, “I’m not going to put up with this. Nobody is going to talk to me
that way . Who do they think they are?” Either way , your mind is telling your
heart, “It’ s okay , I’ll take care of it.” Y ou’re simply directing your awareness
to your mind, so you don’t have to feel the difficult emotion s emanating
from your heart. Notice that consciousness can focus fully on the heart, fully on the
mind, or it can divide its aware ness between the two. When emotions are
extremely pleasant, you may have the tendency to behave irrationally
because you don’t want to shift awareness from the beauty in your heart to
the rational mind. On the other hand, when the emotions are unpleasant, you
may try to change the inner experience by letting your thoughts distract you
from what’s happening in the heart. The mind becom es a place the soul goes
to hide from the heart. To transcend this tendency to hide in either your
heart or your mind, simply realize that it is always the same conscious
awareness experiencing what is going on inside.Chapter 22. Why the Heart Opens and Closes
If you want to know your heart, first and foremo st understand that you are
not your heart—you are the experiencer of your heart. You are the
consciousness that is aware when emotions are taking place. When love
shoots up inside  of you, and you say you’re in love, what you really mean is
that you feel love coming up from your heart and bathing you. You’re
floating in the ocean of love, but you’re not the love you feel—you are the
experiencer of the love you feel. Note that so far we haven’ t considered the
role of another  person in this love experience. This is because what’ s
actually happeni ng when you begin to feel love is your heart is opening and
emanating a beautiful flow of energy. This should drive you to say, “I love
love,” but instead you say, “I love you.” That is your first clue into the role
of another person in your exper ience of love. As long as the other person’ s
presence helps your heart open , you feel love for them. If their presence
stops opening your heart, you start looking elsewhere. This is why human
relationships are so difficult. We project the source of love outside, instead
of realizing it is always inside. The actual flow of love has to do with you and your heart. It has
nothing to do with anybody else. It is an energy flow coming through your
heart that you experience inside. Undoubtedly , certain people or
circumstances can cause your heart to open or close. But the action of
opening and closing is somethin g your heart is doing, not the other person. By the time we’re done with this discussion, you will understand why this
happens. For now, let’s look at what happens if we don’t understand that
love is a totall y inner experience and we project that expe rience onto
someone else. The moment we project the source of love outside ourselves,
everything becomes personal. We tend to become possessive, and that isonly natural. We want to feel love and have projected the experience onto
another person. To keep feeling the love, we have to keep the other person. The very human emotions of jealously , need, and dependency  result from
this. Likewise, if we are feeling the flow of love and our lover does
something we don’t like, we feel closed and hurt. These are just other
feelings that can emanate from the heart. If you want to continue feeling love, you have to learn how to deal
with emotions that open and close the heart. It’s like learning  to play an
instrument. At first, you don’t know how to do it. You’re going to make
mistakes and learn from the experience. The heart is a very sophisticated
instrument that few people know  how to play. If the heart opens, they try to
possess the things that helped it open. If the heart closes, they try to protect
themselves from  the things that caused it to close. Since you have to live
with the consequ ences of your actions, it can be life changing to understand
why the heart opens and closes, and who it is that notices. You do notice that your heart opens and closes, right? Regardless of
whether a person has studied yoga, or ever meditated in their life, everyone
understands the heart can open  and close. When the heart is open, you
experience a more uplifted state than at other times. When the heart is
closed, it’s very difficult and painful to live with. Unfortunately , most
people don’t have the slightest idea what’ s going on when this happens. If
they were told right now to open their heart, they wouldn’ t know what to do. They know how to clench their fist, blink their eyes, and even create a
thought—but they don’t know how to willfully open their heart. Generally ,
the heart opens and closes on its own, and people just have to live with the
consequences. Better be careful about your heart. Y ou can get so involved in the initial
rush of energy when it opens that you get carried away . People have been
known to say, “I’m totally blow n away . I’m so in love. I don’t care where I
live. I’ll live outside in a tent as long as I’m with them.” Let’s see how long
that lasts. When  the heart closes, it becomes, “I don’t ever want  to see them
again. I don’t care what they say. I don’t even want to talk to them. I can’t
believe they did that.” If you get lost listening to the closed heart express
itself, you might not want to see where you end up. Your heart is a thing, like an appliance. It’s an appliance that emanates
vibrations of energies. Like an appliance, it needs a healthy power source. When the heart is closed, you don’t feel positive energies or a constructivepurpose. It can get pretty hard and uncomfortable in there. Sometimes it
feels like a rock inside your chest. You definitely don’t want that, so in an
attempt to avoid the experience, your mind starts making up stories of what
to do. “I’m going to leave them. They’ll be so sorry .” Can we talk honestly
about this? The generation of these thoughts is just a process that happens in
the psyche. When the heart closes, the energy flow is not strong, and this
results in negativ e thoughts. It takes energy to raise things, and that includes
the level of your thoughts. When the heart is closed for a period of time,
people can even go into deep depression. That doesn’ t happen when the
heart is open. Note that whatever state the heart is in, it feels like it’s going
to stay that way. Yet, you’ve seen at different points of your life that the
heart does change if given the chance. People get so lost in the experience of
the blocked heart that they ruin their lives over it. What the mind says when
the heart is closed is not you. It’s just the mind expressing the state of the
closed heart. Y ou are the one who notices. What if your heart is in an excited, open state? You’re just as
dangerous because you think it’s not going to change. Generally , something
is going to happ en that curbs the enthusiasm pouring through your heart. If
there is a reason  that the heart opened, then there is a reason it can close. The world keep s changing; your mind keeps changing; everything keeps
changing. Therefore, if you can point to a reason why your heart is open, be
careful—it will change. If you can point to a reason why your heart is
closed, don’t worry—it will change. If you let it, your heart will go through
fluctuations as different situatio ns cause it to open and close. When you
don’t understand this, you just react to your heart. It takes a truly great being
to understand the heart. This is because they have spent years  objectively
observing the heart’ s behavior rather than running after what it wants or
running away from what it doesn’ t want. A very important aspect of spiritual growth is understanding the
dynamics of the opening and closing of the heart. In order to fully explore
why the heart opens and close s, we must first bring our discussion to a
deeper level. We said earlier that you experience three things inside
yourself: the world coming in, the thoughts of your mind, and the emotions
of your heart. Truth is, there’ s a fourth thing you experience in there. It’s in
there all the time, but most people are so lost in the first three they don’t
focus on this fourth object of consciousness. Nevertheless, there is a very
powerful energy flow inside of you. In different cultures it has been calledby different names, such as shakti, chi, or spirit. For the purposes of our
discussion, we will use the traditional yogic term shakti. Once you quiet down enough, you will realize this energy is constantly
flowing inside of you. You sometimes even make reference to it when your
energy level suddenly changes. You say things like, “When she told me she
loved me, I got so filled with energy I was floating on a cloud. I could feel it
rushing through  me for days.” In other situations, you say, “When she told
me it was over, I hardly had the energy to drive home. It left me so drained I
couldn’ t go to work for a week.” These statements are referring to the
surface level of the energy we’re discussing. There is a much deeper , core
flow that you will experience as you transcend your personal self. It is this
deeper energy flow passing through the open heart that you experience as
the sensation of love. Because the energy can only go as high as you let it,
this beautiful love experience does not happen that often for most people. Nonetheless, there is almost always some energy flowing through your heart
creating your normal emotional state. The reason the energy flowing through the heart fluctuates so much is
because of the samskaras you’ve stored inside. You inwardly shoved away
the experiences you didn’ t like having and clung to the ones you did. These
unfinished energy patterns are real, and they act as blockages to your inner
energy flow. When your energy tries to flow up, and it is always trying to
flow up, it cann ot because it hits these blockages. The energy of the shakti
flow is much subtler than that of the samskaras—so the shakti can go no
higher . Before we delve further into the shakti flow, let’s take a look at what
happens when a blockage gets hit, or activated, by a life expe rience. You
may never have thought about it, but you know all too well what happens. When any particular blockage gets hit, the energy held in that blockage
activates, and you start feeling the emotions and thinking the thoughts that
are associated with the past expe rience. Your inner state becomes dominated
by the unfinished energy pattern s stored inside, and you become totally lost
in them. In this state, you are not in charge of your thoughts or emotions. Nor are you in charge of the opening or closing of your heart. The activated
samskara has taken over your life. If you’re not careful, it will determine
your future by the choices you make in that unclear state. Here’ s an examp le of what the mind sounds like when a samskara has
been hit: “I can’t believe he said that. My father used to say stuff like that tome, and I hated it. That’ s why I left home so young. No way I’m going
through that again. I don’t need  to be in a relationship with someone who
reminds me of my father .” As logical as that may sound—it’ s not. This
person you are interacting with is not your father , and if you didn’ t have
those samskaras  left from your relationship with your father , you would
probably be handling your current relationship much better . In the truest
sense, what was said didn’ t bother you—it hit the samskara, and the
activated samsk ara bothered you. Regardless, to protect yourself from the
disturbance, you closed your heart. Your samskaras  are what cause your
heart to open and close.Chapter 23: 
Dance of the Energy Flow
There is a very important interaction between the energy flow and your
blockages. The energy is trying to come up, but it can’t because you stored
these unfinished patterns from the past. It is these past impressions that
determine your preferences in life. If someone manages to stimulate a
negative past impression, you will not like them. If they manage to stimulate
a positive past impression, it may be love at first sight. It is very dangerous
to live this way—you are not in charge of your life, your past impressions
are. If you work on yourself, there will come a time when you fully
understand your heart. When you have let go of enough blocked energy
patterns, you will begin to expe rience so much energy flowing inside that
you will understand firsthand what the Bible means by “…out of his heart
will flow rivers of living water”  (John 7:38 NKJV). There will be a constant
upward flow of energy coursing  through your entire system. When you get
really open, it will flow out various energy centers like your heart, the point
between your eyebrows, and the palms of your hands. You will become a
being of light, a being of energy. That is when the energy is free to flow—
when it is not obstructed by these personal blockages. We’re going to
discuss this in later chapters, but mentioning it now allows you to
understand why your heart opens and closes in certain situations. The reason
should be obvio us by now—the state of your heart is dependent upon what
samskaras are being activated at any given time. Whenever you shove an obstacl e into any energy flow, it will create a
disturbance in the flow. It is these disturbances that you experience as
emotions. Let’s say you were very open and feeling a clean flow of love
through your heart. Then your lover said something you took offense to, and
you resisted. Your heart will no longer feel love; instead it will feel anger ,fear, or jealousy . These disturbing energy patterns are the direct result of
you shoving a blockage into your heart’ s energy flow. All these emotions
are the same energy manifesting differently depending upon the nature of
the blockage being hit. It is interesting that we choose to give names to
these disturbanc es. Just look at all the names we give to our different
emotions. So far we’ve discussed the energy flow hitting just one blockage at a
time. The more blockages there are, the more complicated the disturbances
will become. Eventually , the disturbances will start to hit each other and
create very complex patterns of energy. This is what it’s like to live inside
ourselves. This is why emotion s are so powerful and often complex. You
can have  a love/hate relationship with something because you have patterns
inside that can generate different energy flows at different times. Whatever
