Leading from the Heart

Good evening friends and welcome to the festival of Leo, and an especially warm welcome to all those who are joining us via BlogTalk Radio. One can truly sense the expanded group presence that this internet/phone link makes possible; and after the last meeting in Cancer it was wonderful to hear from some of those who listened in, including those from distant lands who were working with us in the small hours of the morning. Anyone participating in group service like this is an integral part of the group’s collective aura through a synchronicity of thought and vibration. Each of us is serving to our maximum capacity as we resonate to the key of these group meditations, as well as tuning in to the greater planetary meditation which is continually breathing out life-giving energies to humanity.

Leo’s exoteric, esoteric and hierarchical rulers are all one and the same Being – the Sun, the generating force of our solar system which combines the Will energy of this constellation with the magnetism of Love-wisdom. So it’s not difficult to see that its energies can stimulate a new and needed type of leadership in the world – leadership through the heart, leadership through group consciousness and leadership through creative relationships of love and goodwill. Most of us know through experience that group work is simple in essence but difficult in practice, particularly for a group that works together physically on the outer plane. For example, a dominant personality can disrupt the subtle rhythm of the group heart and mind, destroying the delicate creations that are awakened by the light of the group soul. Nevertheless, each individual’s battle with the lower self in the end adds spiritual depth to the group life. The spiritual tension generated in the group through each individual’s struggle to live at their highest point is ultimately positive, but when self-serving tendencies are allowed to dominate they can dim the group light and detract from its usefulness. In time each group soul confronts and overcomes this Dweller, the sum total of all that stands in the way of the free and pure expression of the heart’s higher desire.

When the Dweller has been overcome, the point of soul light in the group expands into a radiating heart centre. The group’s preparedness and purity enables it to respond to zodiacal energies and allows the members of the group on the inner planes to communicate ideas relating to the Plan to the outer group. The group heart is always sensitively preoccupied with some aspect of the plan and when this is the case the Tibetan says that “a more frequent illumining of the mind by the light of the soul [occurs], whereby the Plan is revealed. This will not be the shedding of that light upon the plans of the server, either for his own life or upon his chosen field of service. This must be clearly grasped. That might only indicate (if it seems to occur) the mental agility of the server to find means for the justification of his own ambition. It will be the recognition of the Plan of God for the world at the particular time in which the server is existing and the part he may play in furthering the ends of those who are responsible for the carrying forward of those plans”.

This important statement about the nature of service emanating from the spiritual heart reminds us that Leo’s two keynotes - the will-to-illumine and the will-to-rule – should be understood in group terms. That service will only truly flourish in alignment with the intention of the planetary heart centre, once all ambition and concentration on little personal plans fade out. Speaking in terms of the influence of the Sun, the exoteric influence of the physical sun, once known and expressed in terms of ambition, then comes under the esoteric influence – the light that emanates from the heart of the sun, expanding awareness into the state we call group consciousness. And it is this inner light which advanced humanity is now beginning to respond to.

Perhaps we can pause here for a few moments to ponder this flow of love as it streams from “The Heart of God”, and on through the Hierarchy and the Christ into human consciousness. We’ll then affirm this fact by saying the Gayatri together:

O Thou Who givest sustenance to the universe.

From Whom all things proceed.

To Whom all things return.

Unveil to us the face of the true spiritual Sun,

Hidden by a disk of golden light,

That we may know the truth and do our whole duty,

As we journey to Thy sacred Feet.

OM

We know that the physical sun gives life to all forms on earth but recently some scientists have been postulating that disturbances in psychological behaviour can occur due to chaotic electromagnetic stimuli from Coronal Mass Ejections and flares from the sun. When excessive, these discharges can affect human behaviour, even our sanity, and the question is being asked by some scientists whether the collective brain of the race might become over-stimulated during these emissions and whether in fact, such electrical chaos can even precipitate wars as the ionic balance of the brain is disturbed by seasonal weather change. Fred Soyka, author of “The Ion Effect”, investigated how electrically charged atmospheric ions can influence mental states and how certain areas of the world at certain times of the year experience dramatic behavioral and psychological change. One example is the Middle Eastern wind known as the Sharav, which can literally send people mad through its generation of excess positive ions which interfere with the normal electrical patterns of the brain. Even magistrates allow for symptoms of aggression and depression that it can cause as an extenuating factor in court cases.

