Breaking the walls of the heart

“Your task is not to seek Love, but simply to seek and find within yourself all the barriers you have built against it”. (Rumi)

Breaking the walls of the heart

The walls built by human beings can be very different and made of different materials. They are apparently external and visible, but essentially internal and invisible. External walls are everywhere that human being lives. Human beings demarcate their territory and strive to maintain it. Be it, for example, a piece of land, be it a part of the economy, politics, society, religions or culture. These walls serve to limit their own world and to protect it, behind which they hope to live in peace, or else, they accumulate enough power to attack their neighbors, from where wars, violence and persecutions come.

However, more powerful than the external walls that human beings build are those they build within themselves. The internal walls, in essence, generate the external barriers. These walls are the thoughts, feelings and actions that are in disharmony with our real being and that generate conflicts and suffering. Many times, we act without thinking, we are paralyzed by feelings, or we are restless by a deafening noise of repetitive thoughts. What is the fundamental cause that builds these walls that imprison the human being himself? It is his self-centered consciousness – the root of all these countless barriers; it is what separates his consciousness from true Love. How many wishes, for example, do you make in a day since you wake up? Did you imagine if all these desires came true? It would be chaos, wouldn’t it?

Unlike the I-consciousness, which seeks to receive everything and to give nothing or very little (and when it does so, it hides an inner selfish intention), Love gives itself completely and can free you from these inner walls which imprison you.

In the profound and inspiring words of Rumi, which we use as the epigraph of this text, what then is Love? We run a risk here in speaking about love, for it is a word very often used, and in general refers to “feeling affection”, when, for example, someone says “I love you”. The Love of which Rumi speaks about has nothing to do with this love as sentiment, nor as some kind of love supposedly elevated and associated with religious dogmas, or any other external authority.

Love here is absolute Love, which is the latent Universal Principle that already exists within the heart of each one of us. As Rumi tells us, it is no use seeking this Love outside yourself, for it is a vain search and in the end you always return empty-handed. This principle is a force that unites everything and that must be awakened in the heart of the human being so that he can “think with his heart” and dissolve all illusion of separateness caused by the self. Only in this way is Love able to break down the barriers that place it within a self-created prison.

Like sunlight, Love enlightens everyone equally. It knows no walls or separations. To love is not to stop hating, but an active force which unites everything. In its deepest sense, it is Compassion, like moving away from sunlight into shadow, to give space to the other. In Buddhism, the Buddhas of Compassion are those who refuse to pass to the nirvanic state because they could no longer help others – they prefer to continue in the world and contribute to the liberation of humanity, because there is no absolute happiness while there is suffering.

And how can one access Love within oneself? There is no formula or manual for self-help. After experiences and maturing, you naturally realize that the search is not external, nor is it later, what you are looking for already lies within you, here and now. It is an inner voice that speaks to you in silence, a compass that guides you to the only true north. And, little by little, instead of simply reacting to people and circumstances, you begin to realize that everything you attract or repel is within yourself. 

Until the I-consciousness is transformed by Love into a new attitude of life, situations repeat themselves until you realize that there is no point in clinging to the same automatisms of escape, attack or lurking, motivated by fear. These automatisms perpetuate the illusion of separateness, motivated by the identification of consciousness with thoughts, emotions, and desires, as in an endless wheel. How much more time is needed to free oneself from this, like a hamster that drives its own wheel?

When you perceive and awaken the Love within yourself, a light, however small, illuminates your heart and makes you see the walls that separate you from your true being. In this way, guided by Love and with a new understanding, you can carry out your inner work and each day, with persistence and joy, as if equipped with a drill in your chest, you will break down the walls erected in your heart and transform them into an attitude of completely new life.

 

References:

Rumi, quoted in Os Sete Raios do Espírito e a Transformação da Vida Humana.  (The Seven Rays of the Spirit and the Transformation of Human´s Life), 1st edition. Jarinu, SP, Brazil: Pentagrama Publications, 2018

Pentagram magazine. Jarinu, SP, Brazil: Pentagrama Publications, May/June 1999: year 21, n. 3

Blavatsky, Helena. The Voice of Silence. São Paulo-SP, Brazil, Texts for Reflection Edition, 2013.

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Date: January 21, 2021
Author: Grupo de autores Logon
Photo: Afbeelding van Fatemeh Hashemi via Pixabay

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