samskara is most activated at any given time will determine what is
affecting your energy flow the most. We are very complex creatures to
predict, and this is why . Unfortunately , things can get even worse. At some point, enough
samskaras can be shoved into the heart so that you become totally blocked,
tired, and completely uninspired. Your naturally uplifting energy flow stops
supporting you. This is the power of these samskaras. They totally run our
lives. Remember that your energy is always trying to flow. The only reason it
can’t is because it’s blocked. Like in a dammed-up river, the flow tries to
find a way around the blockages. To the extent that some energy can
navigate around a blockage, you will feel some strength. But that energy
flow is condition ed by its ability  to continue flowing that way. If something
happens that stimulates yet another stored blockage, the energy flow will be
affected accordingly . This is why people have so many moods and why they
cannot be trusted to remain steady in their behavior . By the time the energy
flow manages to find a narrow pathway around all that stuff we have stored
inside, we becom e very narrow-minded about how the world needs to be to
support that flow. Our entire personality , with its very particul ar likes and
dislikes, is simply the expression of the pathway the energy managed to
find. Our ability  to feel love, joy, and inspiration is determin ed by how
much ener gy makes it through the blockages. Now you understand why your heart is so sensitive. Depending upon
how well the energy can navigate around the stored blockages , your heartwill open or close. Pay attention to this. Otherwise, you’re going to let the
opening and closing of your heart run your life. If you’re talking to someone
and they start discussing a subject that you have blockages about, your heart
may start to close. If your reaction is to walk away and avoid that person in
the futur e, the blockages are running your life. Similarly , if someone starts
talking to you about a subject that opens you up, all of a sudden they’re your
best buddy and you want to hang out with them more. Letting this opening and closing of your heart run your life is certainly
not spiritual. You’re not being true to yourself—you’re being true to your
blockages. That’ s all your psych e is. Your psyche is the net result of all your
blockages and how the energy manages to flow through them. As the
fluctuations in the energy flow cause your heart to change, your thoughts
will change. It’s actually very sad because you will end up lost in there. Those stored blockages will dominate your life, and that is no way to live. You won’ t go anywhere meanin gful; you’ll just go around in circles. There
is no actual purpose, intent, or direction to such a life—except to minimize
the suffering and get a periodic  rush. These samskaras are from the past. They are things that happened to you in your past that you were not able to
handle. Now they are determining your present, and they will determine
your future if you are not careful. We could not be discussing anything more important. These stored
patterns are going to determine where you go, what inspires you, who you
marry , and whether you get divorced. You’re not determinin g your path
through life—they are. Until you get very centered in witness
consciousness, you are going to follow your thoughts and emotions, and
they are determined by your samskaras. Surely you’ve been there. All that
has to happen is for the energy patterns flowing through the heart to shift,
and everything changes. Next thing you know , you’re leaving your spouse
or your job. These stored patterns represent the lowest part of your being. They are the result of you not being mature enough, or evolved  enough, to
handle the passing events in your life. These patterns became stuck in you
and are now determining your energy flow and your entire perception of
life. Understanding the effects of these blockages helps explain why it’s so
difficult to make personal decis ions. What you’re trying to see is how one
choice or the other will make you feel. “Should I marry this person, or
should I wait until I establish my career?” You’re using these thoughts tosee how the different choices will shift the flow of your energy through your
blockages. The problem is you have so many conflicting blockag es stored in
there that what to do is not clear . Of course it’s not clear; you’re consulting
your inner mess and expecting  a clear response. All the while, you are
noticing that these thoughts and emotions keep shifting inside. The
important questi on is not what to do about this, it is: Who is noticing all
this? The same consciousness is aware of this entire proces s going on
inside. There may be many samskaras in there, but there are not many of
you in there. There is only one consciousness watching all these competing
patterns and identifying with them. When you become one integrate d seer—the single witness watching all
these different things pass by inside—you are centered. You are clear . You
are free. But when you don’t sit in the seat of the witness, and your sense of
being is split amongst all these diverse inner patterns, things become very
confusing. It’s almost as though each path the energy takes through your
field of samskaras creates a slightly different personality . You’re one person
around this friend and you’re another person around someone else. You can
even have totally different inner dialogs going on when you’re around
different people. Look at what happens when you go to your childhood
home or a high school reunion. The surroundings stimulate past samskaras,
and you begin to think and feel the way you used to in that environment. Amazingly , in these situations  you feel completely at home with these
different versions of yourself. People in this state struggle to find themselves. They feel they must
choose which of these personalities is really them. The answer is quite clear:
none of them are you. Please don’t pick one of them and let that choice
determine your life. None of your thoughts are more you than any other
thought. You are the one who is experiencing the thoughts. There’ s not a
single thing about those shifting ener gy patterns that is you. It is certainly difficult knowing what to do when all that inner
commotion going on. The only lasting solution is to realize that it’ s the same
you noticing all of it. You are the one who is aware that your thoughts and
emotions are shifting. It happens  to us all the time. Just relax and be the one
who notices. Be the One who sees the many—this is the path to self-
realization.Chapter 24. The Cause of Moods and Emotions
Emotions are generated  when your core energy flow hits a blockage. To
understand this, imagine walki ng up to a stream that’s flowing with no
impediments. There are no rocks or other obstacles in the streambed. Under
these conditions , the water in the stream is going to flow in a very even,
undisturbed manner . There will be no eddies, sprays, or intersecting
currents. This clear stream is analogous to your core energy flow, the shakti. Both of these flows are perfectly pure and constantly flowing when in their
natural state. What if we put a rock into the pure flow of the stream? All of a
sudden there are noticeable disturbances. There are eddies, split currents,
and a spray where the flow hits the rock. Just that one rock caused a
disturbance in the force. The same thing happens if we put blockages in the
flow of shakti. These blockages—these samskaras—create obstacles to the
shakti flow, and as such, create disturbances in the flow. These inner ripples,
sprays, and eddies, combined with the release of the disturbed energy stored
within the samskara, are what we call emotions. An emot ion is caused by the
shakti hitting the blockages in your heart and shooting out to release the
blocked energies. This creates enough disturbance to your normal flow that
your attention gets drawn to these disturbed energies. Emotions are a release
of blocked ener gy. This goes for both negative and positive emotions. Remember that samskaras got stored in there for a reaso n—you
couldn’ t handle the experience that happened. These blockage s may have
been in there for years, even decades, and when something hits them, they
become activate d and start to release their pent-up energy. By definition, the
resultant emotio ns and thoughts will be very personal to you. After all,
you’re the one who held the blockage inside to begin with. You walk into a
kitchen, smell a smell, and your entire state changes because it smells like
what your mother used to cook. Just a smell, and suddenly a powerfulchange will come over you. Your heart will get softer or harder , depending
on how you interacted with your mother . Most of the time, you have no idea
what is happening. You just buy into the shift of your emotions and behave
accordingly . You can now understand where your moods come from. When you
reach a state of clarity , there are no moods. There is just the beauty of the
clean energy flow feeding you day and night. In later chapters we’re going
to discuss what it’s like to get clean, to get clear , to live in a state where you
are always high. Until you reach that state, it’s just one mood after another
as the ener gy shifts due to these stored patterns. From a yogic point of view , here’s what happens on a daily basis in our
lives. The energy flow comes up, and as it approaches the heart it can do
one of three things. First, if the energy is totally blocked by the samskaras
while trying to go into the heart, you won’ t feel your heart. A lot of people
don’t feel their heart very much . They are so used to focusing on their mind
that they don’t notice the shifts in the heart until those shifts are too strong
to ignore. Emotions are messy and much too sensitive, so people suppress
them. They want to be analytic al, not emotional. No one told these people
that if they bothered to do the work necessary to clean out the heart, the
increased energy flow coming into the mind would result in more
inspiration, more creativity , and more intuitive brilliance. A second thing can happen with energy coming into the heart. It can
make it in and begin hitting the blockages stored there. This tends to make
you moody and more sensitive to what is going on around you. Every once
in a while, however , things will line up just right, and your heart will get
quiet. Somebody is in front of you and somehow the way they look, the way
they talk, or something else about them stimulates and rearranges your
samskaras just right. “Her hair looks like my sister ’s hair, and I really got
along with my sister . Look at those glasses. They’re just like the ones my
favorite actress wore in my favorite movie of all time. This is definitely my
kind of person.” The next thing you know , you’re saying out loud, “People
told me nice things about you, and I was really excited to meet you. Now
that I see you, it’s way beyond anything I expected.” So it begins—love at
first sight. The words are right, the hair is right, the glasses are right. Everything is opening you. You don’t have to do anything—it’ s all
happening by itself. The stimuli coming in through your senses are
rearranging the samskaras just right to create an opening for the energy tocome up. As the energy comes up into the heart, it has the opportunity to
flow out and connect with what caused it to open. Now we’re talking about a very personal and sensitive subject. Have
you ever felt the energy start to flow out of your heart? Have you ever felt
your heart connect with another person? It’s as if there were an energy flow
tying two hearts together . People who are in love can just sit together not
even talking while that beautifu l, connected flow is happening. It’s almost
as if nothing in this world is as beautiful as that sensation of energy pouring
out through the heart and connecting with someone. From a yogic point of
view , what you are experiencing is shakti pouring out of the fourth energy
center , the heart chakra,  of your energy system. Though this heart center is
really beautiful, it is actually not so high, since there are seven such chakras
that control your inner energy flow. The yogi understands that if all the
energy goes out through the heart center it will not have the power to reach
the higher centers. What you will come to realize  is that the chakras are like a T-pipe
fitting. At the bottom there is an entry  point for the energy, and it could be
open or blocked. If it is blocked, no energy will enter that center . If it is
open, the energy will come up into the center and attempt to flow right
through. Should the upper pathway be blocked, however , the energy will
flow out horizontally and connect with whatever stimulated the opening
experience. Now  as human beings, we really like that experience of energy
flowing out through the heart. In fact, we don’t call it like, we call it love. That experience is human love, and don’t worry , spirituality has no intention
of taking this away from you. It’s beautiful; just know that there is a higher
expression of love.This leads us to the third thing that can happen when the energy rises
up toward the heart—it can make it all the way through. At this point in our
journey , all you have to underst and is if the energy makes it past the fourth
center , there are energy experi ences way higher than human love. This
doesn’ t mean you don’t experie nce connection with people and things. You
actually connect at a much deeper level. People who say the human
connection experience is the meaning of life have not experienced the
higher centers. That’ s like saying food is the meaning of life or intimacy is
the meaning of life. Yes, these are beautiful experiences, but they are
conditional, and they can come and go. The meaning of life is much deeper
than that. There are much higher energy centers you are capable of experi encing,
and the further you go into these centers, the more beautiful all of life
becomes. But if you can’t work with the heart center , you will never know
the higher centers even exist. To begin to work with the heart, you must first
be able to object ively watch as it opens and closes. What you will see is that
the store d patter ns from your past are getting activated by outside situations
and causing the heart to open or close. Take our example of love at first sight. If you had met the same person
