Anam Cara

5 States of Heart

The human body is an amazing masterpiece. With the senses we see, taste, and touch the world, drawing its mystery inside us. With the mind we probe the eternal structures of things. With the face we present ourselves to the world and recognize one another. But it is the heart that makes us human.

The heart is where the beauty of the human spirit comes alive. Without the heart, the human would be sinister. To be able to feel is the great gift. When you feel for someone, you become united with that person in an intimate way; your concern and compassion come alive, drawing some of the other person’s world and spirit into yours. Feeling is the secret bridge that penetrates solitude and isolation. Without the ability to feel, friendship and love could never be born. All feeling is born in the heart. This makes the human heart the true jewel of the world.

Facing outward, the senses are in ever new conversation with whatever surrounds us. Facing possibility, the mind is in relentless thought-flow. Concealed within the dark, the heart is concerned with who we are. It is ever attentive to how we feel; it senses and feels where the care, the joy, the fear, and the tenderness reside. Always and at every point, the heart remembers who we are. Though so much else is in motion in the mind and the senses, the hidden heart never loses sight of us. If we ever feel lost or overwhelmed, all we have to do is become still and listen in to our heart and we will soon find exactly where we are.

Because the mind is always engaged with whatever is happening now, it often forgets who we are. The heart never forgets. Everything of significance is inscribed there. The heart is the archive of all our intimate memory. What is truly felt leaves the deepest inscription. Each of us carries the book of our life inside our heart. Often at night when we dream, we are surprised at how clearly versions of long-forgotten events return with strange clarity. Though we live much of our lives outside, in action and engagement with the world, the deeper impact of what happens is registered in the narrative of the heart.

Because the heart dwells in unattended dark, we often forget its sublime sensitivity to everything that is happening to us. Without our ever noticing, the heart absorbs the joy of things and also their pain and care. Within us, therefore, a burdening can accrue. For this reason it is wise now and again to tune in to your heart and listen for what it carries. Sometimes the simplest things effect unexpected transformation. The old people here used to say that a burden shared is a burden halved. Similarly, when you allow your heart to speak, the burdens it carries diminish, a new lightness enters your body, and relief floods the heart. In his poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” W. H. Auden has the beautiful quatrain:

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

It brings great joy to feel alive. You sense the beauty and privilege of being here. For a while your eyes take in the world in all its adventure and grace; you feel somehow at the center of its surge of invitation and possibility. One of the loneliest elements of exile is the exile from one’s feelings. The person who is not able to feel his life has become dangerously dislocated. Sometimes severe suffering causes this numbing; the heart atrophies.

The shape of the human heart is very distinctive; it is an instantly recognizable image. It is an interesting shape. Neither a circle nor a triangle, it somehow manages to blend both contours. Viewed through the metaphor of the triangle, the heart is a space where the self and its otherness unite to configure the individual presence of the person. This threefold structure is also the structure at work in friendship and love: you, the friend, and the triangle is completed in the “third force,” which is the spirit of the friendship; this is more than the sum of the two dimensions. It is a force that has its own independence and a different tone of spirit. Therefore, outer and inner friendship have a triadic structure. In Christian belief, God is not a lonely divine object; rather God is where self and other, the one and the many, come together. God is three persons in a kinetic flow of originating, enduring, and completing love. The Father generates the Son, and both together create the Spirit, who is the third force where their knowing, narrative, and memory unite. The first heart is the Sacred Heart.

Viewed through the metaphor of the circle, other qualities of the heart come into relief. The heart has a beautiful simultaneity, being at once the place of arrival and departure within the body. All the wearied blood arrives thereto be refreshed and renewed, and it is from this place that the newly invigorated life force sets forth. It is the place of ending that is always a new beginning. The circle is an ancient form; it signifies continuity, belonging, and permanence. It is consoling to think that at the center of the human body the heart holds one’s life within its sure circle.

The state of one’s heart inevitably shapes one’s life; it is ultimately the place where everything is decided.

• A courageous heart will go forth and engage with life despite confusion and fear.

• A fearful heart will be hesitant and will tend to hold back.

• A heavy heart will make for a gloomy, unlived life.

• A compassionate heart need never carry the burden of judgment.

• A forgiving heart knows the art of liberation.

• A loving heart awakens the spirit of possibility and engagement with others.

The power of the heart’s attitude is expressed beautifully in the New Testament: “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.” And all through the Old Testament, God is interested only in the heart—not sacrifices, rituals, or rules—only the heart. Indeed, the mystical tradition would suggest the heart is beautiful precisely because it is where God dwells: the heart is the divine sanctuary. FOR COURAGE

When the light around you lessens

And your thoughts darken until

Your body feels fear turn

Cold as a stone inside,

When you find yourself bereft

Of any belief in yourself

And all you unknowingly

Leaned on has fallen,

When one voice commands

Your whole heart,

And it is raven dark,

Steady yourself and see

That it is your own thinking

That darkens your world,

Search and you will find

A diamond-thought of light,

Know that you are not alone

And that this darkness has purpose;

Gradually it will school your eyes

To find the one gift your life requires

Hidden within this night-corner.

