For Heart Opening Week.
This one is an excerpt from a larger article. In it, Sri Shankara describes a heart opening in much the same terms I’d use.
One day, when I checked my cellphone, it opened to a page in Safari with the following words from Shankara. They are probably the best description of a heart opening and the consequent entry into a state of transformative love that I’ve read. Reading it brought me into a state of love again, at that moment:
“What happens in this seeing, even as you look at your beloved master [Krishna in this case], at your godhead, the opening begins to occur in your heart. It is similar to being flooded. So when you are being flooded, you do not simply say, ‘Oh, my goodness! My toe is wet!’ You look around, and the whole room is flooded.
“So you may think of it as a monsoon of love. And everywhere you walk there will be love, and you will be able to see, because that is how powerful it will be. There will be no capacity for denial of this.” (1)
Yes, yes, yes. That’s such an apt and vivid description of what I think of as a heart opening. The opening begins in the heart. All of a sudden, love flows mightily and the whole room is flooded. It’s more than a river totally flooding its bank; it’s a tsunami or monsoon, in that it floods everything – every nook and cranny. Love is everywhere and it pushes everything else – like anger and jealousy – aside, back, and away.
“This is how powerful it will be.” Yes, it’s powerful enough to transform the circumstances rather than being transformed (or suppressed) by them. It conquers all it meets in the sense that it does not flee from anyone or anything. We can however flee from it. In that circumstance, love will leave.
No there will be no possibility of denial. One cannot mistake being swept away in love. The idea of mistaking it is laughable when one knows the power of love, but a mystery when one doesn’t.
Footnotes
(1) Sri Shankara: Everywhere You Look Will be a Monsoon of Love, June 26, 2013, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/06/26/sri-shankara-everywhere-you-look-will-be-a-monsoon-of-love/.