The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life by Baptist de Pape Read Free Book Online Page A

Jeremy Hayward, in Sacred World: The Shambhala Way to Gentleness, Bravery, and Power , in which he also offers this contemplation.
    To heighten your heart’s perceptions, think of or look at something beautiful, say, a flower. Notice the whole flower, its color and shape. Look closer and see smaller details: veins in the petals and leaves, the center’s delicate texture. Enter into the space of those details, feel the vastness inside and around each. Connect to the space inside and around the flower.
    Now connect to the space around you. Lie down on the floor or bed and pull your body into a tight ball in the classic fetal position. Pull your knees up to your chest, put your arms around them, head over your knees. Close your eyes tight and feel black space all around you. Tense all the muscles in your body from your feet, through your legs and back, up through your head. Hold that tension a little while. Keeping your eyes closed, gradually relax each muscle, toeto head. Trust that the world is good. Keep your eyes closed and let yourself come out of this ball and slowly unfold until you are sitting on the floor.
    Now open your eyes. Breathe out. Feel the air on your skin and the space around you. Look around you at one thing at a time. Look closely and notice not just each object but the space and light around it. Take your time with each object around you and feel the goodness of what you see.



8. Creating Authentic Power
    Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
    —PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA
    Mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story about the Buddha. The night before his awakening, he was attacked by an army that shot thousands of arrows at him. But as the arrows arched toward the Buddha, they turned into flowers and fell harmlessly at his feet. Understanding and compassion help us transform negative emotions into harmless ones, into awareness. This is Authentic Power.
    You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible.
    —DEEPAK CHOPRA, THE THIRD JESUS
    Picture your heart and soul as the mother ship of a large fleet. Your personality is one of the many ships accompanying it, but, ultimately,only one ship, the mother ship, knows where the entire fleet is headed and can stay the course. When you follow your heart, aligning your personality with your soul, you exercise Authentic Power. You feel on course. You feel joy, meaning, and purpose. You are aware of your energy, thoughts, and inner guidance. Whenever you are off course, you feel unhappy.
     GARY ZUKAV
    The pain in your life is a measure of the distance between your current self-perception and the reality of yourself as a powerful and compassionate, creative and loving spirit. Closing that distance to zero is the spiritual path. It is now the evolutionary requirement for each of us to create Authentic Power.
    Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
    —CARL JUNG
    The four fundamental properties of Authentic Power are
    •  Love: This kind of love includes compassion, caring about others. This kind of love makes you view every hungry mother and every hungry child as your own mother and your own child.
    •  Humility: This kind of humility recognizes that the lives of others can be just as difficult as your own, that everyone goes through life with some pain, loss, and difficulty. Humility allows you to bear in mind that everybody is a beautiful soul and that everybody struggles.
    •  Forgiveness: Forgiving someone for hurting or wronging you is like laying down a heavy burden. The person you forgive may not even be aware of your action, because you do it first and foremost for yourself. Unless you forgive, you will find yourself looking at the world as if through a pair of dark glasses that makes everything look dreary and adversarial. Forgiving is like taking off those glasses and seeing that the world is full of love and