The one who has become attentive hands the shadows of the unconscious over to the light of the Athanor, this furnace of the alchemists, the burning heart.
Alchemy – Gateway to infinity
It cannot be grasped with the mind,
we must burn it with the heart,
and a new reason is born.
The heart, sung by countless thinkers, poets, philosophers, honored, praised as the organ of the mind, of joy, love, friendship and benevolence; yes, also perceived as a temple of the Most High. For example, there is an old painting known in spiritually interested circles – the ‘Princess Antonia’s teaching board’ – in a church in Bad Teinach, Germany, which shows a woman – standing in front of a sanctuary of light – with a burning heart in her right hand.
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Heart pain. Each of us knows the pain in the heart, often enough a burning sensation in the chest, usually in connection with some major mental event: loss, grief, separations. Also fears, the background of all stressful situations, can cause an icy, burning pain in our heart. And what we are doing then? As a rule, people react with defence, with resistance, with anger, with fire. If we lack in insight, self-reflection, we cannot understand what we perceive about ourselves, what is going on with us. And the deeply unconscious, that is most of humanity, gets scared and tries to fight against the pain, against the symptoms, to calm down with all kinds of pills, powders and treatments. And so the message of the heart remains unheard, misunderstood.
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Shadows – Who among us can claim to be free from anger, fear, hurt, ambition, haste, all those common humanity patterns reflected in our being? These emotions press on our mind, on soul and body, especially on our heart. – It often takes one or the other intervening event in our life for us to start questioning the usual, accustomed life processes. What we have experienced in recent years as the global corona crisis, is a serious collective disease. Illnesses, crises, individual or collective, are nothing more than opportunities to ask questions and find answers of unmasking, of disillusionment – – – and to move on. An intensive leap in consciousness was and is still possible as a result – worldwide. The social dogmas are being questioned in all areas these days and are also being dissolved by many – – – like a quantum leap that is taking place in our years and decades, a quantum leap towards a new spiritual development. You meet each other by chance, look into each other’s eyes, understand each other more or less straight away, following secret, cosmic laws . Old relationships, friendships fall apart, new ones form, groups emerge, people say more often than ever: You have to listen to your heart; listen inside, what do you feel, what feels right or wrong etc etc., think about this or that for yourself before you decide… Years ago the author of these lines gave a godfather gift, a book entitled ‘Follow your heart, as long as you live’. – When we become aware of this, this possible quantum leap takes place in each of us, and we begin to understand, to understand from the heart, and to live.
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The language of the heart – intuition.
Intuition is a divine gift,
the thinking mind a faithful servant;
isn’t it paradoxical that we started
to worship the servant
and to underestimate the divine present?
(Albert Einstein)
In English, the word present has a double meaning. It can stand for gift and also for presence..What gift could be nicer than attention, than presence, i.e. presence from the heart! – – –
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If we follow an inner knowledge – maybe some say beliefs about it – we begin to be interested in the processes between heart and mind; a great horror can arise in us at first, a burning pain in the chest. – What we have believed and followed so far turns out to be a mistake, an illusion and misleading by forces that cannot do otherwise due to their existential need. These live quite simply from the unconsciousness of the masses. But at the same time there is also joy, the joy of the beautiful divine spark, which can always work its power if we understand it, if we follow it. – Then we let the shadows, which we now recognize as such, die more and more frequently in the fire of the heart. The schemes that populate our own, very personal environment, our breathing field, we feel, maybe even see them. – If we understand their origin from the dark bygone days of drama, war and strife, we can accept them; we accept and don’t fight against. All resistance is futile – how often have we had to recognize this. – Never again, the one who has become attentive hands the shadows over to the light of the Athanor, this furnace of the alchemists. – And so we allow the fire to burn. It is ‘dark coal’ that is burned, dug from the depths of our being – our habits, thoughts and emotions.
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Song from the heart – All old certainties fade away, and the burning heart speaks to the soul that may still hesitate: Go on, don’t think about survival, don’t think about the false security of tomorrow, don’t extinguish the glimmering spark, direct your thoughts to the light and recognize it. Have you heard of the nest of the phoenix, the fire eagle of mysteries? What should it be but me, your heart that wants to burn? My power, my flame rises, illuminates the labyrinth of your mind like a beacon that reveals cliffs and shallows in the dark. – – – In this way the hitherto hermetically sealed gate to infinity opens before the conscious human being, the gate to the Good, Good and Good once more. – It is the birth of the phoenix, which, emerging from the fire of the heart, rises to the azure heights over lands, seas and times…
And indeed, if we think a little more about these things, in every situation, in every moment, we find the opportunity to illuminate the world with light and joy. And there we make the experience that nothing is more contagious among people than the joy of the truly won, truly lived word – the insight into the connections from above and below, from heart and mind
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In the heart sanctuary of man, even in that of the most sunk, lies hidden a mighty power, an all-realizing power, namely the power and might of love, the power said to be God himself; the power of which the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians, bursting into a hymn of praise, bears glorious testimony. It is the force that in truth must be called the core force of the God-human state. This core-force is called in the Universal Teaching the spiritual center of microcosmic man, the spark of God immersed in nature. The Rosicrucians speak of the rose of the heart; in the „Alchymical Wedding“ it is the Venus… (Jan van Rickenborgh, The Alchymical Wedding of Christian Rosycross, Vol.2, Ch. 19)
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Then, as the student perseveres in his longing and striving, through all the inevitable obstacles, this concentrated light force in the center will touch his heart sanctuary, will penetrate it and mix with the blood. The blood charged in this way flows through the brain organism and influences various centers, including latent ones, in the head sanctuary. It now depends on whether the brain system can react to this intervention, to the Gnostic influences that flow in. If this is the case, then a new intellectual thinking arises in the head. This development of renewed thinking in turn affects the astral body. In this way the astral body is purified.” (Jan van Rijckenborgh, The Egyptian Arch-Gnosis, Volume 3, Chapter 16)
A new feeling becomes possible, a new perception, a new life – a life from the spiritual powers of the heart.
