Four Chambers of the Heart

In both the Western anatomical model of the heart and the Eastern esoteric model of the heart, we recognize that the heart has these four chambers or four rooms. And in this meditation that I'd like to share with you today, we move into what I call the four-chambered mansion of your own heart. So it just starts simply by choosing the best seat possible. You can sit up on padding, put blocks under your knees, make sure that you can sit comfortably for a few minutes. When you establish your seat, you can move the crown of the head over the base of your spine. And as you feel absolutely ready, you can allow your eyes to close. And giving yourself just a few moments to settle and to soften the awareness and hug the level of your attention or awareness into just the perimeter of your own body. And you're going to lift your right hand and place your right hand over your own heart. And the first room of the heart relates to the physical organ of the heart. So begin just to meditate on the beat of the heart, allowing yourself just to grow quiet enough to feel the beat of your own heart. You might notice that the beat comes to you easily. It might be a little bit hard to find. It might feel fast or slow.

It might feel very regular or slightly irregular, all quite normal. So begin to feel the beat of your own heart. And inherent in this gesture of your hand over the heart, emotions might arise. This next chamber of the heart relating to the emotional center. So without having to conjure up an emotion or push away or pull towards you, you just allow the emotion to arise and just lightly hold whatever you're feeling. Without the need to judge it or fix it, just feel simply whatever there is there to feel. And if it gets overwhelming, move back to the awareness of the beat of your heart.

So often times what happens then when we just hold and carefully these emotions and we allow them to have a bit of space, we allow them to be seen and felt. They begin on their own to dissipate some of their hold, some of their clinginess, and almost like clouds parting. The light in what we call the jiva is once again revealed, the part of you that just witnesses, the part of you that just observes, the part of you that remains untouched, unbound, infinite potential. So in this third chamber, you need to identify with the part of you that witnesses the transient nature of the beat of the heart and transient nature of these emotions and part of you untouched by it all. And we allow ourselves to keep connecting back to the part of us that observes, the part of us that is unbound. We recognize, we remember that we are interwoven, interdependent, interconnected to the awareness around us. And we are like little drops of water plucked from that ocean of Brahman, the ocean or sea of awareness that we are that, we are part of that and it is part of us. In this fourth chamber of the heart, the interconnected, universal awareness.

And keeping your eyes closed, you can lower your right hand back down onto your knee or thigh. You can feel the warmth of where the hand was, almost blurring the line between the boundary of you and what is outside of you. And then you can hold on to anything that felt true. Even as you begin to take a deeper breath in and a deeper breath out, you can bring your hands together in front of your heart, thumbs resting back in the middle of the breastbone, bowing your head to your own heart. Now you can come back to anything that felt true just by remembering, reconnecting, reuniting with your own heart space. And you can move that awareness into each moment of your living. And allow your eyes to flutter open, maybe take the gaze hazily at one point on the fingers or floor. Namaste.