The Deep Hearts Core – Spiritual Direction for Difficult Times

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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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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Many of you will know that I am a storyteller and writer on “Seven Ways to a Wonderful Life.”  Each of these seven ways is individually important in their own way but I start with purpose.  This is foundational.

As a storyteller I promote the invitation to the Anamcara Experience. This is an invitation to unfold the divine purpose that you are here on this planet to allow to flow into and through and up.  To do this you need to be grounded.  You will not be able to unfold your divine purpose without some key precepts to build on.

As a storyteller it will come as no surprise that I love stories.  Most of all I love healing stories.  Having been brought up in Northern Ireland I carry old baggage around the teachings that I call christianity. The small c is intentional. I am conflicted around this issue because my heart is in love with the Divine.

When I was graced what Buddhism calls stream entry, I fully expected to experience an intense love affair with the Buddha and the four noble truths.  What I did not expect and did not really want (although of course my soul’s inner wisdom wanted this) was to fall in Love with the Christ.

Notice here that this storyteller is not saying he fell in love with Jesus.  Notice here that he did not say that he fell in Love with christianity. Notice that it has been stated that this storyteller did not fall in love with the Bible. In that grace experience I fell In Love and became Love.  This cannot be understood without such a grace experience.

However, here is the crux of the matter. I think that the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth is one of (if not the greatest) of storytellers to have graced this planet as an invitation to awareness of divine consciousness in human form – the new man/new woman.

At the time he was telling his stories they were not always popular.  The stories I tell are not always popular so I have a role model! The Christ story has never been ‘popular.’ The christian story is in decline although the corpse is being risen from the dead by such best-selling books as The Purpose Drive Life, which is apparently the most popular hard backed book ever published (although I would have imagined the Bible had it beaten.)  Rick Warren, who gave the inaugural blessing to the new President of the USA Barack Obama, wrote this best seller.  This President is, for this writer, an invitation to the mystic.

Having said all the above I absolutely love Bible stories.  Especially those told by the Christ in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. I particularly love the story of the moneychangers in the temple.  I have heard it many times.  This storyteller thinks that were it told the way that Christ intended it to be understood the churches and chapels would be empty.  That is why you don’t hear this story in the modern money changing temples of divine purpose.

When this story is told people think it is an anti-profiteering, anti-business, anti-riches story.  If christianity fully embraced this teaching even on a literal level there would be more justice for the poor.  The rich would not be caught up in the prison of never quite enough and the churches would not be attached to real estate and simply ‘gather in my name.’   In ‘my name’ has nothing to do with church dogma but is a whole other energetic relationship to the Divine and Divine Purpose.

It is not a popular story if you read it as it is intended.  You will tell this storyteller that this story does not apply to you?  You think that it does not apply to you because you have never traded in a church? You might have engaged in fundraising for, say, repairing the church roof, but you are not a moneychanger in the temple.

Now if you take this story literally, as most people do, then you can say, “Okay, so the moneychangers were thrown out of the temple.” If you are graced the insight contained in this story it becomes a beautiful invitation to the mystic.  You get the invitation, the words of the great Van Morrison, “to sail into the mystic.”

From the point of view of the mystic, from the point of view of the Anamcara, you are the moneychanger.  Now you may well be offended at this idea. This storyteller has been offended by the idea.  This is to be expected.  If you are not engaged in the service of the Divine Purpose of Love you are a moneychanger working to profit from your life for your own purpose.

How popular do you think the church would be if each week your religious authority were to tell you that you are defiling the sacred temple of Love with your energy of self-interest? Would you not seriously think twice about going back! You would protest.  You would think, “I haven’t come here to be insulted!” 

Matthew Fox tells a story in “Radical Prayer” (CD available from www.soundstrue.com) about a Native American who decided to ‘travel in the light’ and educate school children about his spiritual tradition’s wisdom. The children always would get the point of his stories but immediately the word “Great Spirit” got mentioned the teachers got really antsy. He told Matthew Fox, ” I don’t get invited back.”  On the other hand, there are an awful lot of schools in the USA and he just keeps moving from one to the next and the next and the next. The stories and their wisdom get planted.

