"The eyes of the mind told us we had fallen from heaven
The eyes of the Heart show us, we were here all along"
AUM
By sequentially vocalising the seed letters of AUM (loud enough for a vibration to be felt) and allowing our awareness to follow the vibrational path we notice a simple and effortless movement from the mind to the Heart via the throat.
Awareness of the vibration the sound A produces, rather than being within the mind, is felt distinctly outside the head. A vibration generated within the head but mapping to the world around us.
As we vocalise the letter U (uuu… and not youuu…) our awareness follows the vibration to the throat and the outer experience of the A becomes an inner experience. We can view the vocalised U as the gateway between outer and inner.
Next we vocalise the M, the final letter in the sequence, we allow our awareness to fall to the location of that vibration which reverberates now within the centre of the chest.
So a direct progression from mind through the throat to Heart and essence of true self. Upon completing the vocalisation of the M simply allow you awareness to gently rest at this location. As our awareness rests in our Hearts we may notice the the cessation of mind, almost like the mind going into sleep mode whilst our attention remains with our Hearts.
As well as being more loving, the Heart is far wiser and more fearless than the mind so by using A-U-M we can ask our Heart for guidance on the external problems that our minds tend to struggle with.
Other benefits of A-U-M include practicing prior to sleep to reduce mind activity and as an intro to most meditations, again due to its effortless ability in quieting the mind.
Meeting life with the Heart vs the mind
The diagrams below show two different mechanisms employed for processing the experience of life unfolding. The first, through that of the mind, is what we can consider the standard model as its the most widely adopted. This model naturally tends towards focus on a persons preferences and how and whether those preferences are met in life’s unknown unfolding and how this then relates to their expanding story of self. We can look at this as an ego or story based mechanism for dealing with whatever life decides to throw at us.
The preference that our hopes, desires, attachments and entitlements will be included and fulfilled in our future story causes our attention to narrow our focus therefore excluding the rest of life unfolding around us. This will also drive our inner effort to manipulate unfolding events towards our advantage.
Now if this is working out for you then great but if life is not serving up what you ordered this will lead to a further narrowing where opportunity for contentment becomes ever squeezed, suffering in life increases and the behaviour of others imprisons the availability of your experience even further as you implement boundaries to protect yourself. This updated perspective on life’s unfolding is then fed back into the “story so far” approach to life, a combination of memory of the story and future projections of that story. If things are not going to plan this approach can lead to fear, resistance and distancing between ourselves and life’s unfolding. In addition, the preoccupation with our future and past stories cause the mind to flip between the past and future when assessing most situations. This also deepens our preclusion of our experience of the present moment.
Although widely adopted throughout humanity this approach to meeting life is obviously flawed in that it only works well when things are happening inline with our preferences, as soon as life stops providing or more accurately provides something else, it breaks. And if life persists in not providing the lived experience will become more and more challenging.
If we choose instead to meet life with the Heart we encounter the immediate benefits of it containing none of the potential pitfalls inherent in the minds approach.
By eliminating these pitfalls the separation between the experience of ourselves and the present can dissolve.
The Heart is a persons source of infinite and unconditional love, that is before our minds get to work on limiting and conditionalising it through story based preferences. Without the minds interference our love stays invite and unconditional and as such can be freely self-administered or given. Once the mind and story are out of the way the heart is free to ever expand in this way. This unconditional love contains the unconditional elements of gratitude, patience, forgiveness, trust and acceptance. With such abundant tools and without the limitations of our minds preferences the Hearts approach for meeting life provides us all that is required irrespective of how life unfolds, whether in our favour or not.
By the heart model not containing all the extra processing effort and considerations seen in the minds model the whole of life’s unfolding in the present moment can be taken in fully and effortlessly, without a need to exclude, opening up the opportunity of everything life has to offer. Due to even the smallest thought being a movement away from the present moment by remaining instead with the Heart our presence in the moment can be effortlessly maintained without the perhaps paradoxical effort of trying to silence or quiet the mind with the mind. Whilst dropping the mind with the mind to become present is possible it is a bit like trying to drop your hand with the same hand.
