I wanted to write a little about some things that have dawned upon me as of late. I have just arrived back from India over the past five days. My head has been spinning around between trying to get my feet on the ground with severe jet lag and also trying to assimilate back into the manicured roads and grocery shelves here in the Western world. Time is a funny thing. It comes and goes and is always present all at the same time. It’s like we are stuck in a memory vortex of systematic change and habitual behavior. India is crazy. There, everything is thrown into a couldron and the sweat and perfume of man- made genius and destruction play a symphony. It is the epitome of the quintessential muse. By that I mean is makes you question, re-evaluate and then want to invent a new vision of how you see the world and yourself. It peels you from the inside out until you are left standing bare naked wanting to design a whole new wardrobe for yourself, literally. I seem to remember someone telling me that drugs would have the same effect, only visiting India is a lot more of an innocent peeling off, whereas the drugs seem to have a little less vulnerability associated with them.
It’s a funny thing considering ‘purity of the heart’. It was the central topic of conversation between us and Shamdas, an incredible voyager and vedic scholar. He lives in the heart of Vrindaban. It doesn’t get any more grimy or glorious than Goverdan, a village in the province of Vrindaban where Shamdas resides. The history and presence of devotion in all shapes and forms exist there. Shamdas was basically telling us that the highest level of existence is to travel the path of Bhakti, devotion. This dance is a dance between the masculine and feminine inside both man and woman, within all existence. It’s amazing how a learned man, as he is, has been able to live in India soaking in the questioning and experiencing of his being and existence for over thirty five years. He has written and continues to write many books on vedic philosophy and spiritual inquiry.
So what is purity of the heart? We all know what that feels like but is it something that we surround ourselves with and live with day in and day out. I would like to feel that the central aspect of what makes me tick is purity of the heart. But we all know that we do not live in a world where this upholds itself twenty four seven. So why is that? Is it because we didn’t have the best parents or socio-economic background to render us pure-hearts, or is it something intrinsically dualistic within our own nature? Critical thinkers may delineate all kinds of analytical reasons why, but what would the poet or the mystic say in less than an eternal treatise about the matter.
I’m going to take a big plunge into an azure ocean and declare that it all boils down to self- love. Authentic self- love from the heart can only regenerate continually purity of the heart. From a young age if we can fall in love with our deepest nature and truly awaken to the kindness and affection we intrinsically feel inside our own body, mind and spirit, then this can be achieved. Then morality and decency, grace and beauty will become by- products of an illuminated sense of self. All respect and adoration start from within and not the other way round.
All social malaise, cultural and political upheaval stem from the individual. We are here to experience and question the totality of who and what we are. And until we do not address these fundamental questions and investigations based on our own personal sense of self then everything that is good and harmonious has a shelf life. The nature of order and destruction is relative. We can become sophisticated and evolved in how we experience order and destruction within this existence. We have many layers to peel off and our consciousness has the capacity to continually expand and express itself in an infinitely creative manner. I pose these ideas and questions only to enliven and arise in my self and in you the melody of the sequence of how we experience our lifetime. For it is only one lifetime, in this way, shape and form anyway.
The horizon is within reach only if the eyes are there to see it and feel it.
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