I can relate to this myself when I tell children about the Tuatha de Danaan and that they, too, are Beautiful People. The only teachers who seem to get these stories are those who work with the so-called ‘handicapped’ or ‘special needs’ children.

Popular is not necessarily the best measure when it comes to wisdom.

There are those on the World Wide Web who are inviting you to simply change the cloth on the temple’s money table.

Why is this story so very important?  Because it shows why the incarnation of Love in form got angry.  He’s not angry about making a return on investment. He’s angry because you and I have claimed the temple of Love as your own.  You have changed the currency of sacred unity for the currency of ego. 

He is angry because you are changing gold into lead.

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One of this Irish storyteller’s favourite things to do is to pick up his white guitar and sing songs.  I have sung at various venues in England and Ireland with many kinds of singer and musician.

Sometimes you come across a song that simply speaks to the heart. It is a song that works on many levels. A very talented young lady sang such a song at a club I recently played at. It was the song “What if God were One of Us” by Joan Osborne.

The chorus goes:

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

For this writer it is almost a mystical text. It asks a question that invites you into the mystery.  Some might think that these lines are sacrilegious and that they are in some way dishonouring of religious sentiment.  This is only if you take the words literally.  Even then, this storyteller thinks that in a literal sense these are an invitation that manages to be both funny and profound.

Some people have issues around the word God.  This is hardly surprising given the way we are as a species, having used the word for purposes of greed, power and self-interest.  However, every time you see or read the word God it can be changed to the word Love (yes, with a capital L).  You can also change the word from His to Her.

For this writer, the song is a great invitation to the quest into Love.  Like many great questions it invites the creative imagination.  It does this through the opening words “What if…” The great poet and writer Rudyard Kipling composed a world famous poem of invitation using these same words.

When I sing this song or any song (or any song I sing for that matter) I sing from different levels of intention.  I sing for entertainment. I sing to invite the heart into the awareness of God. In other cultures this is called Kirton. This is what most authentic singer/songwriters intend to invite.  This is not just sentimental love songs but invitations to know that you are not a stranger to Love nor is Love a stranger to you.

Of course, we are estranged from Love most of the time.  Music and song invite us to remember this estrangement and try to make our way home. We are the prodigal sons and daughters of Creation travelling on the bus of time and form, not quite sure where this mode of transport is heading.

For this storyteller God is one of us and all of us together. God is apart and whole and wholly us.  You are not the Godhead but neither are you separate from the Godhead.  You are a reflection of the divine in form, ready to radiate the return to Love.  All mystics and soul friends invite you to live this life of Love flow from the eternal.

God is a stranger on the bus trying to find his way home in the sense that you are estranged from your essence and you will feel incomplete until you find each other.  There was a mystic, I think it was Meister Eckhart, who said:

It isn’t so much that you are looking for God (or love) but that God is looking for you.

This is the ultimate homecoming.  When this homecoming is felt within the heart then no one is truly a stranger.  Everyone on the bus, train, car or any other form of transport you can think of is seen to be God playing at finding His or Her way back home.

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Sacred story can speak to us of timeless lessons (many of them painfully relevant to us in our present age) and offer us different ways of looking at our innermost being.

- Frank MacEowen, The Celtic Way of Seeing

The Anamcara invites you into the experience of sacred story. This is story that invites you into wholeness and the holy. Most of the stories of our present time are stories of deep separateness and fear.

Irish mythology is full of sacred stories.  These are not just ‘quaint’ stories of days of old. Irish mythology contains, as all mythology does, maps of the journey of humanity into higher and higher levels of Love in action.  The intellect has forgotten that there are ways that the heart has of knowing that the head knows nothing about.

There is the story where the Tuatha de Danaan, the Beautiful People, burn their boats of silver and gold on the shores of the land that will come to be called Erin – Ireland.

When this writer tells this story to children they are in some ways aghast. Some are aghast that the boats burn for three days and three nights and block out all light. Others tell this storyteller that it is silly to burn ones’ boats. The real difficulty for some is imagining that anyone would destroy the wealth of gold and silver in the boats themselves. Such has become the materialist mindset of our young.

What is misunderstood by the children (and many adults) is that there is greater treasure to be had.  This is a treasure available on a new shore.  This new shore is a growth within consciousness that no gold or silver will substitute.  It is the growth in the ability to expand your connection to that which is forever creative.

