The Deep Hearts Core – Spiritual Direction for Difficult Times

In Eternal Echoes the poet and scholar John O’Donohue writes:-

“To pray is to develop and refine the light of your life.  It smoothes the courseness of your vision.  It brings you closer to the homeland of your heart.”  There are many wonderful ancient and classical prayers from tradition.  Yet there is something irrevocably unique and intimate about your own individual prayer.  It would be wonderful to create your own prayer.”

I sometimes have an ambivalent toward the practice of prayer.  There are times when I love it for the sense of connectedness it gives me. There are times when I think it is simply more of me, myself, I when there is the engagement with an idea of someone separate asking for something from that which does not know the idea of separation.  Even from a purely logical point of view there is no meeting of minds.  From a mystic point of view there is only ever the one mind so you can`t pray to something or someone.

Yet I value prayer as an act of co-creation.  This is not simply the action of getting what I want because I am told I should want it or to avoid something I do not want.  John O’Donohue says that to pray is to develop and refine the light of your life. 

In this presentation I am simply going to share with you thoughts and ideas that come immediately to mind as I play with the idea of writing my own prayer.  I am not going to censor these thoughts in anyway but simply run with them as they arise.  I do not claim any expertise in relation to the practice of prayer but I do claim an interest in prayer at my deep hearts core.  The authority for communion with the Divine I claim as my own and it is in no way dictated by allegiance to any outside body or any outside authority.

So let me simply run with this invitation to writing ones own prayer that, personally speaking, I think is a great invitation.  Immediately the image I get around this idea of writing my own prayer is that of a block of marble.  Out of this block of marble I intend, metaphorically speaking, to carve my personal statement of Love.  I am going to engage with the wisdom within me that can create the beauty in the form that best expresses  Divine nature as it moves through this form in time and space.  

This, as John O’Donohue says, begins to refine your vision except that is isn’t really your vision but the blessing of being able to see beyond the limitation of the suffering of the separate sense of Self.  This is the vision of at one ment.  Out of this vision you are able to be a seer of what action needs to be taken.  You become a vehicle for Love in action.

I am more or less thinking aloud here as I write this article but I think that prayer would best become something that you love and something that you enjoy being engaged with.  Sometimes it might become dry and this can be acknowledged as a time of incubation.  Surely, however, prayer isn’t something that you think you should do because some outside authority tells you that this is required of you.  I think that prayer might be thought of as a communion between a lover and their Beloved.  Sometimes this can be challenging but this takes us into new thresholds of creative possibility.

 Prayer, I think, can become a way of tuning into the vision that is unique to you and the way that the light of Love plays through you.  For, me personally, the prayer that I most identify with is that of St. Francis of Assisi.  This begins 

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy Peace.”

Even to live this first line is a statement of a visionary of Love.  In this request there is no praying to get anything but it is a prayer of a co-creator willing to be used for the purpose of peace on earth.  It would be, personally speaking, difficult to come out of the rock of the separate sense of self with a more visionary statement than the invitation asked for in this line.  It could, if you were so inclined, become a kind of living mantra.

Thinking aloud again, I ask myself what would be the qualities required to write your own prayer.  This list of qualities and practices that I immediately think of are these.  They are listed simply as they arise and this does not indicate any level of importance to any of the qualities or practices listed.  I would include humility, silent witnessing, patience, intention, commitment, attention, faith, courage, surrender, enthusiasm, self worth, compassion and thankfulness.  This is not a list that is definitive but as for myself anyone of these is a great foundation on which to begin the practice of writing your own prayer.

In more practical terms you would need to commit time.  You would also need to have a place of quiet and you would need a journal to write in.  I wouldn’t use a computer because there is a direct connection between the use of pen and paper and the hand and heart that I think the computer does not give.  A computer is not a natural extension of your bioenergic form.

Looking at the above list that has simply arisen I find myself thinking that there is every reason to begin to write the prayer of your heart.  This would be the prayer, or unique spiritual statement, that you can feel directly in your heart and which you have no issues about using in the service of Love.  This invitation from John O’Donohue has given me inspiration to at least begin to step out on this journey of writing my personal prayer as a kind of love letter to Creation.

