I saw my heart today

I meditated on my heart today. Each time I meditate, I always see lots of sparkled current-like light that swiftly spirals into place – often moving and never quite calms down. It was interesting to me. I wondered if other people also see the same thing when they meditate.

In particular, I saw my heart today. I tried to imagine this heart smaller, like it is supposed to be, but the flow of my meditation could not (or did not want to) visualize my heart in this manner. I saw the shape of the heart as we know it, the size of my palm. I saw this heart quickly be covered in gold – of a liquid form. So quick, in fact, that I have no idea what it was that the gold actually covered. And it didn’t seem to matter. My heart was liquid gold in motion, so regal, so beautiful, made me smile. 

I was supposed to imagine a front door of this heart. The door I saw was a double door – also golden, with a bronze gold metal ring/knob on each door. When I was to notice the state of my heart, I opened this door. It immediately flung wide open. As the meditation guide’s voice told me to open the heart as much as I was comfortable with opening, I could not even have imagined that there was an option to open it just a slight. I tried to close the doors, and open only slightly, so that I could play with the doors to my heart.

As I did this, I saw myself say, nah, that’s not my style. I like how it feels with the heart doors flung open, and the blue sky with the white clouds gradually spiraling their way inward.

At this point, I heard the meditation guide tell me to notice the back door of my heart, at the back of my body. This door instinctively was black! The same double doors as the front door, with the same ring/knobs. But, oh how I did not like the color black on such a beautiful golden heart!

I tried to visualize this door into a brown – which I thought was a happy negotiated spot, considering brown is dark enough, but does not look as much of a hideous misfit. Nevertheless, I could not keep the doors as I wanted to make them, and so I chose to except that they were black.

It was also not easy for me to visualize these doors opening , they seemed like they were always shut, not ever known to exit. The idea of a backdoor to the heart was definitely one I had not ever thought of.

As I tried to open the backdoor, and let the world flow in and out, from the front and out the back, configuring such a process with child-like amazement and curiosity, I felt my body rock back and forth a bit. I felt like the body really was just a convenient structure placed so that I could know where I ended and where the world began. I also realized that I did not have to be so separate. I could dance with this beautiful flow. I realized that there has been joy in the moments when I have done this without realizing it in a metaphor such as this one.

Now I was given the choice to keep the doors how I wanted them. I was again excited that there was such a possibility, such flexibility in how much I wanted open which door. Ironically, however, even as I tried to leave the doors slightly open to let this inflow and outflow continue, my instinct thought it was clearly absurd to walk around with the front doors flung wide open. And leaving them slightly open just did not seem bold enough to me. So, the decision was pretty obvious – and I cannot imagine my doors of my heart ever having known otherwise. It was as though the gardener of this garden was being asked to play around with this age old routine.

Therein lay my learning of the day. I did not know that visualization would have so much power. I always knew I was a vivid dreamer, but today I saw where my consciousness stood. I saw my state. Usually, I express my emotion in words, and thought that that was the only way I could. You should have seen the amazed look hidden in my closed eyes – the amazement of being able to clearly see this aspect of my being. Seeing it helped me own and accept it.

Today I saw another pair of doors, which I hope will relieve some pressure off of the front doors. I guess I had begun to take for granted the comfort that EXIT doors provide, so comfortable, in fact, that I forgot they exist and their use.