The Promise of Life is like a divine seed gracefully revealing its inner beauty as it unfolds in time, space and substance: season by season, cycle after cycle and era by era.
With the passing of time, more is made possible as we expand our consciousness and enhance our capacity to deliver on this sacred promise.
We mark the passing of these temporal phases in years – from the annual celebration of birthdays and the span of an incarnation to those vast cycles encompassing the rise and fall of civilizations and on up to unimaginable rounds of the Cosmic Calendar. Then there are those auspicious moments within the boundless continuum of the evolutionary process when a number of these cycles line up to create a scalar portal through which new energies enter our Earth from deeper dimensions of the Cosmos. It may be viewed in the same way a combination lock works on a safe – when the numbers line up and click, we can safely open the vault. When these astronomical and astrological cycles line up and click open, we have access to the vault of heaven with its storehouse of refined riches.
We find ourselves living in one such pertinent period of stellar alignment when the Piscean Age gives way to the Aquarian Age and when the dark era of Kali Yuga finally finishes and the golden cycle of Satya Yuga begins. The Agni Yoga teaching describes the transition between these two cycles:
“Falsehood and darkness fill the end of Kali Yuga. One must realize this in order not to lose one’s strength. It is impossible to avoid the dark days. And only a knowledge of their cause will give one the patience to survive them… Hence, in this Kali Yuga cycle of death and destruction for the Age of the Mind, there is already emerging a new paradigm of the Satya Yuga cycle – or golden age, a renaissance for the human spirit that will set the tone for the Age of Aquarius.”
There is always great turmoil and upheaval during these critical times of transition as the old passes away and new forms emerge. The ending of an age or the death of a civilization is not the death of the Human Spirit, but simply the dissolution of the forms that have carried that Spirit to this point in time. In the continuous Pageant of Life through the cyclical procession of the seasons, the Angel of Death and Endings always precedes the Avatar of Regeneration. Appearance, disappearance and re-appearance – such is the generative nature and rhythmic flow of an emergent process.
A pivotal passage between the cycles has to be traversed. I believe we now stand at the threshold of a new era in which a Solar Civilization will be birthed and that entry into this coming golden age will only be gained by passing through the Portal of the Heart. This golden gateway leads us into heightened levels of caring and sharing – stimulating acts of loving kindness in service of the good of the whole.
So why the strong emphasis on the importance of the heart at this particular juncture in history? In this present cycle the mind has provided us with the ability to analyze, dissect and deduce through the power of critical reasoning but the needed ability to unify and hold the whole life in a spirit of compassionate coherence is to be found inside the domain of the heart.
The heart is an organ of immense receptivity and radiance – a unified field that can hold all things with loving understanding and kindness. Inside the subtle sphere of the heart, we find the pervasive quality of coherence where the various aspects of life are sensed as interconnected and thus the notion of separation no longer prevails. The heart also functions as the fecund field – a womb and birthplace of the dream of this more enlightened and compassionate world we are calling the coming Solar Civilization.
In the Agni Yoga teachings, the heart is central. It is called the Sun of Suns of the Universe. Our heart is the locus of our own inner Sun – the Soul. We are advised not to think of the heart solely as our own personal organ but more as a universal organ that is an integral part of us. In this way, the heart becomes the connective tissue and medium of communication, communion and coherence with the cosmos. The acknowledgment and revealing of this Inner Sun will herald the birth of a Soul-centered Civilization.
The rhythm of life can be sensed in each one of us through the pulse and the beat of our heart as it circulates the lifeblood around the ecosystem of Self. And yet, there is a greater system of circulation in which we can consciously participate as we connect heart-to-heart-to-heart and realize the true nature and gift of the Universal Heart.
Pause for a moment and sense the pulsing heart of our One Humanity and how it beats in rhythm with the Heart of the Planetary Life. Realize that, in turn, our Earth pulses as one coherent field to the heartbeat of the Solar System. Now imagine a Chain of Hearts extending into the infinite Nature of the Creator. Lives within lives within lives – hearts within hearts within hearts. Eventually, we come to realize that there is only One Heart and that you and I are heart-fractals of the Mystery of Creation.
Coming to a collective realization that there is only One Heart in the whole of Existence and each of us are fractals of this Loving Core, will mark a major phase of awakening in human consciousness. The breakthrough and shift from self-centeredness, where the part is seen as separate from the whole, to a new world view where each fractal is known to be a unique expression of the Whole, will usher in the Epoch of the Heart on Earth. A heart-centered society is a sustainable society.
We are being invited by our Souls to ‘realize’, or make ‘real’ this vision of a coming Solar Civilization, by how we choose to show up and comport ourselves each day. When we allow ourself to be ‘heartful’, a timeless aspect of Love manifests through us on Earth in time, space and substance.
Part of our work at the Community of Living Ethics is to make known the three Principles of Essential Divinity, Goodwill and Unanimity that live at the heart of the practice of Creative Meditation and form the foundation and ethical bedrock upon which a new civilization will be built. Viewing this trinity through the lens of the heart, we understand that the Principle of Essential Divinity declares that inside each person burns the fiery Presence of Eternal Love and that life is a continuous journey of revealing that Presence. The Principle of Goodwill affirms that Love is the lifeblood that flows throughout the entire Universe and which nourishes and sustains all Creation. Goodwill is how you and I demonstrate that Eternal Love through the daily practice of being mindful and heartful in the world. The Principle of Unanimity asserts that we are each integral aspects of one coherent web of life, glued together and held in place by the power of Unconditional Love. Love burns at the fiery heart of the coming Solar Civilization.
The heart is activated, and the portal into the future gracefully opened, through acts of loving kindness. The Era of the Heart will be characterized by a deep urge to love and serve the One Life – starting with ourselves, our family and neighbors and extending to the whole community of our sisters and brothers around the world. From this space of connection and kinship, we may open the heart further to hold all creatures for whom this Earth is home. As the heart of humanity continues to expand then our communion will include the stars and all life within the incarnational field of the Cosmos in which we ‘live and move and have our Being’.
We are being summoned by the over-lighting Soul of Humanity to inaugurate the golden Era of the Heart today through the way we live our lives. Let us begin this collective journey toward a Solar Civilization by first igniting the Fire of Love inside our own heart to remove the barriers between us and to create a natural state of deep communion and community.
May Love prevail on Earth as we welcome in the next Great Season in the flowering of the human spirit within the Garden of Gaia.
Michael Lindfield, Board President, Meditation Mount
Ojai, California