This, I think, is very different to praying a prayer of chanting a mantra given to you by an authority outside yourself.  This is an authority that you have projected your spiritual power unto.  I often think that mantras are given to the individual from direct divine awareness and that they are unique to that individual.  They represent the direct connection of that individual to their divine nature and are not for anyone else.  Creation never creates twice.  Even when there is a cloning the clone is never a full representation of the original.   

When the Lords prayer is recited it is intended to be an invocation from a state of consciousness which is Christ Consciousness.  To invoke the power of the Lords Prayer you need to at least be aware of the existence of non-dual consciousness from which this prayer is intended to be spoken.  If this awareness is not present then you are simply mouthing sounds that have no resonance to the direct experience out of which this prayer arises and out of which the power inherent in this prayer and other universal prayers arise.

When I go to church or chapel on occasion I am always astonished at how quickly the Lords prayer is recited.  It feels to me as if it is a race to see who can get to the end of the prayer first.  It is as if it were some unpleasant taste in the mouth that one wanted to get rid off.  Personally speaking I think it would be better not to recite it at all if you cannot give it the presence it deserves.

Go one step further, however, and imagine claiming your own spiritual authority and writing your own prayer that you can say and feel and love.  So if you where to begin to write your own prayer how would you begin.  Here again I am thinking aloud because in this article I am in my own way beginning to examine this process.

I think I would do what I am immediately drawn to do. I start with simply trusting the process.  I trust the first through that comes into my head even if it makes no logical sense, which is often the best beginning.  So the first thought that comes to my mind is “Start from the end.”

I don’t know about you but this “Start from the end” really excites me.  This is because it is a paradox, a kind of riddle and I love paradox and I love riddles.  They take you beyond the prison of the intellect and into the unknowing knowing of the heart.  It isn’t sensible.  For many of you it will be kind of confusing.  It is a kind of Zen koan, the kind of phrase that might pop out of the mouth of a child.  It is what I call thinking outside the box.  There are consultants who are paid vast sums of money to come up with this kind of out of the box thinking and get no where near as crazy as this opening thought invites.

You are probably like myself, You don’t know the end. However, as far as I am concerned this writing your own prayer is an engagement with creation and I in this process of writing my own prayer am a co-creator.  I am sure of one thing and this is that creation knows how to create.  I am sure of one other thing and this is that creation knows how to create far better than I do.  I create through a limitation that I think I am called me, myself, I.  Creation is the I AM that creates all things out of no thing.  The best way of being a co-creator is to get out of the way and trust the creative process to be the creative process.  This getting out of your own way is the difficult part

So let me end here with the intention that I come back to this writing your own prayer process as a way of refining my own inner light and the way the vision within me and the vision within you can begin to shine and envision others.  Let me also invite you to join me in this journey by committing to writing your own prayer.  With that intention I am examining the possibility of adding a private forum to the Anam cara Experience website where you would be able to share this journey with myself and others.

If you are interested in becoming part of this “Writing your Own Prayer” group I would be pleased to have you join me in this adventure into what I have come to call the deep hearts core.  This phrase the deep hearts core is taken from the last line of the wonderful spiritual poem by W. B. Yeats entitled “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”  So either email me at one of the following email addresses.

radiate@anamcaraexperience.org

or

irishmysticstoryteller@gmail.com

Or if you know of anyone who would be interested in joining me on such an adventure then please mention this invitation to them.

©   Tony Cuckson 2009

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Nine bean rows will I have there
A hive for the honey bee and
Live in a bee loud glade.

From Lake Isle of Innisfree
By W. B Yeats

Are you living a life filled with the gladness of being. I suspect that for many of us we are more living a life not of a bee loud glade but as the experience of noise and haste that is our busy bee lives.

In my weekly podcast entitled The Deep Hearts Core, taken from the last line of the poem by W. B Yeats entitled “Lake Isle of Innisfree” I invite you not to be a busy bee that is forever doing your life but to create some real sense of lifes sweetness from the buzz of simply being.

A hive is a kind of community. The word community derives from the word communion and this expreince of communion is a state of being out of which real gladness arises. Gladness is more than happiness which has a tendancy to be something we manipulate for our own ends.

Are you willing to learn to invite some real direction into your busy bee life that will give you what W. B Yeats called the peace that comings droppings slow. In your head you have a buzz that is anything but the sound of gladness. It is that buzz that is your doing your less than glad life.