three days earlier when you were in a bad mood, your heart might not have
opened. If you hadn’ t seen the movie with the actress she reminded you of,
she might not have hit you just right. The bottom line is that you have
blockages stored inside, and they are going to determine your level of
openness in any given situation. All it takes is one word said in just the right
way, and the heart will open. Likewise, all it takes is one word said in just
the wron g way, and the heart will close. We all have differen t samskaras,
and we are taking on new ones all the time. That is why what turns one
person on, turns another perso n off. It is also why the heart behaves
differently for the same person at dif ferent times. It’ s hard to believe that our
moods, attractions, and repulsion s are so dependent on our past, but it’s true. In our normal state, we’re not paying any attention to what’ s going on—
we’re just being tossed around by it.Chapter 25. The Secrets of the Heart
We are now ready  to go deeper into the secrets of the heart. From our earlier
explorations, you recognize that the energy can flow out for a while and
create the sensation of love. You also understand that since the opening of
the heart is conditional upon the state of blockages, the energy flow itself is
conditional and generally will not last. Yet it is possible to expe rience great
love all the time. All it requir es is a willingness to work on yourself to
remove the reason your heart tends to close. For examp le, imagine
somebody dies who means a great deal to you. Your spouse can’t go to the
funeral with you because of some important work. You may deeply resent
that. In fact, if you’re not careful, you may resent that for the rest of your
life. You’re playing with fire when you play with these blockag es. You may
lay the groundw ork that will eventually diminish or even destroy your
relationship with your significant other . This is not a game—storing
samskaras is serious business, and it has serious consequences. If you want
love to last, learn to handle these situations better . This is a secret of the
heart that is best to remember . Another very important thing to understand about the outward flow of
energy through the heart is that it literally makes a connection with the other
person. This connection is real, and you become attached as the energy is
exchanged between you. This is not a physical attachment to one another;
this is a reliance  on the energy flowing between your hearts that is feeding
you both ener getically . Let’s look at this in detail. Your heart was closed because  stored
patterns from your past were blocking the energy flow. Someone shows up
whose qualities and characteris tics hit you just right so the energy finds a
path around one of your major blockages. The blockage is not gone, but a
pathway has opened up allowin g the energy to flow out through the heart.That energy goes out toward the other person, and the other person’ s energy
goes out toward you. With the help of another person, you have managed to
experience what  you would be experiencing if the original block age was not
there. Perhaps you used to think people didn’ t like you and that you were
not very attracti ve. Someone shows up who always admires you and looks
at you with tremendous love. It makes you feel so comfortable that you melt
in their gaze. It’s unbelievable. You don’t feel that weirdness you used to
feel all the time. Though this is really beautiful , unfortunately the samskara that was
blocking your energy flow is still there. The energy found a way around it,
but only as long as the energy exchange with this person is still working. It’s
like putting a jumper in an electr ical circuit. You bypassed the sam skara, but
now you are very attached to and dependent on that person. If they start to
leave you, or if you even think about losing them, you will feel that original
samskara again  in all its glory . You will feel the underlying fear and
weirdness you used to feel, and it may even be stronger than before. In other
words, you’ve tied your energy flow to somebody else, and the state of your
heart is now dependent upon their behavior . Surely you have noticed this
pattern numerous times in your life. This is called human love. It is very
beautiful, but fortunately , there is a much higher form of love that is
unconditional and can last forever . The greatest secret of the heart is revealed when you get rid of the
samskaras instead of finding a way around them. If you get rid of the
blockages that are restricting the energy from flowing into and through your
heart, you will feel love all the time. It will always be brimming through
you. Once you reach that state,  if you simply wave your hand in front of
your heart, you will feel waves of ecstatic love pour through you. That’ s
how easy it will be to experienc e love. Love will become the core of your
being. Now , go share it. By all means, share the beautiful love you are
feeling. You will be able to do this without attachment or need because your
love is not dependent upon anyone or anything else. You are whole and
complete within  yourself. We call that self-effulgence . To reach this great
state, you must do the necessary work on yourself to release your samskaras
instead of constantly trying to find a way around them. You now understand much more  about the inner workings of the heart. Thus far we’ve focused on how the energy can flow through the lower part
of the heart or be blocked from doing so. We can call this lower part of theheart the human heart because depending upon how open it is, the energy
flow can create the entire range of human emotions. Energy blocked in the
lower part of the heart can be experienced as feelings of jealousy , insecurity ,
or pangs  of yearning. Even ange r is the result of a strong energy flow hitting
blockages in the heart and shooting out. On the other hand, if the heart is
open enough for the energy to make it to the middle of the heart chakra
where it can flow out horizontally , the energy will be experienced as human
love. It’s all the same energy doing this—the only difference  is how it’s
blocked. There is anothe r level of the heart that can be experienced when the
upward energy flow is strong enough to pass through the middle  of the heart
without going out horizontally . The samskaras have to be thinned out
enough, and the flow must be strong enough to pierce the middle section of
the heart  chakra. When this happ ens, the energy pours into the higher part of
the heart and generates a permanent experience of pure love, strength, and
overall well-being. Now we’ve moved out of the human heart and into what
is truly the spiritual heart. When the shakt i flows through that higher part of
the fourth chak ra, you will start to feel what has been described as the
presence of God. This is what the great saints experienced. At this point you
no longer experience yourself as human—you experience yourself as a
being of energy. You will start to feel love as a natural force in the universe.
Living-Untethered-by-Michael-Singer.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        “I don’t like
that. It should not have happened. ”
Here’ s a technique for getting perspective. Put your mind in outer
space and realize that there’ s nothing out there but 99. 999 percent
emptiness. Ther e’s just empty space between all the stars. Your nearest star
after the Sun is 4. 2 light-years  away. To get an idea of how far that is,
imagine holding  a light beam above the Earth. Now, let it go for one second. In that one second the light circumnavigated the globe seven and a half
times. Travel at that speed every second for 4. 2 years, and you’ll reach the
next star. There’ s pretty much nothing but empty space in between. We call
it interstellar space. That’ s how it is between all the stars, all over the
universe. How would you like to be out there and see nothin g. Because
that’s what 99. 999 percent of the universe is. What you get every day is a
miracle. There are colors, shapes, and sounds along with all the amazing
experiences you’re given with each passing moment. Yet all you do is say,
“No, it’s not what I want. ” Of course it’s not what you want. That’ s not the
point. Instead of comparing the moment in front of you against the
preferences you’ve built up inside your mind, why don’t you compare it
against nothing. Since that’ s what makes up 99. 999 percent of the universe. If you do this, you’ll find yourself being thankful that you get to have
your daily experiences. They are certainly better than empty space. That’ s
how a wise person lives. The alternative is to suffer because things are not
the way you want. Previously, we discussed Buddha’ s first noble truth: All
of life is suffering. Now we get to the second noble truth: The cause of
suffering is desir e. In other words, the cause of suffering is preference,
deciding how you want things to be and getting upset when they’re not that
way. Not surprisingly, it turns out Buddha was right. Events don’t cause
mental or emotional suffering—you cause yourself mental and emotional
suffering about the events. If you are not doing that, things are the way they
are. Always remember, it took 13. 8 billion years of everything unfolding
exactly as it did for the moment in front of you to be the way it is. A perfec t example of how we cause ourselves mental suffering  is how
we view our bodies. When you’re young, you look a certain way. You get
older, and you look another way. What’ s wrong with that. It’s just
miraculous. You watch your body change all by itself. That is a natural
process, and it should not cause suffering. Likewise, in this life you go
through many different experiences. They should not cause suffering. Experiences are not suffering. They are experiences. But if you decide how
you want them to be, and they’re not that way, then you suffer. Suffering is
caused by the contrast between what you mentally decided you wanted and
the reality unfolding in front of you. To whatever degree they don’t match,
you suf fer. What we’re exploring here is deeper than most people want to go, but
it is the truth. You have set up in your mind what you like and what you
don’t like based on your past impressions. Now you honestly believe the
world should be that way. Obviously, that’s not a belief founded in reality. As long as you do that, you’re going to have a very hard time in life. We now have a pretty clear view of the personal mind. We have seen
that the first layer of mind is the one that receives the senses. The second
layer is the samskaras we did not let pass through as life flowed into us. Based on this foundation, we built very personal thought pattern s of like and
dislike and how to get life to unfold the way we want. These impressions of
what we liked and disliked are so powerful that our consciousn ess becomes
completely absorbed in the model of life they generate. In fact, we focus on
it so completely  that it forms our self-concept. “I am the one who likes this,
doesn’ t like that, and I’m dead serious about getting what I want. ” We are so
distracted by this model that we’re not even aware of being back there
watching all this. But we are—how else would we know it’ s going on. Chapter 18. Willful and Automatic Thoughts
You’re in there, and you have the ability to create a thought. Right now say
“Hello” inside your head. Say it over and over again. It’s doing it, isn’t it. If
you had not purposely said that word, it would not have been in your mind,
would it. You clearly have the ability to willfully make your mind create
thoughts. In general, there are two very distinct types of thoughts: willful
and automatic. The first one we’ll explore, as its name indicates, is a
thought that you willfully create. You can willfull y create thoughts in two different ways. You can create
auditory thoughts through the voice inside your head talking to you, saying
“Hello,” or you can create visualizations in your mind’ s eye. For example,
right now, visualize a boat. Do you see it in your mind. Now  visualize a
bigger boat, and an even bigger one. See the Queen Mary in there. That boat
would not be in there unless you purposely willed it to be. Once again, we
see that you clearly have the ability to make your mind create thoughts. There’ s another category of thoughts besides willful thoughts:
automatic thoughts. These are the thoughts you did not purpose ly decide to
create—they just pop into your mind on their own. You may pay attention to
them once they’re there, but you did not willfully decide to create them like
you did with the boat. The vast majority of your thoughts are automatically
generated. You’re driving down the street enjoying your day, and your mind
starts creating thoughts by itself: “Why did I have to say those  things. If I
hadn’ t said them, we might still be together. Well, that’s unlikely—we were
having problems before that. ” You’re not willfully making your mind create
these thoughts. This is that voice inside your head talking on its own. If you
doubt that this is happening by itself, try stopping it for any length of time. The mind’ s stream of thoughts will return in no time. Let’s say somebody was supposed to call you at three o’clock and by
three thirty they still haven’ t called. What happens during those thirty
minutes. Your mind creates thoughts by itself. You are not willfully
deciding, “I want to worry about this. Okay, mind, start creating worrisome
thoughts. Did he have an accid ent or is he standing me up. ” You’re not
doing that. Your mind is doing it all by itself. They’re not even  meaningful
thoughts—they’re destructive thoughts. They are ruining your thirty
minutes. The question becomes, if you’re going to end up waiting thirty
minutes for the person to call, why do you want to make yourself miserable. Well, technically, you’re not. Y our mind is doing it for you. If you pay attention, you will see that the mind creates most thoughts
on its own. They go on all the time. Just watch yourself in the shower. Watch yourself when you’re driving. Watch yourself whenever you take a
break from work. You’ll see the mind is constantly creating thoughts. Even
when someone is talking to you, the words may be coming in through your
senses, but you’re not totally listening to them. You’re also listening to your
mind’ s reaction to what’ s being said. You’re thinking, “I don’t agree with