While some psychological effects of the physical sun are starting to be realized, esotericism focuses on how the sun’s inner, subtle dimensions affect human consciousness. The Tibetan comments that there are “faint emanations from the sacred ‘heart of the sun’, unrecognized by the masses but instantly calling forth response from the mystics of the race who are asserting increasingly a group integrity of a very real moment and interest. These emanations are too high to be sensed by humanity at large, but the mystics react and are drawn together by the sensing of the new vibration”. In turn, these influences are passing down to be registered by the more caring and sensitively aware type of individual who wants to make a difference in the world. Perhaps an example of this was the huge interest and expectation for the success of the UN Rio+20 conference in June which, unfortunately, on the surface of things and from the viewpoint of political leadership, was disappointing. However, as Mary Robinson, President of the Foundation for Climate Justice pointed out, it was very heartening to see political negativity being countered by “the incredible vitality, determination and commitment of civil society...The legacy of Rio +20” she said, “will not just be the text of the Declaration, hopefully it will be about the mobilization of people to build the future they desire.”

As for the practical mystics and disciples of the world, the influence of the spiritual sun is stimulating fledgling group telepathy through high and consecrated feeling, devotion, aspiration and love. As groups of people develop this tendency and work with pure love, communication will be from heart to heart, and from one group heart to another. Such heart to heart communication requires an opening up to others that few are courageous enough to pursue and the great need of our times remains a fusion of love and mind. Happily, there are signs that a capacity to “think in the heart” is not just a romantic notion, but a phenomenon that has growing credibility. Recent scientific investigations have actually discovered specific neurons in the heart which establish “thinking in the heart” as a physical plane fact. A recent TV documentary related the story of the age long split between head and heart. Before the rise of modern science the heart was very much characterised as the site of emotions as well as the very centre of human existence. But since then,

medicine has come to see the heart as just a pump – with many people believing that they are ruled instead by their heads. The documentary had a twist to it because the reporter himself was someone who had prided himself on being a rational man, until his wife suffered serious depression and he realised the person he once knew had gone. His life was then hit by a tidal wave of emotion and he started to realise that the pain he was suffering was literally through a thinking in the heart which his mind couldn’t control and which he had to learn to accept and adapt to.

The filmmaker, David Malone, described how an understanding of the heart as the seat of the emotions changed in the seventeenth century when William Harvey, a physician, discovered that the organ of the heart, the centre of our emotions, also pumps blood around the body. This coincided with the dawn of the mechanical age, when mind and heart came to be seen as similar to cogs and a pump in a body that resembled an elaborate machine, and this in turn changed many people’s perception of what it is to be human. The mind and heart were split into separate departments, and the seat of consciousness was allocated solely to the brain. That Harvey’s work gave licence to this idea was ironic, because this wasn’t his perspective, but he saw how the heart was unable to defend itself against the triumph of the rational mind.

Interestingly in Windsor Castle, drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, neglected for 400 years after his death, demonstrated that a truer understanding of the heart had existed many centuries before. Da Vinci had already deduced that blood flowed through the heart, and that it must make a swirling action, a vortex. The purpose of these vortices was to open up the valves of the heart and so the blood works with the heart not against it. The vortical flow of the blood helps to close the valves of the heart behind it as it flows through. The reporter reflected that if we had understood a pump in terms of a vortex, this mechanical approach would have changed. Heart and blood flows work in natural harmony, and today using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, it’s possible to see the way the blood flows through the heart in this manner.

In the documentary, David Malone interviewed Professor David Patterson of Oxford University who is challenging traditional views of how the heart and brain work together. Prof. Patterson explained that in the heart itself there are around ten thousand specialised neurons, not just nerve cells but a neural network, and the question has to be asked, why are they there? The discovery of these neurons has led to it being called “the heart’s little brain”. It is realised that the brain must work in partnership with the heart and that thinking in the heart is one of its functions. It is not enslaved to the brain, rather it is more like a marriage, its not just thoughts in the brain that govern our lives but emotional and loving thoughts in the heart also. When illness took David Malone’s wife away from him, he discovered that there was no sense of reconciliation while he tried to rationalise the fact in his mind – he had to listen to another part of himself, his heart. It led to him pondering on what it might mean to follow your heart? To quote Blaise Pascal, “The heart has its reasons of which Reason knows nothing”.