As a storyteller and spiritual director it is my intention to invite you into what W. B Yeats called the bee loud glade. He used the word glade for a specfic reason in order to remind you and I of our real sense of gladness that is available to each of us when we follow our true direction and find real sweetness in being the dance of Love that we have come here to share. This is the real buzz of being here as a human being on this planet.

Come and learn to live the sweetness at the deep hearts core and become a real hive of creative activity.

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W. B Yeats – My Spiritual Director

As an Irish mystic storyteller I adore the poetry of W. B. Yeats.  Let me say at the outset this interest in W. B Yeats. is in no way academic.

I never set out to find a connection to W. B. Yeats and his poetry.  I never set out to find a connection to the poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi but I did.  These wonder poets came into my life at a time of threshold.  Each appeared in my life at the time of my return to my homeland of Ireland..  

In April of 2000 my sister Mary who was four years older than myself died of cancer.  This lead me to question what I was doing with what the mystic poet Mary Oliver calls “this one glorious life that you have been given.”  The answer to that question was that I wasn’t doing what I wanted.  I wasn’t living gloriously.  I was playing safe as an accountant working for myself.  

I made the decision (along with my partner Bee) to return to Ireland to develop what we would call A Still Point Centre.  Little did I know then that all hell would break loose.  Since my return I have been supported and amazed at the beauty and invitation from the poetry of W. B. Yeats.  He keeps asking me deep hearts core questions that I attempt to share and sometimes avoid.  

One key aspect of this mystic search at the deep hearts core is the search for peace.  It is the peace that Jesus Christ refers to when he says, “My peace I give to you but not as the world gives you.”  This peace in no way requires that you believe in Jesus Christ.  Belief in Jesus Christ must be the direct inner experience of Christ Consciousness.  

W. B. Yeats in his poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree invites

“And I shall have some peace there for peace comes dropping slow.”

I, as a storyteller, am in some little way a peace pilgrim.  I walk this world in search of what it is I aspire to know and be and give.  This peace pilgrimage is inner.  It is a journey into stillness and silence that is at the deep hearts core.  Out of this stillness arises what is called right action.  This is Love in action.

Gangaji says this beautifully when she writes in “The Diamond in your Pocket – discovering your true radiance.”  She writes

“It is possible to trust that right action can come from the unknown stillness of your being.  You have learned not to trust this stillness, because you are afraid you will just lie on the couch all day.  And you might just do that.  Your body is probably exhausted anyway.”

We don’t have to know what the plan is, but we do have to be true to peace: to take responsibility for choosing to over look what is already at peace.  We have learned how to armor, to lie and to protect ourselves.

Yet deeper, closer than any strategy we have learned, the peace remains.  It is here right now.”  

All mystics invite you to know the now of this peace.  Except that Gangajii says you do not trust that out of the stillness, the apparent emptiness of no thing comes everything.  That, at the centre of such a peace is a power that knows what needs or needs not to be done.

As W. B. Yeats rightly says in the poem Lake Isle of Innisfree, 

“for peace comes dropping slow.”

You have to value it.  You have to have direct experience of it.  You have to have the commitment to make it real in your life and to have it radiate within your life situation.

Pay attention to what your culture invites.  Our Western culture teaches us to be afraid of silence.  Thus it holds tight the keys to the dwelling of peace but not the indwelling of peace that allows you to know safety, sanctuary and Love.  You have to become an island of calm.  You have to be able to attune yourself to listen to the peace of the infinite peace.  This peace is at the still point centre of your deep hearts core.

On this journey of the peace pilgrim you learn that peace comes dropping slow.  Do not be discourgeaged.  Still it comes because it is always there.  The more silent you become inside the more the Universal song sings through you.  It is always a unique song and always a song of peace.

How do you find this peace that comes dropping slow?  Simply by witnessing the non-peace of your mind without judgement until you enter no mind and the One Mind.  It is the most difficult and the most simple of practices.  It follows the biblical instruction “

“Be still and know that I am God.”

Out of this knowing all that needs to be known is know and out of that knowing Love in action arises.  Action that is effective in the world of form arises out of the still point centre of the deep hearts core.