that. I would never do it that way. ” Your mind just made the discussion all
about you instead of what the person is saying. If you watch those
automatically generated thoughts, you’ll see they range anywhere from
funny to frightening. Regardles s, is it so smart to have all that noise going
on inside your head all the time. If you bother to pay attention to it, you’re
going to find out that it’ s not. Where do those thoughts come from. Why does the mind  create
thoughts by itself without you willfully doing it. We’ve actually already
discussed this. When you store a samskara, an unfinished mental and
emotional pattern, that pattern will not sit quietly inside of you. Anything
that ever got stored inside your mind, because you resisted or clung to it, is
trying to release. It’s an energetic reality, like Newton’ s laws of motion. The
energy cannot stay in there unless you continuously assert an opposing force
of will to keep it in there. That’s why it keeps coming back up. Mommy
yelled at you twenty-five years ago, and that hurt you. Now suddenly
somebody menti ons their mother yelling and all these emotional and mental
issues come up inside of you. Why. That blocked energy is always trying to
come up, every single millisecond. Just like in a dammed-up river, the
blockage is trying to release its pent-up energy. It is not comfortable stayinginside you, so you have to const antly assert your willpower to hold it down. How much ener gy are you wasting keeping all this garbage inside. Just as your body is always trying to expel impurities, so your mind is
trying to get these mental impurities out. That is what’ s happening when
your mind creates its own thoughts. Sometimes you will be able to trace
those thoughts back to their source; other times it’s not so easy. The
important thing to realize is there’ s always a reason why your mind creates
one thought versus another. Let’s go back to the example of someone being late with a phone call. Your mind could begin creating worrisome thoughts about what you might
have done to upset them so much that they aren’ t calling. But that is not the
meaningful question. The meaningful question is, why did that possible
reason come up versus any other. Turns out, when you were ten years old,
somebody once said, “You’re right, I didn’ t call you. It was on purpose
because I didn’ t like what you did. ” Now years later, when somebody
doesn’ t call, that comes back up. What if years ago when a person didn’ t
call, the reason was they wanted to surprise you by personally coming by
with a special gift. Now when someone doesn’ t call, you feel all excited
about what might happen next. These impressions get left insid e you. They
will continuous ly try to release pent-up energy, and they will end up
determining the thoughts your mind creates on its own. This is the nature of
almost all your automatic thoughts. They are not to be seen as some
important truth or great insight into what is really going on. They are simply
your mind attempting to cleanse the patterns you have stored in there. Chapter 19. Dreams and the Subconscious
To get a better understanding of how stored mental energies get released,
let’s turn to a favorite topic of psychology: dreams. What are dreams. The
traditional Freudian concept of dreams is that some events happening
outside leave unfinished impressions in the mind. A little boy wants a
bicycle but doesn’ t get one. He goes to sleep and dreams he’s got a bicycle. The original bicycle event didn’ t sit well, so the boy pushed it away in his
mind. He suppre ssed it. When he went to sleep and was not controlling his
thoughts as much, the mind was free to release what it had not been free to
express while the boy was awake. We all experience this type of dream
fairly regularly. A charged event from the waking world finds its way into
our dream world. You are not willfully doing this. It is the mind trying to
release built-up ener gy patterns. There are all kinds of dreams. Freud called the dream we’v e been
discussing basic wish fulfillment. It is a samskara formed in the waking
mind releasing energy by creating the thoughts you watch while you’re
asleep. These thoughts that make up your dreams are not that different from
the automatic thoughts going on in your waking mind. They are certainly
much more vivid, especially in their imagery. This is because when you’re
sleeping, the mind can focus completely on creating the thoug hts. It is not
busy being distracted by the senses or the many other layers of thoughts and
emotions going on. In addition, you’re not willfully pushing the thoughts
away. This is why the mind is much more creative when you fall asleep. It
can create an entire, complex world in full 3D and Technicolor. Most people
can’t do that when they’re awake, though obviously, their minds are
perfectly capable of doing so. Once you stop suppressing uncomfortable experiences, one thing
you’re going to realize is that there really is no subconscious mind, per se. The conscious mind and the subconscious mind are actually the same one
mind, and the only reason we see a difference is because we artificially
created a division. To understan d this, imagine looking around a room of
people and saying, “The people on the right side of the room I like; I’m
comfortable with those people. The people on the left side of the room,
however, I’m very uncomfortable with them. ” Having stated this, imagine
you never again look at the left side of the room because it makes you
uncomfortable. What you’ve just done is separated the room into the part
you’re comfortable with and the part you don’t want anything  to do with. The latter part exists, but no longer exists for you. That is exactly what
you’ve done to create the subconscious mind. The part of your mind you’re
not willing to look at is what we call the subconscious. Fortunately, these artificially divided parts of your mind will merge
once you stop suppressing. You will get the rest of your mind back, and you
will be able to use its full power. Imagine how much mental power you
waste by pushing all that mess into the subconscious. Then you have to keep
it down there for the rest of your life. It’s really amazing what a mess we
make because we can’ t handle the moments passing in front of us. The thoughts we push down into the subconscious play a role in both
our waking and dreaming states. The reason your mind is creating your
automatically generated dream thoughts is the same reason your mind
creates your automatically generated waking thoughts. In both cases, you
are not willfully creating this mental activity. It is happening on its own as
part of the mind’ s attempt to release blocked ener gies. The common thread between your waking and dreaming states is that
it’s the same consciousness that is aware of both. You who is watching the
dream is the same you who watches your waking thoughts and experiences
the outside world. This is why when you wake up, you can say, “What a
dream I had. ” How do you know. You know because you were there—the
same you who is aware while you’re awake. Interestingly, because it is the
same you, there can be a lot of spiritual growth in dreams. Meher Baba,
another great yoga master, said that you can work off karma in your dreams. He said that by going through an experience in your dreams, it is actually
beneficial to your spiritual evolution. You’re at least allowing some blocked
energy to release that you didn’t allow while you were awake, and that is
healthy. There is a great deal we can learn about ourselves from the dream state. If what you stored in the subcon scious was more traumatic than simply not
liking what happened or not getting what you wanted, what happens. Some
things are much harder to deal with than just preferences. There are
samskaras that are so deep they can’t even come up in a dream. If they tried
to release, you would wake from a nightmare in a very disturbed state. In
other words, your consciousne ss isn’t able to experience the event even
when it manife sts in a dream. You resist and become so uncomfortable
about it that you wake up. So how does this ener gy release. Unfinished energy stored in your mind is always trying to release at
one level or another. If the release would wake you from a dream, your
mind, all by itself, symbolizes what it’s trying to express. Instead of
dreaming about the car accident  that killed your younger brother, you dream
that there are birds flying high overhead and an eagle swoops down and
takes one of the small birds away. You’re willing to watch that, but you’re
not willing to watch a car accident with someone you love dying. This is all
very real. Your mind is doing you a favor. Your brilliant mind did that in an
attempt to stay healthy and release at least some of the pent-up energy. That’ s what the symbology of dreams is about. It’s truly amazing how
brilliant your mind is when left to its own resourcefulness. Just as your body
is always trying to heal itself, so your mind is always trying to release these
impurities that are stuck in there. Chapter 20. Waking Dreams
At this point  you can certainly appreciate the tremendous power of your
mind, especially in regard to creating dreams on its own. Creatin g dreams is
not a willful act; your mind has the power to do it by itself. But as you’ve
seen, your dream s are not the only mental objects that your mind creates
automatically. The voice inside your head that talks all day is the exact same
expressive power of mind that creates your dreams. It would not be
incorrect to call that dialog in your head your waking dreams. Every
personal thing that voice says is because of the samskaras you have stored
inside. Your mind is trying to release those blockages during the day while
you’re still awake. For example, you see somebody running and that voice
says inside, “I wonder what he did wrong. It’s like my brother when he ran
away. What is this guy running away from. ” The problem is that this
current situation has nothing to do with your brother, and this person could
be running for exercise. Your mind is using this opportunit y to release
energies that are pent up inside. That’ s why so much of the mind’ s dialog is
negative. The vast majority of energy you have stored inside is because of
things you didn’ t like. When subsequent events happen that stimulate these
negative samskaras, the new events are automatically experienced as
negative. In essence, the negativity keeps compounding. If you really want to see how your preferences manage to make life a
negative experience, go build a house and decide to paint the kitchen walls
white. Do you know there are more than fifty shades of white. Just wait
until you try to pick which white you want. In other words, there  is only one
tiny window of color choice that will align with your preferences and make
you happy. All the rest will get you upset. Just look at the odds you’re up
against. There are billions of things that can happen in life that don’t match
your preferences, and there are only a few that do. Under these  conditions,the probability that life is going to be a negative experience is extremely
high. This is not because life is negative. It is because the only thing that
isn’t negative to you is that which exactly matches your preferences. It is so importan t to understand this. You have set up a system in which
you can’t win. You have expanded what can bother you to include all
experiences that remind you of what bothered you before. What is more, life
almost never totally satisfies you because everything has to be exactly what
you want—to a T. This shows you the power of past and present preferences
—the more preferences you have, the less you will be okay. So far, we’ve learned a lot about mind. We began with an
understanding of empty mind. Then we discussed the here-and-now layer of
mind, which internally renders the images being received by the senses. On
top of that layer  of mind, the real trouble begins. You in there, the conscious
entity that knows you’re there, used the power of will to keep certain images
from passing right through. This resulted in the layer of mind called the
samskara layer. It holds the impressions you stored from your past that are
the basis for your personal preferences. As if it’s not enough that you built
this entire structure in your mind, you then committed your life to thinking
about how to serve it. Your consciousness is pretty lost, constantly focusing
on this false mental concept of self. Fortunately, there is a way out—it’ s called witness consciousness. If
you can learn to sit back and simply watch that voice inside your head, you
can free yourself. This is not about shutting up the voice. Don’t ever fight
with your mind. You’re the one who did this to your mind; how dare you
complain about the mind. If you keep eating food that’s making you sick, do
you yell at the food. Of course not—you change your behavior. Likewise,
since it is these stored samskara s that are messing up the greatness of your
mind, you chang e your inner behavior. The way to do this is quite simple:
release the samskaras you’ve already stored and don’t store any more. Easier said than done, but we will certainly explore how to do this. One thing comp licates our task. The mind is not the only force making
it difficult to find peace inside—there are also emotions. It’s bad enough
that the mind is constantly relea sing stored energy through that inner voice,
but the mind has a little sister, the heart. The heart can create emotions that
make it really interesting to live in there. Sometimes it’s like there are
volcanos going on inside, and other times your inner state is so beautiful
you just want to melt into it. What’ s going on with that. And moreimportantly, what can you do about it. As you might expect, that is exactly
where we’re going as we contin ue our journey into exploring what it’s like
to live inside yourself. PART V: 
The HeartChapter 21. Understanding Emotions
Examining the nature  of the world around us, as well as the nature of mind,
teaches us a lot about ourselves. One thing becomes pretty clear: it’s not
always easy living inside. The thoughts being created by the mind can be
very uncomfortable, and the world coming in through the senses can start a
veritable firestorm within. On top of all this, there is something else we
experience inside that can be even more disturbing than thoughts: emotions. Emotions are very different from thoughts, but most people don’t
