The Five hearts
We all understand that we
possess a heart. In some spiritual traditions it is said
that we develop through a number of hearts as we progress
through our odysseys, travails and love lost. The heart we
all know is our physical one, subject to emotional trauma,
the hurts of love lost or forsaken, actual physical hurts
and wounds, and pathological insults from poor blood
supply, to a literal bursting, expansion or enlargement
beyond its norm and eventual death of parts of it, before
it succumbs.
During our formative years our hearts become tempered and
shaped. This may take years; but we may slowly develop from
a heart that is cold and stern, walled-in and protected to
a teenage emotional and soppy heart, or one that has
drowned in emotion and feeling. We can alter our emotional
life and become easy and light, less affected or we can
find passion, oration, fire and light in a heart consumed
by fire. As we take on and review, reflect and change our
emotional life, we can become aware of our heart's
progress. If we start to have an understanding about
ourselves, we can ask for Grace to accompany us as we
surrender our state, then our hearts can be reshaped and
grow.
One can guage the state we are in, by how we react or how
we get stuck in an emotional place. Even thought we cannnot
change this, we can realise that this is where we are. In
so doing we can offer up our heart and its state to the
Creator for a widening and opening of this part of us. We
need patience to develop as this heart of ours becomes
changed over time.
There are 5 hearts, from base upwards:
Earth - holds the imprint, and remembers all that is done
to it; the heart of culture and the old. (the footprint in
the sand)
Water - is unsettled by, vacillates and slowly comes back
to ease; the heart of feeling.
Air - moves with the force, bends with it, and then settles
back; the heart of instinct & passion.
Fire - burns & scorches, as the insult or emotion comes
towards it; the heart of a human.
LOVE - changes the moment before it occurs, changing hate
to love; the heart of nobility.