NOTE 

You can download and listen to Tony making this invitation to Finding the Still Point Centre at our Deep Hearts Core podcast.  Simply click the button below.

 

 Spiritual Direction for Awakening Beauty [33:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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In this weeks Deep Hearts Core podcast you are invited to discover a lost art. This is the lost art of loving. Most people hunger for Love. Most people think that love is simply an emotion that you feel for some people and not others.

On this spiritual journey to the Deep Hearts Core you discover that Love is not just an emotion. You are invited into the vast realization that Love is not only a state of being it is who you are at your Deep Hearts Core.

This is the only real spiritual direction worth going in. It is a living and lovely paradox. The more you learn this art of Loving which is more an unlearning. The more you discover that you are not the more Love is. This is the task of becoming a real artist – on who is a servant to Love. Then you live the art of love as your life’s expression.

An Anam cara offers you true spiritual guidance and true spiritual direction. It is the guidance in trusting the hearts little intelligence at your deep hearts core. They hold the knowing of this inner telling sense until you love yourself enough to allow yourself to receive the beauty you are. They simply assist in authorizing the real story of you as an individual glory of Love you already are.

To listen to the full podcast The Art of Loving simply click on the button below.

 

 Spiritual Direction - The Art of Loving: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Meeting at the Deep Hearts Core

Have started a podcast called the Deep Hearts Core. This will be a weekly podcast including heart stories, heart song and mystical poetry

The first podcast is called Stairway to Heaven and looks at the word you need to ensure that you get what you came here in this world to be.

In the second podcast you are told the wondertale about the Tuatha de Danaan – the beautiful people who were driven under ground.  This is a metaphor for many of us who live our lives judging our success or failure.

Have a listen.  You will need broadband to download these files.  Simply click on the podcast button below to immediately here this invitation to buying a stairway that takes you to that place of unimagined beauty and creativity – your deep hearts core.

 

 Buying a Stairway to Heaven: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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In the Celtic tradition there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul love; the old Gaelic term for this is Anam Cara.

- John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom of the Celtic World
In the work of The Anamcara Experience there is a beautiful understanding. This is the understanding of soul love or sole love – love of the One by the One to the One for the One.

The word understanding here does not mean a more intellectual understanding but means seeing. It means insight. This is an understanding that is holistic, whole and holy. This understanding is not something you get; it is given. To be given such understanding is a great grace and a great responsibility.

To be given this understanding is to walk in beauty. This means a personal commitment to be faithful to that understanding that has come through you. It is always looking for you. The Beloved in you is looking to unite with you – is longing for you to come in sight and to see each other.

This is a quiet beauty but is nonetheless powerful for all that. It does not have a political agenda. It is not out to save the world. It is, however, out to empower creativity innate in all form. It is out to express the beauty in form that friendship with the soul gives. The world is not saved but the world is known in a way that empowers justice to be in the world

John O’Donohue says in Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom of the Celtic World, that we are here on this planet to be creators with the divine. We are not here to be dominators as is demonstrated by our present relationship with Mother Earth.

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Return to Tir na nÓg – Living the Time of Your Life

Tir na nÓg translates from the Irish as “the Land of the Forever Young.”  To modern intellects this story is a fairy story, meaning it is a fantasy. The intellect does not believe in a place where one lives forever and does not age.

The intellect is a wonderful tool but it keeps you bound to the prison of time and this is not the place where you can really enjoy the time of your life.  To really enjoy your life you know who you are beyond time and form and space. Without this knowing (which is not an intellectual knowledge) you are living in a prison called time.

The Land of the Forever Young is not some mythical place but a state of being. It is the state of felt oneness with the source of Creation.  Creation is created from that which itself was never born and never dies.  In that sense it is outside what we call time.  Forever does not mean an inexhaustible length of time. It is means no time at all.

An Anam cara invites you into the direct experience of living within time as a flow of the timeless. This is the direct experience of knowing yourself as the flow in form of that which is formless. This experience allows you to know the birthless, deathless state within.  It allows you to know you truly are forever young.

© Tony Cuckson 2008

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There is a divine restlessness in the human heart today, an eternal echo of longing that lives deep within us and never lets us settle for what we have or where we are.