bother to separate them. The combination of your thoughts and emotions
makes up what can be called your psyche, or your personal self. The psyche
is comp letely distinct from your physical body. The psyche is the
nonphysical world going on inside you. Clearly seeing the difference between your thoughts and your emotions
is very important. If you were asked to point to your thoughts, you would
not point to your toes; you would point to the area around your head. This is
because thoughts are generated  in the mind which is associated with the
brain. On the other hand, if you were asked to point to where emotions like
love come from, you would point to your heart. That’ s why valentine cards
have hearts on them and not toes—we associate the emotion of love with
our heart. That is understandable because emotions are generated by the
heart. Not just nice emotions—all emotions. If someone does something that
hurts you or makes you jealous, you feel the pain or turmoil in your heart. If
you get inspired at work, you can put your whole heart into the project. This
is not referring to your physical heart—you can’t put that into the project. What we are referring to is your spiritual heart or your energy heart, which
we will soon discuss in great depth. Your emotions are not physical. You can be standing next to someone
who is experiencing joy or sadness, and they don’t necessarily show it. Emotions are not something you see; they are something you feel. In fact,
the words “emotions” and “feelings” are interchangeable. Just like you
experience your thoughts inside, you experience your feelings inside. Nonetheless, your emotions are completely dif ferent from your thoughts. Let’s examine this difference. As we previously explored, your mind
creates thoughts and presents them to you in two different ways. One is
verbally via that voice inside your head, and the other is visually in your
mind’ s eye. Your heart communicates quite differently. Your emotions do
not talk to you verbally. They are not simply a voice inside your head
saying, “I feel so jealous. ” The voice says that because you feel jealous. There is a feeling, a sensation— that is what an emotion is. That’ s why we
use the word “feelings” when we talk about our emotions, as in “He hurt my
feelings. ” Sayin g this means the interaction with the person created an
emotion inside of you that was uncomfortable. Thus, you have verbal or
visual thoughts inside your mind, and you also have these totally different
things called emotions emanating from your heart. They are actually
vibrations. They  don’t form specific objects like thoughts do. They’re more
etheric. Emotions are more like clouds instead of defined objects. They
come up and can be like waves flowing over you. They flush what we call
your aura or energy body. Emotions are simply the sensation of
experiencing a change in your energy. Like Obi-W an in Star Wars put it, “I
felt a great disturbance in the Force. ”
You are always having inner feelings, but you don’t notice them until
they change. Notice that you only talk about emotions when they go to the
extremes. “It hurt me tremendously. I can’t believe how you hurt me. ” Or, “I
felt so much love. It was the most beautiful feeling I ever had. ” These are
examples of extremes in your emotions, and they catch your attention. You
probably don’t notice it, but you have a normal state of emoti onal energy
flowing through your heart all day. When it drops out, you notice the change
and say, “My heart fell out from  under me. I lost my strength. ” Your heart
can fall out from under you when fear takes over. Something happens and
the energy just drops. In contras t, you can say, “My heart has wings. ” All of
a sudden the emotional energy in your heart rises up and inspires you. These
are chan ges from the steady state of emotional energy that normally flows
through your heart. As you get more and more in tune with your emotions,
you will notice that, like thoughts, emotions are almost always there. Just as with thoughts, the questions become: Who is it that feels these
emotional shifts. How do you know you feel anger. How do you know you
feel love. You know because you are in there, and you are aware of what is
going on in there. That clarity is very deep, spiritually. You have been so
concerned about the emotions, themselves, you didn’ t realize you are the
one in there experiencing them. The goal of this journey we are taking
together is not to change your thoughts or emotions, it is for you to stay
seated in the seat of Self while accepting these dif ferent shifts that are taking
place. From this vantage point, the emotions can change, you can notice
them changing, but you don’t go anywhere. You remain the one who notices
the emotions, hears the thoughts, and looks out through the eyes. Who is
this one. This is what our journey is about. There is no spirituality
anywhere excep t in the seat of Self. Spirituality is about spirit, and the seat
of Self is spirit. When you sit back in the seat of witness consciousness, it does not
require a willful process of watc hing your emotions. Instead, it’s the simple
awareness of what is going on in there. It doesn’ t take will or effort to do
this. You are simply aware that you hear or see your thoughts and that you
feel your emotio ns. If you pay attention, you will notice emotions can be
like the sensatio n of wind flowi ng over you. Wind can be very comfortable,
like a gentle breeze. Or wind can be frightening, like a one hundred mile per
hour hurricane blowing in your face. Surely you have noticed that emotions
can be like this. It doesn’ t take effort to notice them, but it can take effort to
handle what you notice. Emotions are very sensitive vibrations emanating
from the heart, and as such they can shift very easily. The heart is much
more sensitive than the mind, and we have much less control over it. Without question, when your heart emanates a particular vibration of
energy, your mind will start talking accordingly. It’s very much like a
freshwater sprin g. If you dive down to the source of the spring, there’ s
going to be water bubbling up from the opening. When that water hits the
surface, it creates ripples and all kinds of patterns. The activity on the
surface is very different from what emanates at the source. So it is with your
heart. Your heart is releasing energy of a given vibration rate, and that
vibration rises into your mind automatically. You don’t have to first notice
that you feel jealous and then decide you had better think about it. What’ s
going on in the heart ends up in the mind as thoughts. The samskaras you
stored are trying to release their energy from the heart, and that is causingthe mind to get active. The roots of the samskaras are stored in your heart. That is where the patterns you shoved out of your mind went. They did not
dissipate. They went down further into the source of your energy flow,
which is in your heart. Very few people understand their heart. Many intellectuals just want to
keep it suppresse d because it is much too sensitive and reactive. They would
rather live in the mind because  they have more control there. Somebody
hurts you, you feel an uncomfor table emotion, and you go right to the mind
and rationalize it away: “He didn’t mean it, it’s okay. Don’ t take it so
personally. ” That’s if you’re being positive. Otherwise, the negative mind
starts in, “I’m not going to put up with this. Nobody is going to talk to me
that way. Who do they think they are. ” Either way, your mind is telling your
heart, “It’ s okay, I’ll take care of it. ” Y ou’re simply directing your awareness
to your mind, so you don’t have to feel the difficult emotion s emanating
from your heart. Notice that consciousness can focus fully on the heart, fully on the
mind, or it can divide its aware ness between the two. When emotions are
extremely pleasant, you may have the tendency to behave irrationally
because you don’t want to shift awareness from the beauty in your heart to
the rational mind. On the other hand, when the emotions are unpleasant, you
may try to change the inner experience by letting your thoughts distract you
from what’s happening in the heart. The mind becom es a place the soul goes
to hide from the heart. To transcend this tendency to hide in either your
heart or your mind, simply realize that it is always the same conscious
awareness experiencing what is going on inside. Chapter 22. Why the Heart Opens and Closes
If you want to know your heart, first and foremo st understand that you are
not your heart—you are the experiencer of your heart. You are the
consciousness that is aware when emotions are taking place. When love
shoots up inside  of you, and you say you’re in love, what you really mean is
that you feel love coming up from your heart and bathing you. You’re
floating in the ocean of love, but you’re not the love you feel—you are the
experiencer of the love you feel. Note that so far we haven’ t considered the
role of another  person in this love experience. This is because what’ s
actually happeni ng when you begin to feel love is your heart is opening and
emanating a beautiful flow of energy. This should drive you to say, “I love
love,” but instead you say, “I love you. ” That is your first clue into the role
of another person in your exper ience of love. As long as the other person’ s
presence helps your heart open, you feel love for them. If their presence
stops opening your heart, you start looking elsewhere. This is why human
relationships are so difficult. We project the source of love outside, instead
of realizing it is always inside. The actual flow of love has to do with you and your heart. It has
nothing to do with anybody else. It is an energy flow coming through your
heart that you experience inside. Undoubtedly, certain people or
circumstances can cause your heart to open or close. But the action of
opening and closing is somethin g your heart is doing, not the other person. By the time we’re done with this discussion, you will understand why this
happens. For now, let’s look at what happens if we don’t understand that
love is a totall y inner experience and we project that expe rience onto
someone else. The moment we project the source of love outside ourselves,
everything becomes personal. We tend to become possessive, and that isonly natural. We want to feel love and have projected the experience onto
another person. To keep feeling the love, we have to keep the other person. The very human emotions of jealously, need, and dependency  result from
this. Likewise, if we are feeling the flow of love and our lover does
something we don’t like, we feel closed and hurt. These are just other
feelings that can emanate from the heart. If you want to continue feeling love, you have to learn how to deal
with emotions that open and close the heart. It’s like learning  to play an
instrument. At first, you don’t know how to do it. You’re going to make
mistakes and learn from the experience. The heart is a very sophisticated
instrument that few people know  how to play. If the heart opens, they try to
possess the things that helped it open. If the heart closes, they try to protect
themselves from  the things that caused it to close. Since you have to live
with the consequ ences of your actions, it can be life changing to understand
why the heart opens and closes, and who it is that notices. You do notice that your heart opens and closes, right. Regardless of
whether a person has studied yoga, or ever meditated in their life, everyone
understands the heart can open  and close. When the heart is open, you
experience a more uplifted state than at other times. When the heart is
closed, it’s very difficult and painful to live with. Unfortunately, most
people don’t have the slightest idea what’ s going on when this happens. If
they were told right now to open their heart, they wouldn’ t know what to do. They know how to clench their fist, blink their eyes, and even create a
thought—but they don’t know how to willfully open their heart. Generally,
the heart opens and closes on its own, and people just have to live with the
consequences. Better be careful about your heart. Y ou can get so involved in the initial
rush of energy when it opens that you get carried away. People have been
known to say, “I’m totally blow n away. I’m so in love. I don’t care where I
live. I’ll live outside in a tent as long as I’m with them. ” Let’s see how long
that lasts. When  the heart closes, it becomes, “I don’t ever want  to see them
again. I don’t care what they say. I don’t even want to talk to them. I can’t
believe they did that. ” If you get lost listening to the closed heart express
itself, you might not want to see where you end up. Your heart is a thing, like an appliance. It’s an appliance that emanates
vibrations of energies. Like an appliance, it needs a healthy power source. When the heart is closed, you don’t feel positive energies or a constructivepurpose. It can get pretty hard and uncomfortable in there. Sometimes it
feels like a rock inside your chest. You definitely don’t want that, so in an
attempt to avoid the experience, your mind starts making up stories of what
to do. “I’m going to leave them. They’ll be so sorry. ” Can we talk honestly
about this. The generation of these thoughts is just a process that happens in
the psyche. When the heart closes, the energy flow is not strong, and this
results in negativ e thoughts. It takes energy to raise things, and that includes
the level of your thoughts. When the heart is closed for a period of time,
people can even go into deep depression. That doesn’ t happen when the
heart is open. Note that whatever state the heart is in, it feels like it’s going
to stay that way. Yet, you’ve seen at different points of your life that the
heart does change if given the chance. People get so lost in the experience of
the blocked heart that they ruin their lives over it. What the mind says when
the heart is closed is not you. It’s just the mind expressing the state of the
closed heart. Y ou are the one who notices. What if your heart is in an excited, open state. You’re just as
dangerous because you think it’s not going to change. Generally, something
is going to happ en that curbs the enthusiasm pouring through your heart. If
there is a reason  that the heart opened, then there is a reason it can close. The world keep s changing; your mind keeps changing; everything keeps
