Publisher: 1982-04-01 00:00:00
Published Date: April 1, 1982
Source: Article
Copyright: © 1982 SCIENCE OF MIND MAGAZINE
SCIENCE OF MIND
55th YEAR APRIL 1982
The Awakening Heart
Exploring Ways to Be Fully Alive!
An interview with JOHN-ROGER
RONALD S. MILLER
Reprinted with permission from SCIENCE OF MIND MAGAZINE
P.O. Box 75127, Los Angeles, CA 90075 (213) 388-2181
John-Roger is Founder and Director of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA), a nationally incorporated church with headquarters in Los Angeles. He is the guiding spirit behind Insight Training Seminars, a nonconfrontive weekend workshop which teaches people how to communicate lovingly, and President of Koh-E-Nor University. John-Roger did his undergraduate work at the University of Utah and finished his graduate studies in California, where he taught in the public school system for twelve years. He has traveled worldwide, speaking, counseling, and conducting seminars, and he also is the author of The Way Out Book, which outlines his practical, down-to-earth approach to spiritual life.
Science of Mind: Spiritual teachers often emphasize that to live in the Spirit we must stop identifying exclusively with the intellect and awaken our hearts. Can you please explain what, in this context, the “heart” is?
John-Roger: “The heart is the essence of each person, as himself, in trueness, at all times. Honesty, openness, humbleness, care, and empathy are all innate qualities associated with the heart, and when they’re activated, the essence of a person shines with true spiritual radiance. Although the heart is essentially always awake, we have, because of forgetfulness, not focused on its presence in our lives. This is what spiritual literature describes as ‘ignorance.’
“Spiritual science has developed various techniques to release the body’s energy when it is trapped in such negativity as hurt, rejection, or anger …emotional blockages which keep the heart closed. When these negative emotions are released, the energy of fear expands into the energy of joy, and the person often experiences spontaneous enlightenment. St. Paul’s blinding illumination on the road to Damascus is an example of this spontaneous form of awakening.”
Would you say that knowledge which comes from the awakened heart is not acquired knowledge, but the spontaneous wisdom at the core of each person?
John-Roger: “Yes. Most people are familiar with the mind and intellect, but the heart is the ‘true’ intelligence of the being. In fact, what we learn in this world – intellectual, acquired knowledge may bear no relationship at all to our true inner core. Our knowledge, credentials, and mental concepts may even take us away from our center, which is the home of true intelligence.
“While intellectual knowledge is certainly valuable, we should always seek to stay in touch with the heart’s ‘natural knowing.’ Others have called this kind of knowledge telepathic, clairvoyant, psychic, or intuitive, although these terms are confusing. Everybody, however, has had a n experience of ‘natural knowing’; we’ve all had moments in which we knew, without knowing how or why. Later we may have confirmed that knowledge, and usually we were right. The confirmation was secondary; the
important thing is that we knew.
“The qualities we associate with the heart – trusting our intuition, being open, honest, and living in the present moment – are all childlike virtues. Notice I said childlike and not childish. The child is not concerned with protecting his image as a ‘knower’ and can therefore be a true learner, confronting life with enthusiasm and simplicity. So can we as adults, when we drop our concern with self image and involve ourselves moment by moment with experiencing life deeply. An intellectual person often can’t abandon his concepts about how life should be, so his mind constantly takes him out of the moment and he tries to analyze, manipulate, and control life.”
Many people choose the safety of the intellect because living in the heart seems risky. Is there a safe and sensible way to live with an awakened heart in a seemingly hostile world?
John-Roger: “When the heart is awakened, people universally say, `There’s nothing anyone can say or do that could hurt me.’ Surprisingly enough, that means living in a state of `perfect vulnerability,’ which means absolute protection. In such a consciousness we automatically feel protected by the entire universe, and our every need is taken care of by universal supply.
” Unfortunately, in our normal state or awareness we’ve been taught to focus on material things. Usually we fantasize that if we had the right job, the perfect relationship, and unlimited money, everything would be perfect for us. Ironically, the real fulfillment of that fantasy comes with the feeling of contentment and joy we get when the heart opens, irrespective of external conditions. No matter how great or small the array of ‘stuff’ we have in the outer world, it would all be intrinsically enjoyable ‘if the heart were open. But this attitude doesn’t mean we romanticize poverty to fulfill a psycho-spiritual concept we hold of the ‘spiritual life.’ We can live with diamonds, jewels, and great splendor while being spiritual in the highest sense of the word.”