 John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

There has always been a divine restlessness. It is the tension of the creative that longs to create as love in form. This writer, for one, prays that this tension remains as the creative force it is. It is presently accelerating and this we see with the events manifesting in the world.

In the wonderful invitation that is A Course in Miracles you are invited to feel that which is deep inside you that longs to radiate through you and express for the highest good of all.  This is the radiance of soul. It is the invitation to knowing the timeless beauty of Love.

The Divine does not rest although this is not to say the Divine is restless. The Divine is Love and Love Creates. It is restless in the sense that it Loves that which it creates. The difference between what we think of as love and Divine Love is that the Divine never sees you as separate while you see the Divine as separate. The soul is the tension that longs for you to see that this sense of separateness is what keeps you restless. It is not satisfied by more but by less. This is the meaning of the Beatitude

 Blessed are those who are poor in spirit because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

-          Matthew, 5:3

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The glory of God

Is the human person

Fully alive.

Irenaeus, Philosopher and Theologian

In Corrogue there are times when I miss the target.

This target is a target of invisibility.  It is the ability to walk in this world with a light footprint.  Not wanting too much other than to know what is beauty.

In this modern age what many of us desire is an idea of success or fame.  We do not focus on being fully alive.  As John O`Donoghue writes in his wonderful book Anamcara, “This is the greatest sin of all.”

In some ways this writer is a reactionary.  There are words that make me react like Pavlov’s dog to the ringing of a bell.  One such word that causes this belling ringing for me is the word “sin.”  It is a word that has wounded many hearts and caused deep separation from the beauty of life.  It is a word that has burdened the vulnerable with a deep sense of guilt.  It has been perverted in ways never intended by the Christ.

Having been raised in Northern Ireland this word has been one that I have heard shouted from pulpits, from school platforms, whispered threateningly by those I loved and perverted by those in charge of children.

Sin and sex went together.  The beauty of the body was denied by those who advocated that one was and a miserable sinner.  There was delight in the depth of misery that the ego could wallow in.  There was no delight in allowing this animal body to do what it loves.

We do not love the body.  Mostly we love the body image.  From an early age we are locked out of the beauty of the body.  As children we become separate from the flow of our divine energy.  Our work in this world is to return to this flow. This is the source of our joy.  To imagine that we are sinners, and that we are wrong in our being, is a prison house from which no one is saved.

Do you think you are required to plead for your life with the Beloved?  This is a foolish distortion of the word ’sin.’ This word simply means ‘to miss the target;’ in one sense we all miss the target.  Only you are not required to feel like a worm.  You are only required to wake up and see how beautiful you are.  You are only required to take another shot at being the beauty you are.  This is the target practice of awareness without attachment to results.

The great Jelaluddin Rumi invites us to come into the circle of love.  Do not beat yourself up with false illusion.  To think that you are wrong keeps you in the prison of the ego.  To think that you can do anything to enter heaven is a false hope.  You cannot enter heaven until you disappear.  Make your target practice a practice of disappearance into love.

Make this target practice a celebration.  Find your way to the centre.  Know that if you are made to feel wrong, then the teaching is wrong.  If you feel wrong then you are attached to the words and have not bathed in the perfume of self-knowledge that is beyond words.

At the heart of all religion is a paradox.  This is the paradox of forgiveness.  All religions teach forgiveness but the paradox is that there is no one to forgive.  When you know who you are then there is only what is in all its’ beauty and glory.

Religion that teaches guilt is not religious in the true sense.  If anyone suggests that you are a sinner with an implication that you should somehow feel wrong then kindly remove yourself to a place that teaches you love.  You are not born in sin.  You are born in the light of the Divine.  Your work is to come back to the centre.  Your work is to return to the source of your being.  Your work is to know that no only are you loved forever but you are love forever.

This does not mean one cannot feel wrong for an action one has done.  However, one cannot be wrong no matter what one has done.  The focus on sin is a magnification of the ego that thinks it can manipulate the Beloved by convincing It that such a wretched sinner deserves mercy.  

If you feel guilty about your life then you cannot live a full life.  Your life cannot manifest the glory of the Divine presence. Your focus on sin is an error.  It is negative.  It is illusory.  To get back on target, simply begin to see the beauty at the very centre of your being.  This will make you laught at the very idea that creation that created you in Love would ever judge such creation wrong.

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