The heart’s reasoning is based on compassion and this quality is the heart’s gift to the rational mind. Listening to the compassionate heart and directing all actions in compliance with its leadership is the way towards a better world. The reason of the heart eclipses the lower reasoning of the rational mind every time and acts in accordance with the God within. In the book, The Light of the Soul, we read of a stage when: “The field of knowledge, the instruments of knowledge and knowledge itself are transcended and the yogi comes to the great recognition that there is nothing except God; that His life is one and is to be found pulsating in the microscopic atom and in the macrocosmic atom also. With that life he identifies himself. He finds it at the heart of his own being and can there merge himself with the life of God as it is found in the ultimate primordial atom, or expand his realization until he knows himself as the life of the solar system.” This encapsulates the spiritual keynote of Leo “I am That, and That Am I”.

By tuning into our inner lives through meditation we enter a stream of love that is constantly pouring forth from the soul and which will naturally guide us into the beginnings of group

consciousness, telepathic interplay and an ability to discriminate between the different qualities and sources of energies that are playing through us at any moment. The Will and Love of God are always flowing through us but as yet we are not sensitive enough to register these energies and consciously work with them to any significant degree - this is the task ahead of us and what the esotericists of the world are training for. The registration of divine energies is a tuning into the “rhythm of….[Sanat Kumara’s]….breathing and the results of the systolic and the diastolic action of His heart. From these energies we cannot escape, but—in a mysterious and peculiar manner—the planetary Logos directs them or withholds them to suit the recognised planetary needs of the period. At this time the ‘eye of His direction’ is turned towards a needy and waiting world, and particularly towards the large number of waiting people who hold within themselves the potencies of discipleship. They are the hope of the world. This outpouring of directed energy means a great stimulation of all sensitive and responsive aspirants; the result is not an easy one for them. Everything in them is raised to the surface of consciousness, and whilst they are faced with a vital and beneficent opportunity, they are also faced with the problem of absorbing more ‘punishment’….than they would normally take. Will they break under the impact of self-discovery and the opportunity to eliminate personality? Or will they rise triumphant from the ashes of their dead selves into living power and beauty?

Though Sanat Kumara is naturally unaware of the individual disciple or aspirant, He is not unaware of their massed effect, quality or status. Contact and relationship are based upon vibratory reaction, and the potency of the united vibration of the disciples and aspirants of the world is today—for the first time in human history—strong enough to reach Shamballa. This is a new and very interesting fact.” That more people are becoming aware of a greater purpose emerging through world affairs is apparent from the growing tendency to think in terms of wholes without distinction. The equitable sharing of all the planet’s resources is starting to be recognised as not just a moral ideal, but as a prerequisite for humanity to evolve any further as a species towards some vaguely sensed goal. The seriousness of global events is intensifying the lesson and teaching humanity how to think “in the heart”. And this is a significant step forward, for the awakening heart of humanity is sensing the Divine Plan and instinctively recognising that each and every individual is an integral part of it.

As we meditate in the fiery influence of Leo, the soul ruler of London, we might reflect upon a recent expression of its inclusive heart energy in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games and particularly the lighting of the Olympic torch. No longer was it just a single individual involved but a group of previous Olympians passing the flame to worthy athletes of the younger generation. And it was this up and coming group who together lit the individual segments or petals of the cauldron. All the petals ascended and converged to form the cauldron, providing us with a beautiful symbol of the one humanity and its aspiration towards the Divine.

The Olympic cauldron can also be seen as representing a fiery, radiating heart centre through which unconditional love streams out to all of God’s creatures, outshining any possible domination by the rational mind. But instead, mind and heart working together - reason suffused with love and enlightened by spiritual will. So let us now go into meditation and use the group’s collective store of spiritual wisdom to work skilfully with divine purpose as it streams forth from Shamballa, where the Will of God is known.

FESTIVAL OF LEO –
LONDON – AUGUST 2012
Christine Morgan