When you really like to discover the truth, when you just like to see and feel what’s true, this indicates that you like being yourself. It is lovely to be where one is without rejection, without the need to be somewhere else to be okay. In this place, the heart opens up, and there is enough space to feel joy. There’s contentment and peacefulness, and a personalness to the contentment and peace that gives the feeling of intimacy. You are intimate with yourself when you’re simply being where you are.

The crystal heart is a dimension or level of the heart that brings about detachment from everything. So it’s the heart of nonattachment, which makes it possible for us to love and have heart without attachment. But here, I wake up with this heart and feel it as hard, as a hard and neutral presence. It does not feel like love, but like the absence of love and heart. 

What we call heart is not exactly what we usually think of as the heart. More precisely, our usual understanding of heart is a very limited way of knowing the real heart. At the beginning of our inner work, we experience our heart as emotions and feelings. At deeper levels, we experience our heart as the essential heart with love, compassion, joy, and all of the qualities of essence. The essential heart leads to the aspect of truth, the solid gold of truth, which is the source of the essential heart. Beyond the aspect of truth is the heart of non-attachment, which does not distinguish between heart and mind. Knowing and feeling coincide as pure sensitivity.

The fickleness and polygamy of the heart with its multiplicity of love objects will continue even when you have turned toward the inner path. It will take a long time to understand and fully recognize how the heart is divided, and what that actually does to the heart, which naturally seeks unity. But we’ll make a start now, because the beginning of the possibility of unification comes through the recognition that the true Beloved of the heart is something intangible, something which we don’t even know yet. In truth, the heart does know it, but the eyes have not seen it. It’s because the heart knows its true Beloved that it is still discontented—it feels the pain of not being united with it. In time we’ll learn what it really means to be united with the Beloved, and how this affects our relationship with our earthly loves. We’ll learn how to unify our love and harmonize our heart, but we can’t do this until we recognize that it is divided. That’s why we’re doing this inquiry into our personal experience of the discontent of the heart. 

Originally, to start with, human beings create all these mind relationships, these mental relationships, these splittings in relationships, to protect the love, to protect the heart from hurt. That protection comes from ignorance. We do not know that our heart is indestructible. The heart cannot be destroyed. Your heart is more permanent than your body. Even when you feel hurt, it is not ultimately your heart that is hurt. What is hurt are your identifications, your self-image, your pride. So to continue loving regardless of what happens is not giving in to the other person; it is giving in to your heart, to your nature. Sometimes we do not allow ourselves to feel loving, and to be loving, and to act loving. This is because we think that loving means we are going to be weak, or that we are going to be taken advantage of, or exploited, or that we are being stupid, or that we are going to lose something. The fact is that the moment you close your heart, you are the one who loses. If you give in to your heart, it does not mean that you are giving in to the other person. It does not mean you are giving in to negativity. You are giving in to your nature. You are surrendering to who you are. To be always loving does not mean that you do not defend yourself. The courageous heart perceives and acknowledges what is there—good or bad. It does not pretend that there is no negativity. It perceives the negativity and deals with it with love. So to continue to be loving does not mean that you are weak. It does not mean that you are going to be dominated by someone. In fact, to have a courageous heart means you are able to be inwardly alone and independent. There is no true autonomy without a courageous heart. And there is no courageous heart without true autonomy.

The heart is the feeling capacity of the soul, the soul’s capacity to know intimately.

This need to shed all that we love, and our willingness to give up all that we have and sacrifice it at the altar of love for the Beloved, will lead us to what we call mystical poverty and the dark night of the soul. Going through mystical poverty, going through the dark night of the soul, ultimately means recognizing that we have to give up everything, till in the end we have absolutely nothing. At the stage we’re looking at here, it’s a question of renouncing all our objects of love—everything that we love, cherish, and value. But remember, it’s not that the love decides to say no to any of the objects, images and forms. When it comes to the heart, it’s not a calculated thing; it’s not something we think through and decide. It’s more that the heart is just flooded with love for the Beloved and the forms are dissolved and melted by the flood of love itself, by its sweetness, gentleness, and delicacy, and also by its passion and power. The images of our previous loves vanish the way little soap bubbles do. We can also experience the love as an all-consuming fire, whose flames incinerate all the forms. Whatever way we experience it, the heart wants only one thing, and the mind doesn’t even know what that one thing is. The heart simply feels, “I just want to be near the Beloved, and nothing else will do. The nearer I am, the happier. The farther away, the sadder I am.” 