How can we open our hearts while living normal, modern lives?
John-Roger: “One way I recommend is by learning how to communicate with our neighbors. The biggest difficulty in spiritual life is that most of us withhold the real essence of our communication from each other. Religious norms in the past stressed restriction and self-effacement in communication, but the modern age requires us to be assertive and honest with our speech and emotions. The New Age, the Golden Age, will be a lived reality when our lives are governed by two principles: love as the basis of all relationships, and the clear, active communication of that loving.
“Whenever I am honest enough to verbalize my so-called `negative emotions,’ without regard for the self image I usually defend, I release energy that covers my heart and a feeling of joy runs through me. If you and I have a problem in our relationship, I might say, ‘I have this problem with you that bothers me, and I’d like to work on it. I hope it won’t get in the way of our relationship. If what I say doesn’t fit with the facts, maybe you can help me see where I’m projecting my own unresolved stuff on you.’ As long as we take responsibility for our feelings, without inflicting pain on the other or elevating ourselves through one-upmanship, we create the possibility for real self-transformation.
“When we look at each other and speak in depth, without the distractions and hideouts of normal ‘communication,’ we hold the rational, defensive mind in check, then the real truth comes forward. When the environment is loving and supportive, we can have the courage and honesty to hear our own truth. At that moment we’re not listening to the rational mind, the way our parents programmed us, or the social masks we’ve been busy defending. In that joyous instant the heart opens, something inside leaps up in joy, and we know intuitively what our next growth step is.”
You’ve said that negative emotions like jealousy cover the heart. What attitude should we assume to-ward such emotions in our attempt to grow beyond them?
John-Roger: “We surmount negativity by standing on the things that appear negative and using them to lift us higher. When we begin exploring our inner consciousness, we find a treasure chest of love, understanding, faith, hope, and charity … along with wishful thinking, gossip, warmongering, and lust. If we observe a diamond in its rough form, we might not recognize it as a precious jewel. Without its facets polished and delineated, we might throw the rough diamond away.
“Similarly, our so-called lower emotions prevent us from perceiving our inner core of love. Yet we can view our negative emotions as diamonds in the rough. Jealousy, for example, can be viewed as emotional involvement, a positive quality, taken to the extreme of unhealthy emotional investment in another person – which is frequently called ‘attachment.’ Jealousy says, ‘I really care about you. I care so much it makes me sick. I care so much I’m enslaved by what I love.’ Often jealousy elevates the other person so high that we feel unable to attain that same state, so instead we wallow in low self-esteem.
“But we can harness the same energy which sustains jealousy, then lift ourselves to a higher state. The distance between where we are and where we want to be is maintained by the energy of jealousy, so when we stop comparing ourselves with another person and accept ourselves where we are, we transform that energy, which is really self-rejection, into action. Gone are the debilitating thoughts such as ‘I can’t do it’ and ‘I’m not as good as he in’ which are excuses that justify the laziness which keeps us from taking action.”
Guilt and resentment also frequently drain energy from our higher potential. Can you explain what these conditions are and how we can transform them?
John-Roger: “Guilt is the conflict between who we think we are — our self-image — and what we do in reality, regardless of the ideal self-image we usually frantically defend. Actions which run contrary to our habitual self-concept cause us to inflict mental and emotional punishment on ourselves, and in this way the heart closes down.
“For example, we may find ten dollars on the street and pick it up. Our conscious self, who has a tight moral belief system to defend, says, ‘That’s stealing!’ It immediately punishes us with a self-torture program, even though the act may have been strictly innocent or empty of any moral significance. The guilt we feel covers our higher consciousness with the soot of self-rejection.
“To open our hearts again, we can change our action by either returning the money, donating it to charitable organizations, or enjoying the money without rejecting ourselves. We can also change our belief system about what a ‘good person’ does. If we choose the latter course, we graciously accept ourselves as a ‘good person’ who occasionally does things not usually judged ‘good’ by society. Although harder than altering action, loosening the boundaries of our self-concept brings increased self-acceptance and less internal punishment.
