Guha (Cave of the Heart)

 

“the heart breaks and breaks/and lives by breaking./It is necessary to go/through dark and deepr dark/and not to turn.”

From “The Testing-Tree, Stanley Kunitz

 

The rishic seers, the mystic founders of Hinduism, also experienced continuity between the divine presence encompassing the entire cosmos and the inner depths of their own heart, the guha or cave of the heart, the deepest point of human subjectivity and freedom, a place uncorrupted by time and external actions.

Wayne Teasdall, The Mystic Heart

 

There are times in our lives when the usual comforts no longer console.  We feel an agitation, a grief, a boredom but do not know why.  Seemingly nothing has changed except this ache in the heart blossoming from no apparent arrow.  It can take some time to even recognize this grief.  At first, we might find ourselves feeling overwhelmed, irritated, or reactionary in the midst of a perfectly ordinary day.  There might be a sense of feeling pinned in, ungrounded, at loose ends. All the usual pleasures fall flat and tasteless.  The mind scrambles around to find something that will sooth and comfort but keeps coming up short.  

 

I recently found myself in this place of overwhelm and agitation.  It spread slowly and deeply from inside. It drained the joy out me leaving me empty of consolation.  I tried to pin it to something happening at work, with family, with friends but nothing stuck.  I wanted to push it away or figure out what needed to change so I could have the joy back but nothing worked.  I didn’t feel I had the right to feel so much sadness because nothing tragic had happened to me.  But there it was.

 

So I let go into the grief, to let it have more space. My senses unconsoled by usual things, moved more effortlessly inward to the cave of the heart where I sensed something longing to be known by me and healed through that knowing.  It came to me that through this healing the birth of something that longed to be manifested in the world would be possible.

 

Such times of sadness or “dark nights of the senses” while painful can be purifying.  They help to loosen our grip to outer stimulation, circumstances, events for comfort.  The dark night opens the door to the inward fall to the still place in the heart where we might meet and heal what remains unresolved and unknown in us.  Emerging out of this purifying darkness, the outer world appears brighter, clearer, as our senses are less clouded by conditioning and habit.  There may be an invitation to live with more freedom and purpose what is close to the heart.