The heart is, by its very nature, sensitive, attuned to life; it appreciates human beings and recognizes their preciousness. Acting at the expense of another’s well-being is only possible when the heart is desensitized, shut down. For example, if you only express angry reactions to someone without allowing yourself to be vulnerable and expose the hurt feelings beneath your anger, that self-protection will hurt your own heart. Your heart is dying as you attempt to maintain your own psychic survival. So, moving from the animal soul to the human soul accomplishes the important shift of focus from both your physical and psychic survival to the survival of your heart.

What’s true for everyone is that the more we allow the heart to open up and orient itself toward the Beloved, the more that fuels the journey as a whole. It gives our spiritual unfolding a particular dimension of depth and intensity, and a particular kind of beauty—a kind of magic. I said at the beginning that the more love dominates our path, the more it becomes a love affair, and this is an important shift. It means that it’s no longer all just hard work—it’s not only a matter of being disciplined and dedicated in a way that’s all about being responsible and earnest. We’re now involved in an intoxicating love affair, and the way we feel has aspects to it that are best described as ‘drunken’. That’s partly what is meant by the term ecstatic love—that it has a drunken quality to it. It’s not a rational, orderly, or reasonable quality, because it’s not being restrained and regulated by the mind. So it might seem that we are irrational and drunk, but it’s love that we are drunk on—it’s a state of intoxication caused by passionate and ecstatic love. 

We see that all that we have loved, we loved because it revealed something about our true beloved to us. It was a reflection of the true beloved, a message from him, a beckoning toward him. But we did not see that at the time, instead filling our heart with these partial expressions. Now our true love has revealed Himself to us, and the heart instantly recognizes and rejoices. We realize we have always been in love, sometimes sweetly and tenderly and other times passionately and deeply. We have always been forlorn and sad, dejected and depressed. When we were in the company of an earthly love we could not feel the total intimacy that we knew our heart wanted. Our love has always been unrequited, because all the loves were substitute loves, at best partial manifestations of our true love. Now that we are united with our true beloved, our earthly love is balanced and seen in perspective. It deepens and expands, for we see how much beauty and majesty our earthly love reminds us of, and expresses to us. In other words, we realize that we love others and objects because we see something in them that expresses our true beloved. We have earthly love because all manifestation is the appearance and body of our true beloved. Now our love affair is consummated and fulfilled. Our ecstatic and passionate love of the mystery draws us powerfully to its depths, and its annihilating love for us draws us deeper into its non-beingness. We meet in the heart, the soul consumed with passion, and lovingly annihilated in the beloved’s embrace. We become one, a crystalline luminous beauty, sable black and charming beyond description. Musk fills the air, and the scent of roses announces the total marriage.

There is another reason why we need the heart for the process of inquiry, a reason we do not appreciate until we go very far in our journey. The heart is the specific abode of the truth. It is the particular place where the absolute truth will emerge and declare, “This is my place. I made this heart my throne, for me to dwell in.” This can happen when we recognize that the Absolute is one hundred percent what the heart wants. The heart recognizes its ultimate function as the place, the particular abode, where the truth resides. It has been said that to look for the Absolute, you cannot look in any temple or place, but must look for it in your own heart. There is an inherent reason why the heart loves the truth. More than any other expression or manifestation of the truth, the heart is designed so the truth can reveal itself there most fully. It’s just like when we make a ring for a particular stone. The ring is made for that stone to fit perfectly. That’s what the heart is—a particular setting for the precious stone that is the truth. This is a very subtle, deep perception that we can recognize at some point. We see its reflection when we feel that we love and want the truth. The heart loves to have its master present, longs for its true occupant to dwell within. Before that, the heart is occupied by many kinds of things that are mistaken images of what the truth is. All these things that we love and want do not fit the heart exactly. As a result, the heart is constantly discontented, for its setting is designed for one thing in particular. Only that one thing will fit one hundred percent perfectly. The heart will know when the truth appears. It will then be fulfilled. And the Diamond Guidance is the specific guidance that leads the heart to fulfill its purpose.

Many of us have already experienced what’s called ‘the opening of the heart.’ There comes a time in our life when we experience the heart opening in a certain way, when it becomes able to feel things more intensely, more deeply. Openness of the heart sounds wonderful, because people often think it means only ecstasy and joy. And yes, it can bring ecstasy and all the orgiastic, rapturous feelings of love. But as we saw earlier, when the heart is open it opens to the whole range of emotions, so we will also begin to feel more of our vulnerability, more of our sadness, our hurt, our wanting and yearning. We feel the love and the deprivation, and both are felt in a deeper and more powerful way. This is the openness of the heart. The mind would prefer to bypass these intensely difficult feelings, but we can’t let the mind guide the heart. If the mind tries to guide what the heart feels, then it’s a form of control—it means there is something from outside of the heart that wants to direct or contain it. And the simple truth is that by its very nature the heart knows the Beloved, and it doesn’t need any guidance at all on what to feel about it. So if we feel a painful sense of distance, if we feel a sense of separation and abandonment, if we feel a sense of insufficiency and emptiness, a sense of hurt, desire, longing, and yearning, then we are on the right track. We don’t want to control these things. We want to let them be felt as freely, as completely, and as deeply as possible. 

