The heart chakra on the path of Self-realization: Being love
The heart chakra is called Anāhata chakra. Anāhata means 'that which cannot be killed' and refers to that in you which is no longer bound by a limited existence: pure love or consciousness itself. In ancient scriptures, the heart was often seen as a potential gateway to a deeper discovery of Self, because what you intrinsically are is love. Even on a relative level, if you truly love something or someone, it opens you to an inherent essence that is neither rooted in the mind nor dependent on circumstances, expressions, or forms. It doesn't come or go. It is always here. It simply is. Love simply is.
A musical note that was never struck or a single hand clapping were used as traditional pointers to collapse the thinking mind and reveal something to you that is inherently non-conceptual, cannot be figured out by the intellect, and no longer operates within the parameters of duality. To be comfortable with not knowing and remaining without concepts catapults you deeper into the realization of the Self and opens you deeper to the unified nature of reality.
To come from the love of the Self means to see life, yourself, and others increasingly through your deepening wisdom that all appearances, and that includes 'others', are a part of the Self and yet never. Duality itself emerges from and displays this love, yet it completely transcends any separatist notion. This love is all-inclusive and yet isn’t defined by what emerges from it. It is exactly that paradox that gets fully integrated in the heart chakra. What it means on an experiential level is to become aware of what arises within the contents of the mind, yet also to stay transparent to your true nature as consciousness at the same time. It means being given a new choice that comes from no longer needing to respond to appearances.
Love is such a helpful pointer and catalyst for awakening, because almost everyone has experienced what it means to love someone or something exactly as they are, simply for their being, their existence. Such love, no longer motivated by personal validation or causality, lets you glimpse more deeply the impersonal and unconditional love of the Self. Because romantic relationships can only fail in the search for lasting happiness, this can also catalyze and prompt an investigation into what in you doesn’t need love from an outside source, because it already knows itself being love.
To be more consciously inspired by that deeper love of Self on a relative level means fully seeing what arises for you and others in the present moment, and loving it all from the wisdom that all is divine.
As your discovery of your true Self deepens in this heart chakra mastery and unveils to you the love that you are, you will also no longer define yourself or others through what appears to you or them, but can remember yourself and all others as that love which exists prior to, amidst, as, and yet beyond all appearances.
