Many spiritual traditions include a plethora of practices aimed at expanding our hearts and moving us toward kindness, joy, compassion, and gratitude. These qualities present an antidote to a blocked fourth chakra, potentially opening us to an experience of unconditional love, or what Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist teacher, calls True Love. This Love includes open-heartedness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, sweetness, non-violence, and a strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others.
CHAKRA FOUR
THE HEART CHAKRA
NAME: Anahata (meaning) “unstuck, unhurt”
LOCATION: Heart, chest, lungs
ELEMENT: Air
COLOR: Green
PURPOSE: Love, intimacy, compassion
DEVELOPMENTAL AGE: 4 to 7 years
BALANCED: Radiant, joyful, generous, compassionate
IDENTITY: Social identity
DEMON: Grief
GIFTS: Radiant love, dissolution of ego boundaries
RIGHT: To love and be loved
EXCESSIVE: Co-dependent, meddlesome, needing attention
DEFICIENT: Closed-hearted, judgmental, isolating
PRINCIPLE: Equilibrium and balance
CORE VALUE: Love
Buddhism refers to the four Viharas, also known as the Four Immeasurables or Heavenly Abodes:
The heart opening practices we have included here encourage the development of these four qualities. They work best when accompanied by introspection to see where you are blocked from giving or receiving love.
Loving Kindness Meditation:
This is a composite guided meditation drawn from Ayya Khema and James Baraz. Begin with yourself and then offer to others.
Close your eyes. Put your attention on your breath for a few moments. Then let yourself find a deep feeling of sincerity and innocence inside your heart, as if you are a child praying. From that place, call on the benevolence of life, however you conceive it, to guide and support you. Imagine a field of benevolent energy surrounding you and enveloping you, inside and out. Take that feeling in deeply and notice where you experience it in your body. Notice the state of mind it creates. If the field had a color what would it be? Let yourself be infused by that soothing color and allow yourself to be held by this field of benevolence. Feel its protection. This refuge is always available when you need it. If you wish to include sending loving kindness to others, continue with the following guided meditation.
Many spiritual traditions include a plethora of practices aimed at expanding our hearts and moving us toward kindness, joy, compassion, and gratitude.
“Now press your lower back down, keeping the back of your sacrum in touch with the floor. Using your belly muscles, lift your head and shoulders a few inches off the floor, exhaling. You need not sit all the way up. The muscles do their work in the first few inches of contraction. Pause at the point of contraction, and hold the position as long as it is comfortable. Then, inhaling, slowly lower your torso back down, keeping your low back on the floor, maintaining tension on the muscles throughout the move. Repeat, exhaling as you lift, inhaling on the way down until you feel the burn!” This will develop muscle tone over your third chakra area.
Now in this field imagine a beautiful flower that you are allowing to grow. Let this beautiful flower expand, so that you’re totally filled with the all-encompassing aroma of it, of love itself, of your own capacity to love. Bring someone into your minds’ eye that you care about. Give the gift of this flower of love to that person. Make it as large as yourself, filled with the most wonderful aroma. Take a few moments to savor. Now choose another person, perhaps someone you are distant from or have dis- like for. Hand the beautiful flower of love from your heart to this person. Let that person also have the same gift from you, making no distinctions between people. Now make as many flowers of love grow in your heart as possible. Hand those beautiful flowers – all containing love, all full of a wonderful aroma – to as many people as you can think of. You can even give to those you’ve met just briefly as well as those whom you see often. Let them all have the gift of love from you. When you feel complete, come back to your own heart, return to the field inside and notice the flowers receiving sunlight.
We might be surprised to notice how much our inner critics judge us and others. Recently Marianne Williamson spoke about a connection between personal life dissatisfaction and the holding of judgments. She said she wasn’t aware of any judgments but was irritated and feeling low energy; then she realized she was not only carrying judgments about someone but justifying them. The recipient? Sarah Palin. Marianne told the audience she went out and bought Palin’s book and worked on opening her heart to her.
Practice: Allow thoughts, images and emotions that you judge to come up in your mind. Invite curiosity by asking yourself: What is going on when I behave this way or think these thoughts? Do I mean to hurt myself or someone else? With an inner spaciousness, be gently compassionate with yourself. Breathe in love and forgiveness with every breath and say to yourself: “I forgive myself for whatever I did, intentionally or unintentionally. May I be at peace.” Now imagine someone you wish to forgive. Can I accept this person as a human being with bad and good qualities? Repeat the practice of breathing in love and forgiveness.
When ready, say: “From my heart, I forgive you for whatever you did, intentionally or unintentionally. May you be at peace.” Open to the warmth of the healing between you. Now imagine standing in front someone you have hurt. Connect again with breathing in love and forgiveness, and when ready, say: “Please forgive me for whatever I did to you, intentionally or unintentionally. May you be at peace. May we open our hearts and minds to meet in love and understanding.” Open to the healing between you.
The quickest and most reliable way to increase your happiness and well-being is through regular appreciations and thankfulness.
The quickest and most reliable way to increase your happiness and well-being is through regular appreciations and thankfulness. Bob Emmons, a researcher on gratitude reports that:
Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects who did not.
And
Those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).
Gratitude Writing. For 3 minutes write non-stop, listing blessings you experience in your life. These can come from thoughts about your body, your mind, other people, and the bounty and beauty of the earth. Being specific will make this more powerful. For example, I appreciate the eight bright yellow tulips my friend brought me as they open up on my desk.
There is a great difference between being in love with a particular person or a particular place and Being Love as a spiritual state. “Being in love” with someone may be a very exciting emotional condition, but is it really happiness, or is it usually mixed with a fair amount of suffering? Attachment gives us the feeling of: how can this relationship fulfill MY needs?
Real love would ask: What can I do for the other? Attachment based on selfishness asks: if you are good to me, I am good to you. Altruistic love is based on equanimity: as I realize that others are like me, flawed, and want happiness, I see I want them to be happy just because they exist. In addition attachment leads to possessiveness: MY husband, MY wife, MY friend, MY family. Possessiveness leads to fear of losing, a sort of false affection out of fear, overprotection, craving, jealousy or even the feeling: I can’t live without her/him/my car/my cat/chocolate/pizzas/my job/my jewelry/my music. Look for how you can perceive those around you with freedom, acceptance for who they are, and give them the independence to live as they do.
There is a great difference between being in love with a particular person or a particular place and Being Love as a spiritual state.
An old Sufi tale:
“One afternoon, Nasruddin and his friend were sitting in a cafe, drinking tea and talking about life and love. His friend asked: ‘How come you never married?’ ‘Well,’ said Nasruddin, ‘to tell you the truth, I spent my youth looking for the perfect woman. In Cairo I met a beautiful and intelligent woman, but she was unkind. Then in Baghdad, I met a woman who was a wonderful and generous soul, but we had no common interests. One woman after another would seem just right, but there would always be something missing. Then one day, I met her; beautiful, intelligent, generous and kind. We had very much in common. In fact, she was perfect!’ ‘So, what happened?’ asked Nasruddin’s friend, ‘Why didn’t you marry her?’ Nasruddin sipped his tea reflectively. ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘it’s really the sad story of my life… It seemed that she was looking for the perfect man…’ ”