Now definitely, the more we open to love with other human beings, the more our heart opens, and the more we can therefore engage the inner path of love. We clearly can’t engage it if our heart is not open to love and willing to tolerate all the feelings that come with it, and those feelings usually emerge first in relation to other human beings, often intensely. When it comes to the inner Beloved the intensity is of a different order, but when the heart first opens we tend not to be aware of the difference. So the opening of the heart is in some sense the beginning of the path of love, and often this is experienced when we fall in love with someone. However, the heart opening is not just a matter of falling in love, because people can fall in love before the heart opens. When we talk about the heart opening, we mean that the heart center is open and flooded with ecstatic love.

The heart's love of truth is not a thought or an idea. It is not a matter of trying to live according to an ideal. It’s not a motive that comes from the mind. It is an impulse from the depth of the soul, a deeply felt motive from the heart. It is not that we think and deliberate and decide that truth is good for us, so we end up wanting it. Love of the truth is not utilitarian. The truth often ends up being utilitarian, but that is not what inspires the right attitude for the journey. The correct attitude is that of a lover who wants to be close to the Beloved.

The heart is what possesses the truth sense, not the mind. The mind can discriminate and know, but it is the heart that ascertains whether it is the truth. Since the Beloved is the ultimate truth, only the heart will know it for certain. And since the heart primordially loves the truth, the ultimate truth is inherently its deepest Beloved.

Pure heart is what I also call the courageous heart. The courageous heart does not eliminate love when there is hatred and does not try to choose one thing above another. The pure heart is open to the presentations of Being regardless of what they are. It is happy to be with whatever God wills and asserts no position. The attitude of purity is the attitude of no assertion. You don't assert any truth. You don't assert any knowledge, any perspective, any position. You don't take a position; you don't have a position; you don't have a particular truth, opinion, belief, religion. You are absolutely poor. The attitude of purity is that you never close your mind and say that's it. You never close the door. You are open not because you are uncertain, but because it is not possible to assert this or that about reality in some absolute way. And also there is no need or urge to assert this or that view.

A person who does not have a heart cannot hate, cannot be angry, cannot be hurt, cannot be jealous. Without love there is no such thing as jealousy, hurt, fear, hatred, or anger. All of these things are reactions to the absence of love, to the blockage of it, to the non-perceiving of it. To be aware of the real relationship means that there is always awareness of love. This never goes, in any relationship. There is always the lovingness, and love has understanding in it. Love has forgiveness and acceptance in it. Love has compassion, appreciation, pleasure, happiness, strength, and gratitude. All these are elements of love, and it is there all the time; it is part of our nature. The courageous heart is the heart that is always present, regardless of what happens. If your heart is present only if good things happen, your heart is not yet free, not actualized. You are still a coward, still afraid. You have a heart, but not yet a courageous heart. So to have a true relationship, a real relationship, means to manifest the courageous heart.

The courageous heart is independent of what the other person does and what the other person thinks of you. To have a courageous heart, you need to accept a certain kind of aloneness, a certain kind of independence. With the courageous heart, you are so independent that the person can do all kinds of unpleasant things but you can still see the reality. In that independence, the feeling is that you have to give constantly, regardless of what the other person does or what the situation is.

So we often end up in situations where our hearts are divided. And when the heart is divided, the process of inquiry is less effective. However, the more the heart is one in loving the truth, the more our unfoldment will be optimized. The understanding that we need to love the truth and make it our dominant love—even our only love—lies behind the need for discipline, behind the view of renunciation, behind the view of detachment. When it is said, “Renounce the world, leave the world,” what does that mean? The idea is not that the world is bad. The point is that if you love it to the extent that you don’t want to see the truth, then the world becomes a barrier to the truth. You feel that the truth will threaten that love for the world, so some of the time you will choose the things of the world over the truth. Most of the time, choosing the truth over everything else does not mean that you have to renounce the world. It only means that the world is your second choice. But this is very difficult because of our divided heart. The heart is not powerful enough, courageous enough, strong enough to go charging after the truth regardless of what happens. You feel that you’re going to be rejecting and ruthless if you do that. You’re always concerned about this, about that, about what’s going to happen tomorrow. What is this person going to think of me? What is going to happen to my mother? What is going to happen to my child, my wife, my husband? You continue in the condition of having a divided heart. As I said, though it is difficult, it is possible to arrive at a place where you love only the truth. This is not, however, required to activate the Guidance or to allow the unfoldment to happen. What is needed is only the pure, selfless love of the truth even if you have competing loves. But the Guidance can work most effectively when the love of truth outweighs our love for everything else.

