Thursday, April 13, 2017

The Heart of Spring - Marie Teresa McDaid

The season of spring has arrived in the northern hemisphere. During early spring, the axis of the earth is increasing its tilt relative to the sun, and the hemisphere begins to warm, causing new plant growth. The days are becoming longer, and the weather is glorious – vibrant pink sunrises and sunsets, and clear blue skies. Early morning birdsong greets us to begin each new day. The cherry blossom trees have started to flower in all their glory. They don’t remain in bloom for very long so I like to be out around them to get their full essence, as it will be another year before I see them again.

While out walking this week, I came across a real beauty. It was in a quiet corner of a government building, amongst paving stones in the town center. I stood underneath her light pink blossoms in the early morning, closed my eyes and waited to feel what she wished to share. What I felt was stillness, simplicity, innocence and purity, and I felt her surrender to the elements.

In the early stages of Heartfulness, the word ‘surrender’ was hard for me to fully understand. But gradually, through the days of heart connection it started to present itself naturally. Surrender is like a seedling that was planted into the soil of our hearts from the time of creation. Now we are reconnecting with it, and many such seedlings, through the stillness of meditation. We can feel our hearts surrender to the flow of Heartfulness during these moments of connection. The mind and inner conflicts release their hold as we yield to a stream of pure, unconditional love and divine will.
 
The Beloved regulates the inner and outer seasons for us all, universally - the earth on which we walk, the winds of change, the warmth of the sun and the waters of life. We sit in mediation with the elements; they breeze through us, cleansing, purifying and balancing. They release impressions wrapped around our hearts, and the system settles into the flow of love that fills the empty spaces. Then, connected to earth, renewed and restored, our hearts become filled with the divine presence. We absorb it deep within our hearts, to share with others.

There are other seedlings to discover in this inner heart.  Let’s go forward together with our sisters and brothers around the world in this season of new growth and renewal on the planet, to propagate our inner condition so that we can be in constant connection with His heart and to each other. 

Like the cherry tree that stands amidst the concrete paving stones, we stand within this form of life, sometimes restrictive and painful, but we don’t have to wait until next year to blossom, because we have Heartfulness constantly flowing to assist us and to get us to our destination.

The cherry blossom, for now, will share her beauty and love.


Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Craving the Ultimate - Marie Teresa McDaid

Craving the Ultimate
Marie Teresa McDaid
Craving: to long for; want greatly; to require; to need; to yearn for
The Ultimate: the absolute: the concept of an unconditional reality which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence.
 thefreedictionary.com
Love

We are making our way back home to the Beloved within all of us. The seeds of love were sown in our hearts from the time of creation. God gave us free will when we came to live these lives. We lived and experienced our lives in form and in the exterior places that we have found hold little value, and now we are trying to find our way back to the ultimate place within.

Throughout my life I had felt a sense of separation, of something missing. Once I started Heartfulness, I realised that what I was feeling was separation from inner self; that I was missing my ultimate home. That is when my yatra (journey) started.

The feeling of separation from our Beloved can be a difficult thing to put into mere words. We yearn so deeply to be with Him. This yearning drives every particle of our being to get closer to Him. It vibrates the pulse and radiates from the heart. We long to feel the flow of His love pulling us towards Him.

Prayer

This love is so subtle, it assists in taking us there, pulling from ahead and pushing from behind. When this begins, there is no going back; what is there to go back to? It becomes almost unbearable to be within this surge of separation whilst journeying but how beautiful it is to bear!

We must keep moving forward and not slow down as we move through the different points along the path. Once the momentum has begun, this stream of love must be kept at a level to keep taking us to higher states of infinite awareness. It is so beautiful to feel the love proliferate and all around us benefit too.

To remain in a condition of love is the key to moving forward continuously. Love will attract love, so the lover and the Beloved will be drawn to each other.

Keep this condition not just in meditation but in the waking and sleeping states. We can keep generating love through regular, pure intention – prayer and constant remembrance.

Constant Remembrance

What has helped me on this journey of love has been prayer and staying in constant remembrance. The impetus for this was a talk given by Daaji, which I came across in 2015 when I had been a few months in this beautiful Heartfulness practice. In it he suggested that we “think that everything surrounding us – the air particles, people, the birds, the trees, the flowers, the ceiling, the wall, the paintings – everything – is absorbed in Godly remembrance.”

I seemed to absorb this within and it became part of my daily life.

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What is real love for God?

“It is a state when the trinity of the lover, the beloved and love itself disappear.”

Lalaji