Follow Your Heart

The Vision Of The Heart

Follow Your Heart – the perennial injunction, but, how do you do it? Vision Life Coaching, one of the services we offer, focusses on helping clients learn to follow their heart by transforming challenging areas of their life – wealth, work, relationships, creativity, etc. – especially areas that feel stuck. An energy-aware mentor heightens awareness of the need for change by reflecting back to the client the ways they tend to lose their energy (qi) and how they can cultivate their energy to move beyond the life-limiting karmas that keep them stuck in unsatisfactory states or circumstances.

As a result of these interactions, we routinely see people achieving profound changes within themselves and their lives – especially those who are willing to follow their heart or live with more ‘intent.’

“I can’t thank you enough for enabling me to know me. I can’t really find the words for it. Vision Life Coaching is quite intense, but the most powerful intervention I’ve ever experienced!” Dr. IW, UK

“Vision Life Coaching has made a dramatic difference to my life unlike anything else I have done . . . KP, USA

‘Follow your heart,’ is, of course, a well-known injunction. But what does it really mean?  In this article, we discuss the essential empowerment process that underlies any ascending development – or progressive illumination – of human consciousness.

Ramana Maharshi and ‘Tara’

Ramana Maharshi was one of the most famous Indian sages of the 20th century. Here’s an extract from his story:

Ramana was drawn to Arunachala by a flow of energy between his heart chakra and the spirit of the place –  the place where he then relentlessly practised his much-documented method of awareness development. Ramana’s life was completely transformed as a direct consequence of his commitment to following his heart (-chakra energy).

Now here’s part of the story of a Vision Life Coaching client – we’ll call her ‘Tara’ –

So Ramana moves to a mountain and Tara gets a job. What’s the essential difference between their experiences? Very little, energenically-speaking. In spite of Ramana’s intense illumination experience, followed by many years of rigorous practice, both he and Tara engaged with areas of their lives – where to live or what job to get – through their heart connections. And they both experienced the natural consequences of following those connections.

‘Following your heart’ is not an abstract concept. It is the discipline or ‘life practice’ of being true to yourself in a very specific way – a way that is so fundamental to the human condition, it absolutely determines the quality of all your fortunes – or lack of fortunes – throughout your life.

Follow Your Heart For Higher Energy Fortunes

The heart chakra is approximately two inches up from the bottom of the sternum (breast bone). Its location is marked by a slight indentation in the sternum – if you run your thumb up your sternum, with a firm pressure, it ‘drops’ into the hollow of the heart [chakra].

At the central root of the heart chakra, in the spinal cord, there is a minute, brilliant, glow called the ‘spirit within.’ This isn’t a religious concept. It’s simply a part of the living energy body, visible to anyone who has developed the ability to see the human energy body in precise detail.

Everything has its own essential nature, or ‘spirit,’ which manifests as a form of light that can eventually be discerned by someone using practices that open a chakra, the stareye, at the centre of their brow. The human spirit abides in the heart [chakra].

Your spirit is constantly connecting to potential sources of higher energy fortunes – like certain mountains or much-needed work. Your ‘fortunes’ are also not a vague concept. The fortunate aspects of your life are products of your conductivity of five forms of qi – the fortune qi – which generate your wisdom, inner strength, happiness, success and higher awareness.

In each moment, your heart is connected to opportunities through which you can raise the frequency of each fortune qi flowing through you. In other words, despite the usual daily ups and downs, your heart energy is always ‘pulling’ you towards those things, people, experiences, tasks, places that will begift you with higher quality wisdom, inner strength, happiness, success and awareness as normal aspects of your consciousness . . . to the degree you follow your heart.

Suffering Is Living Apart From Your Heart

Ramana followed his heart to Arunachala. Tara followed her heart to a perfect (for her) job. People often make the error of separating their spiritual development from the rest of their lives. There’s the work, relationships, responsibilities, pains and pleasures of everyday life. And then, there’s meditation, and some supportive disciplines perhaps, as something else – a thing apart. But the greater this separation, the greater the lack of results.

The more you separate your spirit or heart from your daily life, the more you experience the five misfortune qi – confusion, harm, exhaustion, failure and ignorance (the opposite of awareness rather than knowledge) – that enter your energy body as a result. The unfortunate experiences, states and circumstances we suffer don’t manifest out of thin air. Just like our fortunes, they are all products of the various energies we once called (and still call) to ourselves through not following our heart.

