Meditating on the Heart

Please close your eyes and imagine yourself in the most perfect situation you could create here on earth. You are trying to visualize heaven here on earth. You might imagine yourself as being super-successful in your chosen vocation, or perhaps a great and powerful world leader, or a rich and famous musician or sports person.

You might also imagine the perfect relationship; your partner, your perfect soul-mate brilliantly reflecting all that you had imagined your perfect mate to be. Or perhaps heaven for you is a quiet property in an idyllic forest away from the rush of the city. Perhaps heaven is just being popular and loved. Perhaps it is being close to the animals you love or experiencing the love of your children. Everything that you want for yourself or have ever wanted for yourself in this life you have achieved.  

Glimpse yourself in this perfect place and focus all of your attention on how you feel. See yourself in heaven here on earth, and then be supremely objective. Realize that there is no anger or hate or indeed any negativity, that the earth is by no means perfect but observe your consciousness, objectively inspect your state of mind, and you will realize that in this heaven inside of you, you are free, there is pure love, pure happiness and perfect freedom. You might visualize your heart being full of light and that all darkness - your worries, anxieties and fears - have been lifted and transformed by the flood of light from your heaven.

Now, gradually, I’d like you to remove the physical inspirations you used to create the vision of heaven for you, focusing more and more on the feeling of heaven within you. Take out firstly the place, removing your dependence for example on the idyllic forest or the stadium for your huge rock concert. Then remove your dependence on being materially successful, and notice that you can still feel the heaven within you. Then remove the time, if you were imagining this in the future, notice that you are feeling heaven now, and it is not bound to any time yet to come, it is here, now.

Then try removing your dependence on certain things happening so that you can feel this heaven, e.g. I can’t feel heaven until my existing partner is removed from the equation. Finally remove the physical you, stop seeing yourself in this body with these arms and legs, and if you can try removing even your superficial mind. Notice all that is left is the real you, the real you. You might try imagining yourself as a small ball of light that is being shone through. As you focus on this ball of light it is almost as if it is being cleaned and more and more light can shine through it.

As if heaven is not a place or a time or even a result of some event, it is a perfect light that shines simply and perfectly through your consciousness now, in this moment.