Invoke the learning

Of every suffering

You have suffered.

Close your eyes.

Gather all the kindling

About your heart

To create one spark.

That is all you need

To nourish the flame

That will cleanse the dark

Of its weight of festered fear.

A new confidence will come alive

To urge you toward higher ground

Where your imagination

Will learn to engage difficulty

As its most rewarding threshold!

FOR AN EXILE

When you dream, it is always home.

You are there among your own,

The rhythm of their voices rising like song

Your blood would sing through any dark.

Then you awake to find yourself listening

To the sounds of traffic in another land.

For a moment your whole body recoils

At the strange emptiness of where you are.

This country is cold to your voice.

It is still a place without echoes.

Nothing of yours has happened here.

No one knows you,

The language slows you,

The thick accent smothers your presence.

You sound foreign to yourself;

Their eyes reflect how strange you seem

When seen across a cold distance

That has no bridge to carry

The charisma in which your friends

Delight at home.

Though your work here is hard,

It brings relief, helps your mind

In returning to the small

Bounties of your absence.

Evening is without protection;

Your room waits,

Ready to take you

Back like some convict

Who is afraid

Of the life outside.

The things you brought from home

Look back at you; out of place here

They take on lonely power.

You cringe at the thought

That someone from home

Might see you now here,

In this unsheltered room.

Now is the time to hold faithful

To your dream, to understand

That this is an interim time

Full of awkward disconnection.

Gradually you will come to find

Your way to friends who will open

Doors into a new belonging.

Your heart will brighten

With new discovery,

Your presence will unclench

And find ease,

Letting your substance

And promise be seen.

Slowly, a new world will open for you.

The eyes of your heart, refined

By this desert time, will be free

To see and celebrate the new life

For which you sacrificed everything.

FOR SOLITUDE

May you recognize in your life the presence,

power, and light of your soul.

May you realize that you are never alone,

that your soul in its brightness and belonging

connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.

May you have respect for your individuality and difference.

May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique,

that you have a special destiny here,

that behind the facade of your life

there is something beautiful and eternal happening.

May you learn to see your self

with the same delight,

pride, and expectation

with which God sees you in every moment.

FOR AN ADDICT

On its way through the innocent night,

The moth is ambushed by the light,

Becomes glued to a window

Where a candle burns; its whole self,

Its dreams of flight and all desire

Trapped in one glazed gaze;

Now nothing else can satisfy

But the deadly beauty of flame.

When you lose the feel

For all other belonging

And what is truly near

Becomes distant and ghostly,

And you are visited

And claimed by a simplicity

Sinister in its singularity,

No longer yourself, your mind

And will owned and steered

From elsewhere now,

You would sacrifice anything

To dance once more to the haunted

Music with your fatal beloved

Who owns the eyes of your heart.

These words of blessing cannot

Reach, even as echoes,

To the shore of where you are,

Yet may they work without you

To soften some slight line through

To the white cave where

Your soul is captive.

May some glimmer

Of outside light reach your eyes

To help you recognize how

You have fallen for a vampire.

May you crash hard and soon

Onto real ground again

Where this fundamentalist

Shell might start to crack

For you to hear

Again your own echo.

That your lost lonesome heart

Might learn to cry out

For the true intimacy

Of love that waits

To take you home

To where you are known

And seen and where

Your life is treasured

Beyond every frontier

Of despair you have crossed.

FOR FAILURE

The will of color loves how light spreads

Through its diffusions, making textures subtle,

Clothing a landscape in concealment

For color to keep its mysteries

Hidden from the unready eye.

But the light that comes after rain

Is always fierce and clear,

And illuminates the face of everything

Through the transparency of rain.

Despite the initial darkening,

This is the light that failure casts.

Beholden no more to the promise

Of what dream and work would bring.

It shows where roots have withered

And where the source has gone dry.

The light of failure has no mercy

On the affections of the heart;

It emerges from beyond the personal,

A wiry, forthright light that likes to see crevices

Open in the shell of a controlled life.

Though cruel now, it serves a deeper kindness,

Wise to the larger call of growth.

It invites us to humility

And the painstaking work of acceptance

So that one day we may look back

In recognition and appreciation

At the disappointment we now endure.

FOR GRIEF

When you lose someone you love,

Your life becomes strange,

The ground beneath you gets fragile,

Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;

And some dead echo drags your voice down

Where words have no confidence.

Your heart has grown heavy with loss;

And though this loss has wounded others too,

No one knows what has been taken from you

When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret

For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;

Again inside the fullness of life,

Until the moment breaks

And you are thrown back

Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,

You are able to function well

Until in the middle of work or encounter,

Suddenly with no warning,

You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.

All you can depend on now is that

Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.