changing. Therefore, if you can point to a reason why your heart is open, be
careful—it will change. If you can point to a reason why your heart is
closed, don’t worry—it will change. If you let it, your heart will go through
fluctuations as different situatio ns cause it to open and close. When you
don’t understand this, you just react to your heart. It takes a truly great being
to understand the heart. This is because they have spent years  objectively
observing the heart’ s behavior rather than running after what it wants or
running away from what it doesn’ t want. A very important aspect of spiritual growth is understanding the
dynamics of the opening and closing of the heart. In order to fully explore
why the heart opens and close s, we must first bring our discussion to a
deeper level. We said earlier that you experience three things inside
yourself: the world coming in, the thoughts of your mind, and the emotions
of your heart. Truth is, there’ s a fourth thing you experience in there. It’s in
there all the time, but most people are so lost in the first three they don’t
focus on this fourth object of consciousness. Nevertheless, there is a very
powerful energy flow inside of you. In different cultures it has been calledby different names, such as shakti, chi, or spirit. For the purposes of our
discussion, we will use the traditional yogic term shakti. Once you quiet down enough, you will realize this energy is constantly
flowing inside of you. You sometimes even make reference to it when your
energy level suddenly changes. You say things like, “When she told me she
loved me, I got so filled with energy I was floating on a cloud. I could feel it
rushing through  me for days. ” In other situations, you say, “When she told
me it was over, I hardly had the energy to drive home. It left me so drained I
couldn’ t go to work for a week. ” These statements are referring to the
surface level of the energy we’re discussing. There is a much deeper, core
flow that you will experience as you transcend your personal self. It is this
deeper energy flow passing through the open heart that you experience as
the sensation of love. Because the energy can only go as high as you let it,
this beautiful love experience does not happen that often for most people. Nonetheless, there is almost always some energy flowing through your heart
creating your normal emotional state. The reason the energy flowing through the heart fluctuates so much is
because of the samskaras you’ve stored inside. You inwardly shoved away
the experiences you didn’ t like having and clung to the ones you did. These
unfinished energy patterns are real, and they act as blockages to your inner
energy flow. When your energy tries to flow up, and it is always trying to
flow up, it cann ot because it hits these blockages. The energy of the shakti
flow is much subtler than that of the samskaras—so the shakti can go no
higher. Before we delve further into the shakti flow, let’s take a look at what
happens when a blockage gets hit, or activated, by a life expe rience. You
may never have thought about it, but you know all too well what happens. When any particular blockage gets hit, the energy held in that blockage
activates, and you start feeling the emotions and thinking the thoughts that
are associated with the past expe rience. Your inner state becomes dominated
by the unfinished energy pattern s stored inside, and you become totally lost
in them. In this state, you are not in charge of your thoughts or emotions. Nor are you in charge of the opening or closing of your heart. The activated
samskara has taken over your life. If you’re not careful, it will determine
your future by the choices you make in that unclear state. Here’ s an examp le of what the mind sounds like when a samskara has
been hit: “I can’t believe he said that. My father used to say stuff like that tome, and I hated it. That’ s why I left home so young. No way I’m going
through that again. I don’t need  to be in a relationship with someone who
reminds me of my father. ” As logical as that may sound—it’ s not. This
person you are interacting with is not your father, and if you didn’ t have
those samskaras  left from your relationship with your father, you would
probably be handling your current relationship much better. In the truest
sense, what was said didn’ t bother you—it hit the samskara, and the
activated samsk ara bothered you. Regardless, to protect yourself from the
disturbance, you closed your heart. Your samskaras  are what cause your
heart to open and close. Chapter 23: 
Dance of the Energy Flow
There is a very important interaction between the energy flow and your
blockages. The energy is trying to come up, but it can’t because you stored
these unfinished patterns from the past. It is these past impressions that
determine your preferences in life. If someone manages to stimulate a
negative past impression, you will not like them. If they manage to stimulate
a positive past impression, it may be love at first sight. It is very dangerous
to live this way—you are not in charge of your life, your past impressions
are. If you work on yourself, there will come a time when you fully
understand your heart. When you have let go of enough blocked energy
patterns, you will begin to expe rience so much energy flowing inside that
you will understand firsthand what the Bible means by “…out of his heart
will flow rivers of living water”  (John 7:38 NKJV). There will be a constant
upward flow of energy coursing  through your entire system. When you get
really open, it will flow out various energy centers like your heart, the point
between your eyebrows, and the palms of your hands. You will become a
being of light, a being of energy. That is when the energy is free to flow—
when it is not obstructed by these personal blockages. We’re going to
discuss this in later chapters, but mentioning it now allows you to
understand why your heart opens and closes in certain situations. The reason
should be obvio us by now—the state of your heart is dependent upon what
samskaras are being activated at any given time. Whenever you shove an obstacl e into any energy flow, it will create a
disturbance in the flow. It is these disturbances that you experience as
emotions. Let’s say you were very open and feeling a clean flow of love
through your heart. Then your lover said something you took offense to, and
you resisted. Your heart will no longer feel love; instead it will feel anger,fear, or jealousy. These disturbing energy patterns are the direct result of
you shoving a blockage into your heart’ s energy flow. All these emotions
are the same energy manifesting differently depending upon the nature of
the blockage being hit. It is interesting that we choose to give names to
these disturbanc es. Just look at all the names we give to our different
emotions. So far we’ve discussed the energy flow hitting just one blockage at a
time. The more blockages there are, the more complicated the disturbances
will become. Eventually, the disturbances will start to hit each other and
create very complex patterns of energy. This is what it’s like to live inside
ourselves. This is why emotion s are so powerful and often complex. You
can have  a love/hate relationship with something because you have patterns
inside that can generate different energy flows at different times. Whatever
samskara is most activated at any given time will determine what is
affecting your energy flow the most. We are very complex creatures to
predict, and this is why. Unfortunately, things can get even worse. At some point, enough
samskaras can be shoved into the heart so that you become totally blocked,
tired, and completely uninspired. Your naturally uplifting energy flow stops
supporting you. This is the power of these samskaras. They totally run our
lives. Remember that your energy is always trying to flow. The only reason it
can’t is because it’s blocked. Like in a dammed-up river, the flow tries to
find a way around the blockages. To the extent that some energy can
navigate around a blockage, you will feel some strength. But that energy
flow is condition ed by its ability  to continue flowing that way. If something
happens that stimulates yet another stored blockage, the energy flow will be
affected accordingly. This is why people have so many moods and why they
cannot be trusted to remain steady in their behavior. By the time the energy
flow manages to find a narrow pathway around all that stuff we have stored
inside, we becom e very narrow-minded about how the world needs to be to
support that flow. Our entire personality, with its very particul ar likes and
dislikes, is simply the expression of the pathway the energy managed to
find. Our ability  to feel love, joy, and inspiration is determin ed by how
much ener gy makes it through the blockages. Now you understand why your heart is so sensitive. Depending upon
how well the energy can navigate around the stored blockages, your heartwill open or close. Pay attention to this. Otherwise, you’re going to let the
opening and closing of your heart run your life. If you’re talking to someone
and they start discussing a subject that you have blockages about, your heart
may start to close. If your reaction is to walk away and avoid that person in
the futur e, the blockages are running your life. Similarly, if someone starts
talking to you about a subject that opens you up, all of a sudden they’re your
best buddy and you want to hang out with them more. Letting this opening and closing of your heart run your life is certainly
not spiritual. You’re not being true to yourself—you’re being true to your
blockages. That’ s all your psych e is. Your psyche is the net result of all your
blockages and how the energy manages to flow through them. As the
fluctuations in the energy flow cause your heart to change, your thoughts
will change. It’s actually very sad because you will end up lost in there. Those stored blockages will dominate your life, and that is no way to live. You won’ t go anywhere meanin gful; you’ll just go around in circles. There
is no actual purpose, intent, or direction to such a life—except to minimize
the suffering and get a periodic  rush. These samskaras are from the past. They are things that happened to you in your past that you were not able to
handle. Now they are determining your present, and they will determine
your future if you are not careful. We could not be discussing anything more important. These stored
patterns are going to determine where you go, what inspires you, who you
marry, and whether you get divorced. You’re not determinin g your path
through life—they are. Until you get very centered in witness
consciousness, you are going to follow your thoughts and emotions, and
they are determined by your samskaras. Surely you’ve been there. All that
has to happen is for the energy patterns flowing through the heart to shift,
and everything changes. Next thing you know, you’re leaving your spouse
or your job. These stored patterns represent the lowest part of your being. They are the result of you not being mature enough, or evolved  enough, to
handle the passing events in your life. These patterns became stuck in you
and are now determining your energy flow and your entire perception of
life. Understanding the effects of these blockages helps explain why it’s so
difficult to make personal decis ions. What you’re trying to see is how one
choice or the other will make you feel. “Should I marry this person, or
should I wait until I establish my career. ” You’re using these thoughts tosee how the different choices will shift the flow of your energy through your
blockages. The problem is you have so many conflicting blockag es stored in
there that what to do is not clear. Of course it’s not clear; you’re consulting
your inner mess and expecting  a clear response. All the while, you are
noticing that these thoughts and emotions keep shifting inside. The
important questi on is not what to do about this, it is: Who is noticing all
this. The same consciousness is aware of this entire proces s going on
inside. There may be many samskaras in there, but there are not many of
you in there. There is only one consciousness watching all these competing
patterns and identifying with them. When you become one integrate d seer—the single witness watching all
these different things pass by inside—you are centered. You are clear. You
are free. But when you don’t sit in the seat of the witness, and your sense of
being is split amongst all these diverse inner patterns, things become very
confusing. It’s almost as though each path the energy takes through your
field of samskaras creates a slightly different personality. You’re one person
around this friend and you’re another person around someone else. You can
even have totally different inner dialogs going on when you’re around
different people. Look at what happens when you go to your childhood
home or a high school reunion. The surroundings stimulate past samskaras,
and you begin to think and feel the way you used to in that environment. Amazingly, in these situations  you feel completely at home with these
different versions of yourself. People in this state struggle to find themselves. They feel they must
choose which of these personalities is really them. The answer is quite clear:
none of them are you. Please don’t pick one of them and let that choice
determine your life. None of your thoughts are more you than any other
thought. You are the one who is experiencing the thoughts. There’ s not a
single thing about those shifting ener gy patterns that is you. It is certainly difficult knowing what to do when all that inner
commotion going on. The only lasting solution is to realize that it’ s the same
you noticing all of it. You are the one who is aware that your thoughts and
emotions are shifting. It happens  to us all the time. Just relax and be the one
who notices. Be the One who sees the many—this is the path to self-
realization. Chapter 24. The Cause of Moods and Emotions
Emotions are generated  when your core energy flow hits a blockage. To
understand this, imagine walki ng up to a stream that’s flowing with no
impediments. There are no rocks or other obstacles in the streambed. Under
these conditions, the water in the stream is going to flow in a very even,
undisturbed manner. There will be no eddies, sprays, or intersecting