“Resentment, the opposite face of guilt, is the emotion of punishment directed outward instead of inward. Resentment says, ‘I’m spoiled and I’m not getting my way with you.’ Initially we send out a feeling to another person, and because that feeling is not responded to according to our expectations, the feeling is re-sent and re-sent … until fin ally it builds into resentment.
“Forgiveness is the antidote to resentment, because it removes the judgment we have inflicted on another person. All judgment is self-inflicted anyway, so the act of forgiving another is really an act of self-pardoning. Both guilt and resentment can be avoided by following Christ’s dictum to ‘judge not lest ye be judged.’ This is not a negative moral injunction aimed at keeping us in line, but a practical, time-tested way of maintaining peace as our way of life.”
If awakening the heart brings peace and contentment, why haven’t religious and spiritual organizations been more successful in transforming humanity throughout our history?
John-Roger: “I think because all of us have suffered from what I call ‘totalitarian education.’ Outer authorities have repeatedly told us, ‘This is the one true way,’ whether in the field of religion, education, or politics. Because we’ve followed them, we’ve become strangers to our own sense of reality.
“Spiritual awakening is really re-awakening, a remembering of one’s true essence. This process can’t happen when spiritual or political authorities try to control the mind or body. Although they may temporarily succeed on a n intellectual level, they can’t control our feelings, which are the keys that open the heart. No amount of outer coercion or doctrinaire argument can, in fact, awaken us. Such techniques may produce conformity and the security of numbers, but never awakening.
“When the heart awakens, the Spirit becomes our teacher from the inside. But this is not an alien spirit, nor is it an outer authority imposing truths which do not fit our nature and inner direction. It is a self-validating state, in which knowledge springs spontaneously from within, and our course of action becomes individualized, unique in the universe, and totally comfortable with who we are. Until awakened from within, we are kept in the dark by our totalitarian education. When the light finally dawns in us, we enter what mystics have called the ‘Divine Unknowing!’ ”
Don’t we. also enter a state called “surrender,” in which we give up trying to control life to allow the universe to supply our needs?
John-Roger: “Yes, but when we talk about surrender, we don’t mean defeat by an antagonistic force or giving in because of weak-ness. Surrender means that we give up the ways, expectations, and conditions we impose on life, to align ourselves with the Way that exists harmoniously for everything and everybody. Surrender means ‘giving up into,’ a state in which all our needs are supplied. I call this a high state of cooperation.
“The Bible states. ‘Even before you ask I know your need and will supply it.’ What the text leaves out is, ‘As long as you’re living in the heart.’ When our hearts are open, we live in what religion calls ‘God’s will,’ the way of universal harmony and abundance. We live in now with the tides and rhythms of nature, and so attuned are we with both inner and outer things, that before we even speak, our needs are supplied.
“The Bible also states that the reason we don’t receive abundantly is that we don’t ask. Here the text refers to those who are outside of the heart function and who are not in harmony with the instinctive goodness of both nature and the open heart. Thus the Bible accounts for both kinds of people – those who haven’t realized the truth and who must ask, and those who have surrendered to God’s will and who can graciously receive.”
What does “asking” mean in this context?
John-Roger: “‘Asking’ means that to receive the truth, we must abandon positions of intellectual knowledge. If living in attunement with spiritual truth is actually meaningful, we must be willing to abandon everything to attain this pearl of great price, including our cherished ideas about how life should be. When we become flexible enough to adapt to how the universe really is, we arrive at the heart, and then when we ask, we automatically receive, even though our asking is at this point superfluous.
“Some clever people have redefined ‘asking’ as ‘claiming,’ which expresses itself as, ‘I claim this in the name of. ..,’a practice which smacks of conquistadores, manipulators, and totalitarians. It’s like calling God the great bellhop in the sky and saying, ‘Move my bag over here.’ If we place our individual will against nature and demand a manifestation, we become the inheritors of the karma connected with that action, because we’re responsible for it. But the prodigal son who surrenders and returns to the Father is immediately pardoned and receives his complete inheritance without creating any karma at all.”
Then the Biblical story of the prodigal son is a parable of how we learn to surrender as a way of life?