This story indicates what one is required to do in order to venture into this new land of Erin – this land of possibility arising from the unknown.  One has to give up what one holds dear and sacrifice it in order to move on.  This giving up is an emptying out of the old in order that the new may be birthed.

All wisdom teachings speak about the issue of detachment.  Buddhism in particular has much to say about being attached to things including experiences.  Our gold and silver boats are our ideas about who we are.  Many of us will resist any idea of change.

In this way, we move against life. We make our life situation the way we want it to be rather than the way our soul has invited us to be.  We become attached to our roles. We live within this script, which are the bounds that I call ‘little me.’

But ‘little me’ is not the ocean of life in constant creative flux.  ‘Little me’ tends to build a pond away from the flow of the river moving ever forward toward the fathomless ocean of Love.  It tends to build an identity that it can cling to and never need to make a real effort to grow in Love.

The soul is the movement of this energy toward higher expressions of Love in form.  It will burn all boats of silver and gold because it loves the adventure. The soul is not afraid of new birth.  The ego tends to live in fear of the unknown.  The soul relishes the unknown.  The ego tries to save the life situation of ‘little me’ and loses its real connection to the life of Love ever expanding.

Burning your boats on another shore might mean you change your job. It might mean that you go and leave living with your parents.  It might mean you seek counselling for a form of addiction.  The symbol of burning your boats of gold and silver means you claim full responsibility for the way the flow of life moves through you.  This is the beginning of maturity. It is the beginning of the call to adventure that is the hero’s journey.

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When we start telling stories we gave our lives a new dimension: the dimension – apprehension – comprehension.

Ben Okri – Birds of Heaven

Are you committed to giving your life a new dimension? Are you ready to enter a dimension of expanded creativity aligned with expanding creation?

If so you become a bird of heaven. You are attuned to the source of the infinite. You learn to fly the nest of resistance to growth in Love.

To tell the story of who you truly are involves tremendous risk. Yet the rewards for such risks are equally tremendous. In the Irish traditional folk song “She Moved Through the Fair” the meeting of two lovers ends because one refuses to tell their story. This is indicated in the lines:

But One has a sorrow

That never was told. 

There are very few of us living the human story who do not have a sorrow that never was said. In this writer’s family many sorrows were left unsaid out of fear and guilt.  So the story of fear and guilt is visited upon the sons and daughters for generation upon generation.

This is until one child comes along to change the dynamic. They are often those children thought of as the ‘black sheep’ of the family when often the truth is that they fight to be free of the burden of sorrows unsaid.  They are really Birds of Heaven.

To be a storyteller for your family, for your community, for your nation, for the world is a great responsibility.  The true storyteller suffers the chaos and the madness, the nightmares and dreams to resolve it all, to see clearly and then guide you surely through the fragmentation of a shifting world.

Still and all – you get to fly!

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Sacred story can speak to us of timeless lessons (many of them painfully relevant to us in our present age) and offer us different ways of looking at our innermost being.

 - Frank MacEowen, The Celtic Way of Seeing

The Anamcara invites you into the experience of sacred story. This is story that invites you into wholeness and the holy. Most of the stories of our present time are stories of deep separateness and fear.

Irish mythology is full of sacred stories.  These are not just ‘quaint’ stories of days of old. Irish mythology contains, as all mythology does, maps of the journey of humanity into higher and higher levels of Love in action.  The intellect has forgotten that there are ways that the heart has of knowing that the head knows nothing about.

Storytelling has been at the heart of most civilisations for millennia.  The oral tradition of storytelling has been the primary way of communication for most of this adventure in form we call humanity.

These sacred stories (sacred meaning to make whole) offer us a different way of seeing the world. They invite us to reclaim our true sense of creative power. This is the power of our innermost being.  This being understands stories that transcend time and invites paradox, magic and wonder. 

These sacred stories are Wonder Tales. These are no tall tales but tales that invite you to connect with a real sense of wonder. With sacred story you are invited to give up your intellect for bewilderment. You are invited to move beyond the sacred to the wildness of the sacred. Such is the invitation of  The Anamcara Experience.

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