More than you, it knows its way

And will find the right time

To pull and pull the rope of grief

Until that coiled hill of tears

Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance

With the invisible form of your departed;

And when the work of grief is done,

The wound of loss will heal

And you will have learned

To wean your eyes

From that gap in the air

And be able to enter the hearth

In your soul where your loved one

Has awaited your return

All the time.

FOR THE INTERIM TIME

When near the end of day, life has drained

Out of light, and it is too soon

For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline

Makes everything look strangely in-between,

Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.

In a while it will be night, but nothing

Here seems TO believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim

Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;

The way forward is still concealed from you.

“The old is not old enough to have died away;

The new is still too young to be born.”

You cannot lay claim to anything;

In this place of dusk,

Your eyes are blurred;

And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart

And you can see nowhere to put your trust;

You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.

Do not allow your confusion to squander

This call which is loosening

Your roots in false ground,

That you might come free

From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,

And it is difficult and slow to become new.

The more faithfully you can endure here,

The more refined your heart will become

For your arrival in the new dawn.

FOR BEAUTY

As stillness in stone to silence is wed,

May solitude foster your truth in word.

As a river flows in ideal sequence,

May your soul reveal where time is presence.

As the moon absolves the dark of distance,

May your style of thought bridge the difference.

As the breath of light awakens color,

May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder.

As spring rain softens the earth with surprise,

May your winter places be kissed by light.

As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance,

May the grace of change bring you elegance.

As clay anchors a tree in light and wind,

May your outer life grow from peace within.

As twilight pervades the belief of night,

May beauty sleep lightly within your heart.

FOR A PRISONER

Caged in a cold, functional cell,

Far from the comfort of home

With none of your own things,

In a place that is gray and grim,

Where sounds are seldom gentle,

Amidst the shuffle of dumbed feet,

The crossword of lost voices,

The one constant note

Is the dead, trap-shut sound

Of unrelenting doors that

Make walls absolute.

Though you have lost the outside world,

May you discover the untold journey

That awaits you in the inner world.

May you come to recognize

That though your body is imprisoned,

No one can imprison your mind.

May all the time you have on your hands

Bring you into new friendship with your mind

So that you learn to understand and integrate

The darkness that brought you here.

Within this limited space,

May you learn to harness

The stretch of time.

May your compassion awaken.

May you learn to recover the self

You were before you lost your way

And draw from its depths

Some balm to heal your wounds.

Behind the harsh rhythms of prison life,

May you find a friend you can talk to

And nurture the natural kindness

To become more free in your heart

And lighten the outer constraints.

May your eyes look up and find

The bright line of an inner horizon

That will ground and encourage you

For that distant day when your new feet

Will step out onto the pastures of freedom.

FOR SUFFERING

May you be blessed in the holy names of those

Who, without you knowing it,

Help to carry and lighten your pain.

May you know serenity

When you are called

To enter the house of suffering.

May a window of light always surprise you.

May you be granted the wisdom

To avoid false resistance;

When suffering knocks on the door of your life,

May you glimpse its eventual gifts.

May you be able to receive the fruits of suffering.

May memory bless and protect you

With the hard-earned light of past travail;

To remind you that you have survived before

And though the darkness now is deep,

You will soon see approaching light.

May the grace of time heal your wounds.

May you know that though the storm might rage,

Not a hair of your head will be harmed.

FOR ONE WHO IS EXHAUSTED

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,

Time takes on the strain until it breaks;

Then all the unattended stress falls in

On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.

The light in the mind becomes dim.

Things you could take in your stride before

Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.

Gravity begins falling inside you,

Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.

And you are marooned on unsure ground.

Something within you has closed down;

And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.

The desire that drove you has relinquished.

There is nothing else to do now but rest

And patiently learn to receive the self

You have forsaken in the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken

And sadness take over like listless weather.

The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.

Learn to linger around someone of ease

Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,

Having learned a new respect for your heart

And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

FOR EQUILIBRIUM

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,

May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.

As the wind loves to call things to dance,

May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,

May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,

So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,

May your sense of irony bring perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,

May your mind stay clear of all it names.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough

To hear in the depths the laughter of God.

FOR LONELINESS

When the light lessens,

Causing colors to lose their courage,

And your eyes fix on the empty distance

That can open on either side

Of the surest line

To make all that is

Familiar and near

Seem suddenly foreign,

When the music of talk

Breaks apart into noise

And you hear your heart louden

While the voices around you

Slow down to leaden echoes

Turning the silence

Into something stony and cold,

When the old ghosts come back

To feed on everywhere you felt sure,

Do not strengthen their hunger

By choosing to fear;

Rather, decide to call on your heart

That it may grow clear and free

To welcome home your emptiness

That it may cleanse you

Like the clearest air

You could ever breathe.

Allow your loneliness time

To dissolve the shell of dross

That had closed around you;

Choose in this severe silence

To hear the one true voice

Your rushed life fears;

Cradle yourself like a child

Learning to trust what emerges,

So that gradually

You may come to know

That deep in that black hole

You will find the blue flower

That holds the mystical light

Which will illuminate in you

The glimmer of springtime.