John-Roger: “Yes, and it’s a story of each one of us. Through ego, the assertion of self-will — as opposed to the cosmic, unitary Will –we separated from our Source and began to individualize our ideas, thoughts, and feelings. In a way, we make them superior to the Source of all thought and feeling. When we assert our own individual will, we move away from the universal harmony of all things and establish ourselves against that now by seeking such things as power and security. Our whole effort is then like pushing water uphill; I push a little bit u p the hill, but most of it flows down against my will.
“In pitting ourselves against the universal Will, which we could call the Father, we eventually exhaust ourselves. We see the futility of living in the ego. One day, when life in the individual will proves to be empty, the prodigal says, ‘My way isn’t working. I’m starving, and even the least one doing the Father’s will gets more than I. How stupid of me to live this way! I shall return to my Father’s house.’
“Maybe he’s impelled because of the loneliness of his path through life. Maybe his intellect has promised much but delivered little in the way of inner peace. Maybe the prodigal is fortunate enough to experience an awakening of the heart. In whatever way the blessed realization occurs, the prodigal then moves with sincerity and contrition back to the Father’s house. When his sincerity is noted, the Father rushes out to meet him, supplying him again with everything from the heart. Once again the prodigal is in tune with energy, abundance, and with universal flow.”
But the “control panel” of one’s life is not in the ego’s hands anymore. Doesn’t living the life of the “returned prodigal” mean having the faith to enter the unknown constantly?
John-Roger: “Yes, but it’s a Divine Unknown. We’re constantly living in the Divine Unknown anyway, but our habitual thoughts and attitudes make us overlook that basic condition of our lives. It’s a little like driving a car down the road. We’re thinking about the time, the weather, how much fuel we have, and soon w e completely forget that we’re driving a car. The truth is we are the Unknown driving the car, missing turnoffs and signals, turning here and there, — absorbed in thoughts which give us an illusory sense of controlling reality. Yet constantly, beyond all thought, the Divine Unknown is driving the car to the destination. Really, the joke’s on us, because it doesn’t matter what we think; the car is going to the appointed destination anyway!”
Is faith the ability to continually move into the unknown?
John-Roger: “Let me put it this way. Faith is nothing; Faithing is moving into the unknown instead of waiting for the unknown to come into us. Throughout the centuries what I call ‘churchianity’ has corrupted the human being by encouraging him to sit down, read a holy book, and wait for God to deliver him. People have been waiting for thousands of years, and they still haven’t been delivered from their misery. When we’re faithing, instead of having faith, we don’t wait for God, but cooperate with Him, moving constantly toward His Will, wherever it shows itself. That is a n active and alert process which is enhanced when the heart is awake.
“Before such an awakening, faith is a n intellectual affair, the essence of things hoped for, the substance of things unseen. One’s goal is unseen, unknown empirically, yet knowable in terms of the imagination, feeling-nature, or as an idea. When the heart opens, however, we leave the faith of the intellect and move into a manifestation of the faith, which I call Faithing.’ We move away from a life predicated on intellectual understanding, into the enlightenment of God’s Will. We move toward it as it moves us.”
Doesn’t this state of affairs baffle the intellect, which before was in the habit of knowing and controlling things?
John-Roger: “Of course, but the intellect may be able to be enlightened by seeing how progress works from a spiritual perspective, thereby gaining trust in the process. The intellect gains trust by watching for empirical results, things it can observe and touch. While the intellect likes to observe and analyze from a distance, Faithing is wholeheartedly immersing ourselves in a process without having an insurance policy in a back pocket in case we decide to change our minds. Faithing is really laying our bodies on the line.
“To call faithing ‘total commitment’ doesn’t do justice to the concept, though. I’m reminded of a conversation between a chicken and a pig over their contribution to the farmer’s ham and eggs It’s all right for you to talk about commitment, because all you do is lay eggs,’ said the pig to the chicken, ‘but with me it’s total!”‘
This means that to live the life of faith, we can’t comfortably observe things with the sense of ‘understanding’ which once gave us a false sense of control over our destiny. It means, in effect, that we give our lives to existence.
