If we are looking for peace, love and happiness the best place to find these qualities is inside our spiritual heart. Unlike the physical heart our spiritual heart is located in the centre of our chest, exactly at the place we point to when we say “I”. We intuitively feel that that spot inside our chest represents who we truly are. The spiritual heart is not a muscle or a physical organ, but a chakra, a centre of consciousness inside our body. When we learn how to concentrate and meditate on our heart-centre, we will soon develop a real sense of happiness, fulfilment and joy.
Following are three exercises given by spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy about how to open up your spiritual heart.
1. The sun rising in your heart
No matter what time of the day you are meditating, even if it is in the evening, imagine the rising sun for a few fleeting seconds. Imagine that the sun is rising and radiating light inside your heart. Or you can imagine a most beautiful and most pure flower opening up and blossoming petal by petal inside your heart.
As soon as you see either the rising sun or the flower, you will feel the light or the purity of your heart. Then, as you breathe in and breathe out, you will feel the light or purity inside your heart increase. And the more light and purity you feel in your heart, the brighter will be the rising sun or the flower. Afterwards, try to feel that you have become the rising sun. Or try to feel that the purity-flower inside your heart has fully blossomed and that you have become this most beautiful flower. Your very existence, from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head, has become the flower itself. The beauty, the purity, the fragrance of the flower is all you.
From the rising sun or the most beautiful flower that you have become, light will radiate and purity will spread. When the light and purity spread, they enter into those around you. In this way you can meditate more in the heart.
2. The garden in your heart
We use the term `heart-garden’. Inside our heart-garden are all our divine qualities. They are like beautiful and fragrant flowers. First, repeat to yourself, “I am inside my heart-garden.” Try to see and feel all the beautiful flowers there. Then say, “I am my heart-garden. All the divine flowers inside my heart-garden are part and parcel of my own self.” Up until now you have established your oneness with the reality that you see in your outer life. But now you want to establish your oneness with the dearest and purest existence of yours, which is your inner life, the life of your heart.
When you are meditating, if you happen to look at your shoulder or your knee, please say to yourself, “This is my heart.” If you have a good thought during your meditation, then immediately inside that good thought try to feel the existence of your heart.
3. Feel like a child
For a beginner to meditate in the heart, he has to feel that he is a child, no matter how old he is in earthly age. A child’s mind is not developed. When he is twelve or thirteen his mind starts functioning on an intellectual level, but before that he is all heart. Whatever he sees, he feels is his own. He identifies spontaneously. This is what the heart does.
When you feel that you are a child, immediately feel that you are standing in a flower garden. This flower garden is your heart. A child can play in a garden for hours. He will go from this flower to that flower, but he will not leave the garden, because he will get joy from the beauty and fragrance of each flower. Inside you is the garden, and you can stay within it for as long as you want. In this way you can meditate on the heart.