What we call heart is not exactly what we usually think of as the heart. More precisely, our usual understanding of heart is a very limited way of knowing the real heart. At the beginning of our inner work, we experience our heart as emotions and feelings. At deeper levels, we experience our heart as the essential heart with love, compassion, joy, and all of the qualities of essence. The essential heart leads to the aspect of truth, the solid gold of truth, which is the source of the essential heart. Beyond the aspect of truth is the heart of nonattachment, which does not distinguish between heart and mind. Knowing and feeling coincide as pure sensitivity.

The heart, obviously, is very important here, but we need to free the heart. Most of the time the heart is dominated by the perspective of object relations. We experience various feelings and emotions according to our psychodynamic history. Actually, the heart is nothing but the mind filled with love. The heart gives fullness to the concepts of the mind. So the mind and the heart are not separate things. They’re one thing. Love and thinking are one thing. Both the mind and the heart need to be freed from the perspective of the physical world. The heart is freed from object relations by arriving at
non-attachment.

Remember, we defined the human soul as having a heart. What is a heart? The heart is nothing but the soul turning toward the Source as a movement of love. When that turning is complete, we don’t call the soul the human soul anymore. We call it the angelic soul, or the essential soul, because it has made its turn completely. The journey of that turning is what we call the experience of the human soul. It is the movement of love. And if we recognize what is happening, the journey of that turning is a love affair. All throughout your life, you are looking for love—the satisfaction, sweetness, and happiness of love—whether you are involved in spiritual work or not. When we are little babies, we want love. Everything is hinged on love—are we getting it or not, and how much and in what way? So, from the very beginning, all of life is this turning of the heart. This is always so; we are just not aware of it as such.

Now a courageous heart is a heart willing to love regardless of the negativity. The courageous heart is the heart that will love in spite of the badness that is there. The courageous heart is not just the heart that only loves and nothing else; it is the heart that loves regardless of what happens. The courageous heart is the heart of unconditional love: whether the other is good or bad, you continue loving them. Usually, with your friend or your spouse it is easy for you to be loving if the other is loving. But if the other is frustrating or mad, angry or rejecting, right away you shift, and close your love and bring in another reaction. You are hurt, you are angry, hateful, or frustrated, and if you are angry, frustrated, or hurt, you do not let yourself feel your love, at least not at the time of your initial reaction. What splitting does, more than anything else, is close the heart. Whether you are all bad or all good, whether you are all loving or all hateful, what you are doing more than anything else is covering up your courageous heart. You are not allowing yourself to have your courageous heart, to be your courageous heart. You are not allowing your love to be unconditional. Your love becomes conditional. You respond lovingly only under certain conditions, or with certain manifestations of the other

What does it mean that the human soul has a heart? “Heart” means love, more than anything else, because love is the foundation for the heart. When we think of heart, we think of love and all its derivatives. In contrast, a person who is living on the animal level is motivated by what is called the first chakra, which is the energy center that is focused on survival. At that level, a person is more animalistic and tends to be selfish and territorial, thinking of himself first; this focus leads to a way of living that is called “survival of the fittest.” The more you become human, the more you have a heart, and your relationship with life will tend to express other values besides safety, protection, and control. Survival itself becomes less important than the quality of that survival. Surviving is necessary, but it is only the first task to be accomplished, not the central concern.

The motivation we need is the sincerity of wanting the truth for its own sake, loving the truth for its own sake. This happens when truth becomes what we want, what we value, what we appreciate, what makes our heart happy. This is not a matter of ethical sincerity—of telling the truth—which is how sincerity is usually understood. The attitude here is more of a state of the heart, a devotional attitude. We want something for its own sake when we truly love it. There’s no other way to want something for its own sake. Conversely, when we appreciate something for its own sake, we call that love. So loving truth for its own sake brings the heart to a devotional attitude, an attitude of selfless affection and dedication. It is the heart’s openness, the heartfelt appreciation and longing, the gravitational pull that makes us want to see the truth, to be closer to the truth, to be intimate with it. The heart’s love of the truth is not a thought or an idea. It is not a matter of trying to live according to an ideal. It’s not a motive that comes from the mind. It is an impulse from the depth of the soul, a deeply felt motive from the heart. It is not that we think and deliberate and decide that truth is good for us, so we end up wanting it. Love of the truth is not utilitarian. The truth often ends up being utilitarian, but that is not what inspires the right attitude for the journey. The correct attitude is that of a lover who wants to be close to the beloved.