currents. This clear stream is analogous to your core energy flow, the shakti. Both of these flows are perfectly pure and constantly flowing when in their
natural state. What if we put a rock into the pure flow of the stream. All of a
sudden there are noticeable disturbances. There are eddies, split currents,
and a spray where the flow hits the rock. Just that one rock caused a
disturbance in the force. The same thing happens if we put blockages in the
flow of shakti. These blockages—these samskaras—create obstacles to the
shakti flow, and as such, create disturbances in the flow. These inner ripples,
sprays, and eddies, combined with the release of the disturbed energy stored
within the samskara, are what we call emotions. An emot ion is caused by the
shakti hitting the blockages in your heart and shooting out to release the
blocked energies. This creates enough disturbance to your normal flow that
your attention gets drawn to these disturbed energies. Emotions are a release
of blocked ener gy. This goes for both negative and positive emotions. Remember that samskaras got stored in there for a reaso n—you
couldn’ t handle the experience that happened. These blockage s may have
been in there for years, even decades, and when something hits them, they
become activate d and start to release their pent-up energy. By definition, the
resultant emotio ns and thoughts will be very personal to you. After all,
you’re the one who held the blockage inside to begin with. You walk into a
kitchen, smell a smell, and your entire state changes because it smells like
what your mother used to cook. Just a smell, and suddenly a powerfulchange will come over you. Your heart will get softer or harder, depending
on how you interacted with your mother. Most of the time, you have no idea
what is happening. You just buy into the shift of your emotions and behave
accordingly. You can now understand where your moods come from. When you
reach a state of clarity, there are no moods. There is just the beauty of the
clean energy flow feeding you day and night. In later chapters we’re going
to discuss what it’s like to get clean, to get clear, to live in a state where you
are always high. Until you reach that state, it’s just one mood after another
as the ener gy shifts due to these stored patterns. From a yogic point of view, here’s what happens on a daily basis in our
lives. The energy flow comes up, and as it approaches the heart it can do
one of three things. First, if the energy is totally blocked by the samskaras
while trying to go into the heart, you won’ t feel your heart. A lot of people
don’t feel their heart very much. They are so used to focusing on their mind
that they don’t notice the shifts in the heart until those shifts are too strong
to ignore. Emotions are messy and much too sensitive, so people suppress
them. They want to be analytic al, not emotional. No one told these people
that if they bothered to do the work necessary to clean out the heart, the
increased energy flow coming into the mind would result in more
inspiration, more creativity, and more intuitive brilliance. A second thing can happen with energy coming into the heart. It can
make it in and begin hitting the blockages stored there. This tends to make
you moody and more sensitive to what is going on around you. Every once
in a while, however, things will line up just right, and your heart will get
quiet. Somebody is in front of you and somehow the way they look, the way
they talk, or something else about them stimulates and rearranges your
samskaras just right. “Her hair looks like my sister ’s hair, and I really got
along with my sister. Look at those glasses. They’re just like the ones my
favorite actress wore in my favorite movie of all time. This is definitely my
kind of person. ” The next thing you know, you’re saying out loud, “People
told me nice things about you, and I was really excited to meet you. Now
that I see you, it’s way beyond anything I expected. ” So it begins—love at
first sight. The words are right, the hair is right, the glasses are right. Everything is opening you. You don’t have to do anything—it’ s all
happening by itself. The stimuli coming in through your senses are
rearranging the samskaras just right to create an opening for the energy tocome up. As the energy comes up into the heart, it has the opportunity to
flow out and connect with what caused it to open. Now we’re talking about a very personal and sensitive subject. Have
you ever felt the energy start to flow out of your heart. Have you ever felt
your heart connect with another person. It’s as if there were an energy flow
tying two hearts together. People who are in love can just sit together not
even talking while that beautifu l, connected flow is happening. It’s almost
as if nothing in this world is as beautiful as that sensation of energy pouring
out through the heart and connecting with someone. From a yogic point of
view, what you are experiencing is shakti pouring out of the fourth energy
center, the heart chakra,  of your energy system. Though this heart center is
really beautiful, it is actually not so high, since there are seven such chakras
that control your inner energy flow. The yogi understands that if all the
energy goes out through the heart center it will not have the power to reach
the higher centers. What you will come to realize  is that the chakras are like a T-pipe
fitting. At the bottom there is an entry  point for the energy, and it could be
open or blocked. If it is blocked, no energy will enter that center. If it is
open, the energy will come up into the center and attempt to flow right
through. Should the upper pathway be blocked, however, the energy will
flow out horizontally and connect with whatever stimulated the opening
experience. Now  as human beings, we really like that experience of energy
flowing out through the heart. In fact, we don’t call it like, we call it love. That experience is human love, and don’t worry, spirituality has no intention
of taking this away from you. It’s beautiful; just know that there is a higher
expression of love. This leads us to the third thing that can happen when the energy rises
up toward the heart—it can make it all the way through. At this point in our
journey, all you have to underst and is if the energy makes it past the fourth
center, there are energy experi ences way higher than human love. This
doesn’ t mean you don’t experie nce connection with people and things. You
actually connect at a much deeper level. People who say the human
connection experience is the meaning of life have not experienced the
higher centers. That’ s like saying food is the meaning of life or intimacy is
the meaning of life. Yes, these are beautiful experiences, but they are
conditional, and they can come and go. The meaning of life is much deeper
than that. There are much higher energy centers you are capable of experi encing,
and the further you go into these centers, the more beautiful all of life
becomes. But if you can’t work with the heart center, you will never know
the higher centers even exist. To begin to work with the heart, you must first
be able to object ively watch as it opens and closes. What you will see is that
the store d patter ns from your past are getting activated by outside situations
and causing the heart to open or close. Take our example of love at first sight. If you had met the same person
three days earlier when you were in a bad mood, your heart might not have
opened. If you hadn’ t seen the movie with the actress she reminded you of,
she might not have hit you just right. The bottom line is that you have
blockages stored inside, and they are going to determine your level of
openness in any given situation. All it takes is one word said in just the right
way, and the heart will open. Likewise, all it takes is one word said in just
the wron g way, and the heart will close. We all have differen t samskaras,
and we are taking on new ones all the time. That is why what turns one
person on, turns another perso n off. It is also why the heart behaves
differently for the same person at dif ferent times. It’ s hard to believe that our
moods, attractions, and repulsion s are so dependent on our past, but it’s true. In our normal state, we’re not paying any attention to what’ s going on—
we’re just being tossed around by it. Chapter 25. The Secrets of the Heart
We are now ready  to go deeper into the secrets of the heart. From our earlier
explorations, you recognize that the energy can flow out for a while and
create the sensation of love. You also understand that since the opening of
the heart is conditional upon the state of blockages, the energy flow itself is
conditional and generally will not last. Yet it is possible to expe rience great
love all the time. All it requir es is a willingness to work on yourself to
remove the reason your heart tends to close. For examp le, imagine
somebody dies who means a great deal to you. Your spouse can’t go to the
funeral with you because of some important work. You may deeply resent
that. In fact, if you’re not careful, you may resent that for the rest of your
life. You’re playing with fire when you play with these blockag es. You may
lay the groundw ork that will eventually diminish or even destroy your
relationship with your significant other. This is not a game—storing
samskaras is serious business, and it has serious consequences. If you want
love to last, learn to handle these situations better. This is a secret of the
heart that is best to remember. Another very important thing to understand about the outward flow of
energy through the heart is that it literally makes a connection with the other
person. This connection is real, and you become attached as the energy is
exchanged between you. This is not a physical attachment to one another;
this is a reliance  on the energy flowing between your hearts that is feeding
you both ener getically. Let’s look at this in detail. Your heart was closed because  stored
patterns from your past were blocking the energy flow. Someone shows up
whose qualities and characteris tics hit you just right so the energy finds a
path around one of your major blockages. The blockage is not gone, but a
pathway has opened up allowin g the energy to flow out through the heart. That energy goes out toward the other person, and the other person’ s energy
goes out toward you. With the help of another person, you have managed to
experience what  you would be experiencing if the original block age was not
there. Perhaps you used to think people didn’ t like you and that you were
not very attracti ve. Someone shows up who always admires you and looks
at you with tremendous love. It makes you feel so comfortable that you melt
in their gaze. It’s unbelievable. You don’t feel that weirdness you used to
feel all the time. Though this is really beautiful, unfortunately the samskara that was
blocking your energy flow is still there. The energy found a way around it,
but only as long as the energy exchange with this person is still working. It’s
like putting a jumper in an electr ical circuit. You bypassed the sam skara, but
now you are very attached to and dependent on that person. If they start to
leave you, or if you even think about losing them, you will feel that original
samskara again  in all its glory. You will feel the underlying fear and
weirdness you used to feel, and it may even be stronger than before. In other
words, you’ve tied your energy flow to somebody else, and the state of your
heart is now dependent upon their behavior. Surely you have noticed this
pattern numerous times in your life. This is called human love. It is very
beautiful, but fortunately, there is a much higher form of love that is
unconditional and can last forever. The greatest secret of the heart is revealed when you get rid of the
samskaras instead of finding a way around them. If you get rid of the
blockages that are restricting the energy from flowing into and through your
heart, you will feel love all the time. It will always be brimming through
you. Once you reach that state,  if you simply wave your hand in front of
your heart, you will feel waves of ecstatic love pour through you. That’ s
how easy it will be to experienc e love. Love will become the core of your
being. Now, go share it. By all means, share the beautiful love you are
feeling. You will be able to do this without attachment or need because your
love is not dependent upon anyone or anything else. You are whole and
complete within  yourself. We call that self-effulgence. To reach this great
state, you must do the necessary work on yourself to release your samskaras
instead of constantly trying to find a way around them. You now understand much more  about the inner workings of the heart. Thus far we’ve focused on how the energy can flow through the lower part
of the heart or be blocked from doing so. We can call this lower part of theheart the human heart because depending upon how open it is, the energy
flow can create the entire range of human emotions. Energy blocked in the
lower part of the heart can be experienced as feelings of jealousy, insecurity,
or pangs  of yearning. Even ange r is the result of a strong energy flow hitting
blockages in the heart and shooting out. On the other hand, if the heart is
open enough for the energy to make it to the middle of the heart chakra
where it can flow out horizontally, the energy will be experienced as human
love. It’s all the same energy doing this—the only difference  is how it’s
blocked. There is anothe r level of the heart that can be experienced when the
upward energy flow is strong enough to pass through the middle  of the heart
without going out horizontally. The samskaras have to be thinned out
enough, and the flow must be strong enough to pierce the middle section of
the heart  chakra. When this happ ens, the energy pours into the higher part of
the heart and generates a permanent experience of pure love, strength, and
overall well-being. Now we’ve moved out of the human heart and into what
is truly the spiritual heart. When the shakt i flows through that higher part of
the fourth chak ra, you will start to feel what has been described as the
presence of God. This is what the great saints experienced. At this point you
no longer experience yourself as human—you experience yourself as a
being of energy. You will start to feel love as a natural force in the universe. Section summary: 

