On the heart

There is a hidden agenda that is so fully a part of our nature, so engrained we have no reason to question it.

It is this: we want to feel pleasure.

Things appear before us. People, places, activities. All of these, we are hoping, will provide us with pleasure. Maybe it is the pleasure of completing a difficult task, an engaging conversation, a delicious bite of food, a beautiful landscape.

let me ask this question: is it possible to derive pleasure from anything? how about everything?

likely the answer is no: what about the guilt of failing at a project? The heartache in a fight with a close friend, the sadness of a clearcut forest. How could there possibly be pleasure there?

what we have to ask ourselves is: why is one thing pleasurable, and not another? Is there a list somewhere that lays out what experiences are good, and which aren’t good? Why do things we once loved and derived great joy from become dull and lifeless? What madness, trying to bring ourselves close to things that give us pleasure when we have no way of being certain they will actually do so!

All we have is the moment, where we either experience pleasure, or its absence.

What if it is possible for pleasure to precede the experience? What if the deciding factor of what constitutes a pleasurable experience has nothing to do with the experience itself, but rather has EVERYTHING to do with how we MEET the experience? It seems simple enough, certainly we have been bombarded with this rhetoric since we could remember, but the key to this is much more fundamental to our livelihood than we may think.

Let's assume for just a moment that WE ALONE get to determine how much pleasure we experience in any given moment regardless of what is happening to and around us.

I determine whether my experiences are pleasurable = My experiences determine whether I feel pleasure. These assumptions are equal, yet their implications are opposite.

So then what can we do to experience pleasure if it is not reliant on what is happening to us?

First, we have to know WHERE exactly it is that we feel this pleasure. When we eat a tasty meal, are we feeling the pleasure in our mouth? our nose perhaps? or our belly when its satisfied? Are these locations where the pleasure is actually recieved? I say no. These are places where sensations come from, the communication points between the world outside, and in. So where is the EXPERIENCING actually taking place? Here we will call it the Heart, but this is not the pump that moves our blood. The Heart is the very center of all our sensations. It is the location of awareness itself. The perceiver. The witness. The place THAT PERCIEVES.

Now, as sensations travel inward toward the Heart; they pass through a series of filters that determine HOW the Heart will perceive them. In this state, the Heart is a passive recepticle and what it percieves is determined by how the filters have colored the sensations. These filters are numerous, they alter our sensations arbitrarily based on their specific self-reflective purpose. Filters are not good or bad, they simply modulate the sensations. They add and subtract information from the sensations that tell the Heart how to experience them. By this fact, they also distance the Heart from the senses; and thereby the actual state of the world around us as it exists in reality. The greater number of filters, the further from truth our Heart is. Our Heart, in its receptive state is receiving more information about the filters themselves than reality as it is.

So how do we remove these filters? (the ideas, structures, constructs that designates what sensations deserve to be assigned pleasure, and which do not.

Now, the Heart possesses an incredible super power. I prefer to think of it as free will, but it is also known as: Love, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, joy, selflessness. This is because there are two states in which the Heart can exist.

One: a passive state where it receives the influences of incoming information.

Two: a state in which the heart moves outward, where it MEETS the incoming information.

where before, the filters were automatically rearranging the quality of sensation on its way toward the Heart; now the Heart itself is expanding outward, and as it does so touches the filters. When the outflowing of the heart meets the filters they change; they become like the Heart in its quality of giving. When the Heart is passive, it is also lifeless, and the filters completely determine the pleasure it experiences. When the Heart is enlivened by the desire for generosity, the filters it touches are purified in that they no longer determine how any given sensation is experienced, but instead act as conduits through which the quality of our Heart moves into the sensations, and thus the world.

When the Heart desires this state and chooses to become like its qualities, it taps into a source of pleasure that is not limited like the sources of pleasure that are allowed through the filters traveling inwards. The Heart is now the source of pleasure, rather than the place of its reception.

When the Heart is in this state, it fills sensations with pleasure.

Now, there is a great challenge. Information from the senses is still moving inward, and the filters have extraordinary power to shape the quality of it. In this way, the filters compell the Heart to receive their influence, either by filling it with pain, or pleasure. Both of which render the Heart passive and powerless. In order for the Heart to expand outward and fill the sensations again, it must do so with a force that is greater than the incoming sensations. This requires strength that can only come from within the Heart.

What is beautiful is that we may request this strength to appear within our Heart. The source of pleasure from which the Heart draws in its giving state will always, by its nature provide the necessary strength. The quality of the request however, must come from a desire to give, bestow, move outward. Not from a desire to receive. For in the desire to receive, energy is already moving inward through the filters, and any strength that is derived in such a way will be limited according to the filters themselves.

In our desire to fill our experiences with pleasure, rather than to receive pleasure from them is the key. From this desire we are no longer at the mercy of the events happening in our surroundings in order to feel pleasure. We are empowered. We no longer need to control or predict our environment in order to draw pleasure in through narrow channels within the filters. Instead, our environment is benefited by us inherently. We are giving it permission to be exactly as it is. Like a child who’s development depends on the parents’ ability to both nurture, and grant freedom to grow and expand; our environment gains our permission to be itself, and becomes more willing to show us what it really is. We allow our experiences to show us more of why they happen, and how we can best interact with them. Our reality fills with truth and opportunity. We become like a magnet for experiences that are easier and easier to fill with the pleasure of our Heart, and for that we experience greater levels of physical abundance, connection, and love.