The Commitment Of The Spiritual Warrior

Of course, on the whole, we tend to be mostly unaware of our energies from moment to moment of our daily lives, so we usually make choices that don’t raise our heart (energy).  Our choices fail to lift our spirits. We are like people who can barely see, standing at road junctions every day of our lives, then going this way or that, based on our knowledge, beliefs, feelings, likes and dislikes.

We don’t hear our hearts. We are too busy talking to ourselves, knowing what we know, not recognising what we don’t know, feeling what we feel, wanting what we want. The small voice of the spirit within is drowned out by the internal clamour that is always distracting us from the way we need to go. Hearing our spirit makes every choice crystal clear. But how often do we have the internal stillness to do that?

Each step that is not in our heart direction draws future misfortunes towards us. More confusion, more fatigue, more things not working out the way we hoped they would – all reflect the energies we have cultivated, like weeds in our garden, through ignoring the spirit within. It isn’t rocket science – every misstep has a karmic consequence – but the discipline to recognise and stay on the path of your heart depends on a sustained commitment.

In the beginning, a commitment to the heart engenders an intense struggle – the struggle of the ‘spiritual warrior’ – an over-used term, but a valid concept because all those desires, feelings, beliefs and knowledge conspire to obstruct your spirit’s ascent. Our karmic commitments are too invested, too set in their own ways of being, to step politely aside just because we aspire to make a bid for freedom from their clutches.

The Ascent Of The Spirit

When you do take a step in an [energy-] ascending direction, a tiny part of your spirit flows a little higher, literally. Your spirit aspires to reach your crown, the gateway to illuminating higher awareness. Ramana was, of course, unusual. The connection between his heart and his crown was very strong. But, before that, it wasn’t.

Everyone goes through the same process. No exceptions. Everyone who gets anywhere worth getting to, follows their heart, no matter how this may manifest at different stages of the process. Or how unwitting they may be of each such step in the beginning.

Recognising and following the pull of your heart connections refines your fortunes – the manifesting forms of your wisdom, happiness, success, and so on. This refinement appears within you as a growing sense of inner peace, clarity, guidance, direction and drive. Every millimetre your spirit rises higher, the more it changes your awareness of who you are.

Your spirit may be tiny by comparison with the volume of your energy body and its dominant consciousness, but its potential, transformative, effect upon your energy body and consciousness is more encompassing and powerful than any other energy by far. ‘All’ you have to do is maintain or move yourself, your actions, your attention, the focus of your love, and of your passion, in your heart direction. Every day.

Live With Intent For Your Spirit’s Ascent

Doing this begins with the most fundamental question you can ever ask yourself: ‘What do I need to do [now]?’ This is most fundamental because it leads to answers to every other question you can ever ask. Recognising and fulfilling your needs (energy-ascending actions and choices) cultivates your wisdom and awareness in ways that lead from wherever you are to the pathways of your heart – the pathways of your ascending fortunes, which all lead to your crown.

In the Living With Energy Awareness Training, we focus on developing the awareness to recognise our needs – an awareness that utterly transcends our mind’s capacity to clearly know what to do. The mind works well within its own domain, but when it’s applied to the needs of your spirit, it’s like trying to use a hammer to turn a screw.

Meanwhile, your awareness is perfectly designed to discern that which is fortunate or unfortunate. For you. By cultivating your ability to be aware, with your whole body, of the direction of your heart in every moment, your life and consciousness are transformed in extraordinary ways.

The Living With Energy Awareness Training can be followed by the Vision Feng Shui Training, for cultivating your environmental energy awareness – dates: LWEAT 12th & 13th April 2014 and VFST 19th & 20th April 2014, Glastonbury, UK.  Further details are available on the Life Energy Awareness Forum.

Follow Your Heart As A Way Of Life

But to follow your heart, the Way always starts with your body energy awareness – seeing what you need to do in every moment. Being able to recognise your own, unique, energy-ascending needs is the ‘secret’ to success in all forms of spiritual endeavour. This is living with the intent to transform every living moment into an ascending moment. Moving from the weight of ‘normal’ consciousness to the relative levity of grounded energy awareness gradually transforms every form of suffering into an increasingly illuminating and all-encompassing lightness of being.

By cultivating your energy awareness, the process of stepping into the world of energy, one step at a time, becomes a way of life that engages every part of your life. And by constantly learning to follow your heart, you come to realise, in full awareness, who you always, already, are  capable of being.

Want to know more? Also see How To Follow Your Heart by Natalie Fee