You are on a beach in the Caribbean having fun. After a while you lie down and close your eyes to rest in the sun. Where do you go when you close your eyes, in the head or to the heart?
You have spent all your life centered in the head. You learned language, developed relationships, went to school, got a job and even went on vacations using the head. Where else will you go when you close your eyes, but in the head. Thoughts continue inside you even though you want to just relax on the beach. These thoughts are not really welcome and are perceived as disturbance in these situations. Who wants those work thoughts on the beach? You can try to reduce the chatter in the brain through practice of mindfulness and meditation if you so liked.
Can you go somewhere else when you close your eyes? What do you know about “cave of the heart?” Life is getting by fine without knowing one more thing. We all mostly live in the head, mind is our bridge and gateway to the outer world. Now and then heart comes into play when you get emotional, i.e. you feel something something in the heart when you fall in love. Cave of the heart has been described by the eastern mystics as gateway to the inner consciousness. The idea is to get into the habit of diving in the heart during meditation and or practice of intermittent silence rather than going to the head.
Heart and mind both continue to coexist inside you but they are wide apart. The head is a different world and it has its own cities (mind) while heart lives in a different zone, away from the hustle and bustles of the mind. Go to the head when you want to brainstorm and go to the heart when you want to relax and experience love. When you are in the head, you are not in the heart, and similarly, when you are in the heart, you are not in the head.
Let’s say you live in New York and are used to the ‘always busy lifestyle’ there. Sometimes you can close your eyes and imagine that you are somewhere else, somewhere on the beach that you may have visited before. When you open your eyes, you are still in New York. One day a friend of yours takes you to Rainbow lake in the northern woods of Maine. You can only get there by a float plane and no one else lives there. You are surrounded by nature all around – the trees, the birds and the lake. You look around and all you see is the magnificent beauty of the nature. New York continues to be where you left it. Coming to the lake has created a little gap. This gap has given you the peace and beauty of nature. You can always go back to New York and continue on from where you left off. When you are in New York, you are not on the Rainbow lake, and similarly, when you are at the Rainbow lake, you are not in New york
The art of putting the mind aside is the whole secret of spirituality, because as you put the mind aside, your being explodes into a thousand and one colors. Just imagine that there is a cave near your heart and go there when you close your eyes. The brain (New York) will continue to be there. Let there be a little gap, the gap between the cave of the heart and the brain of the head. Let the silence grow; let the head coexist out there. Heart is the bridge and gateway to your inner consciousness.
Just this moment when this silence pervades…who are you? You are not the body and you are not the mind. Then what are you? Just a peace, just a silence…and out of that peace and silence a great joy starts surfacing, welling up, for no reason at all. It is your spontaneous nature. Silence gives you a chance to melt, merge, disappear, evaporate. Once you know your silence, you can learn how to swim in this silence. You can swim in silence and find answers. There are many authors, musicians and scientist who claim that the idea or the thoughts came to them in their silence or sleep.
Head is the gateway to the outer world and is important for our survival and attaining excellence. Heart is the gateway to our inner consciousness and important to reaching greatness beyond excellence. Close your eyes and head to the cave of your heart. The full sentence is, “Seated in the cave of the heart, he finds freedom.” You need freedom from the head from time to time. It’s important to know that you are not your mind, mind is a tool that belongs to you. There is more to you than just your head; cave of the heart is a richness you must explore.