This chapter discusses techniques for gaining perspectives

*   * Re frames unwanted outcomes. -       View emptiness : Consider "empty" spaces' existence,

=====



Summary:

**Perspective Shift**: Reframe unwelcome circumstances by considering the immense void/void-like quality (~0. 00001%) existing throughout universal spacetime & relativity's governing principles ('relatively'). **Desire-based vs Reality**, identify/match your desires (& dissatisfaction) towards contrasting realities leading psychological distress (**Sorrow**). Key concepts covered:


1\. Interconnected relationships b/w Conscious Mind \& Inner Patterns


Inner processes influence Outer Experien ces. \*\[Reference]\*

These notes highlight key ideas presented regarding meditation practices aimed solely addressing perceived issues/dispelling misaligned expectations related primarily to individualized aspects affecting interactions among selves and external influences. \*. Their ultimate aim targets removing constraints imposed by memories accumulated across lifetime. 's 'learned behaviors'. Consequently,'spiritual freedom'developement arises directly linked connections influencing potentialities accessible paths chosen courses. *\\*
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Incorporation mechanism avoidance prevents repetition:



(No repeated phrases)

Specific Details maintained :

• Space vacuum composition (~99. 9%)
Light-year measurement data
Buddhist teachings mentioned [truth]
Mind-sense processing explained  
Astral projection / lucidity | Emotional expressions| Differentiation |
Cultural associations referenced \\
Psychological analysis |

Avoided Replication Mechanisms:

(The provided content hasn't included repetitive structures)

Sources utilized :
None specified

References cited ;
https://www. biblegateway. com/passage/. search=JOHN+7%253 AOLONGWITH
Note:
Not applicable



Source. Please provide feedback about accuracy, relevance, and overall performance. Is there anyway enhance readability. How accurate/specific the summarizer performed compared to manual review.
Empty space (99.999%)
What is the majority of the universe composed of?
To appreciate and be grateful for the experiences you have, rather than focusing on what you don't want
What is the purpose of comparing the present moment to your preferences?
Desire and preference, as it leads to mental and emotional suffering
What is the true cause of suffering, according to the Buddha?
Recognizing that the heart is a complex, sensitive, and powerful part of our being, and that it is the source of our emotions and energy flow
What is the key to understanding the heart and its role in our lives?
To experience a permanent and unconditional love, strength, and overall well-being, which is not dependent on external factors and is a natural force in the universe.
What is the ultimate goal of the heart, according to the text?