John-Roger: “But paradoxically enough, that’s the best form of control there is! Our minds aren’t really in control of anything. Just observe how our thoughts are constantly in a state of flux, uncertainty, or doubt. Our emotions certainly aren’t in concrol; in fact, they yo-yo all the time. And from a physical standpoint, our bodies are constantly undergoing decomposition, decay, and death. Control on the mental, emotional, or physical level is purely an illusion. “If we give ourselves up to total existence, which is constantly in charge of our minds emotions, and bodies, we then transfer our consciousness to the real control matrix. We then don’t have to make things happen in our lives.
Things are simply happening, and our task is to cooperate with the natural movement inherent .in all things. Living in this manner is a form of humbleness, an appreciation of one’s individual gifts, which at the same time permits one the permeability to flow within the greater matrix of possibilities.
“Such an approach to life is neither impractical nor irrational. The ‘practical’ mind thinks that it knows, but the heart knows that it knows, and therefore is the master of thought. When a person is thus illumined, body, mind, and emotions move in one direction, or as the Bible says, ‘If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be filled with light.”
Living in this manner has been described as living non-expectantly, yet few of us live that way. Why does living with expectations cause dilemmas and suffering in our lives?
John-Roger: “When the reality we experience doesn’t match up with what we’ve created in our imagination, we cause ourselves suffering in the form of anger; disappointment, or depression. If I go to a movie with the expectation that it will be good, I’ve already in some sense written the movie’s script inside myself. The real movie may never match the mental movie I’ve created. What’s better and more effective is not to expect how enjoyable the evening will be. I can therefore more easily accept the evening’s entertainment, no matter how it turns out, because I haven’t laid parameters on the evening.”
Wouldn’t living this sensibly help us avoid so much of the hurt and disappointment which punctuate our lives?
John-Roger: “Often our greatest awakening occurs because of our greatest hurt and suffering, although we ought not to glorify pain. But suffering, when it does occur, can act as a correcting mechanism to show us through our pain where we are out of harmony with the universe. In those moments, suffering becomes our guardian angel, giving us the ‘whack’ of awakening to restore us to our proper course. When we return to the life of joy, we keep the memory of suffering as a reminder, a rudder to keep us safely on our way. With only joy in life, there often isn’t a reminder which calls attention to our need to move on to the next level of development.”
Even though we must go through the process ofhaving expectations as part of our growth process, is it possible to one day live entirely without them?
John-Roger: “Yes, but that takes maturity. Having made many mistakes over the years, I’ve learned to live non-expectantly by taking charge of the things in my life over which I have authority …and I’ve learned not to give my power away to an expectation which is totally beyond my authority. Of course, I don’t plan to fail, but neither do I fail to plan. My course of action in life has a tremendous flexibility, because on all levels I’m guided by the understanding, ‘Thy will, not my will, be done,’ which is the guideline to non-expectant living.”
Isn’t service also considered one of the principal guidelines to awaken and keep us in the heart?
John-Roger: “Service is the highest form of consciousness on our planet. Service is highly regarded in spiritual life because it diminishes the selfishness of our ‘little self,’ allowing us to identify with others as members of one human family. We make the earth a more heavenly place through serving others.
“It’s always important to serve something larger than ourselves, our ego, or sense of personal survival… but before we’re fully able to be of service to others, we must serve ourselves to completeness so we give from the overflow. If we serve without feeling complete inside, we often feel cheated. My attitude is, ‘Take yours right off the top and then serve others with the rest.’ Otherwise service is tainted with the expectation of when and how we’ll receive our reward.
“Be unashamed in having what you need. Only then will true service evolve naturally and wholeheartedly. While we all probably have notions of what constitutes service, I advise husbands and wives to serve the family first. Make sure no one is on welfare and that each one is being properly educated. One of my personal maxims is, ‘Take care of yourself so you can take care of others.’
“Our true core, before it gets contaminated with selfishness, wants to give love. Service reinstates us in the awareness of that true nature, which is not to get love, but to give it. In truth, we can’t really ‘get’ love anyway. When we say to another person, ‘I can’t live without you and your love,’ we’re perpetuating the illusion that the source of love lies outside ourselves.
When we say, instead, ‘Every, time I see you, the place within me. which is love comes more awake and I really love that,’ we’re recognizing the other person as a catalyst who will awaken the love which already exists inside ourselves.
“That love is in the heart, the love of complete self-acceptance. We find it not in the Himalayas, nor in foreign cities, but –miracle of miracles –in the very center of our own being.”