Essay Edition
The Heart as the Center of Being
The word “heart” usually means the center. The heart is where change meets eternity. The center of the wheel touches that changeless place at the axis. When we go to the heart in this world of physicality, it is the center because it is where the changeful meets the changeless. It is where time touches eternity. That is why we use the word “heart.”
The heart is the center of your being, not your brain, not your pelvis, not some other pinky or your clothing, but your heart. It is actually the center, with three chakras above and three chakras below. But it goes deeper than the metaphysical astral center into the causal center. There is a deeper heart in a deeper plane of existence. You might say the heart is that trans-dimensional point of knowing in which all dimensionality exists, the dreamer that dreams up dimensions, times, and spaces.
This is all quite metaphysical and philosophical, but really, the heart is a very practical thing that we have to practice to find out its gift. When we exist in the heart, we are living in a state of utter completeness. There is a sense that we need nothing because we are so unassailably whole.
We have touched our immutable side. It is the side of ourselves that can neither be created nor destroyed because it is the quintessential aspect of existence. There is a part of us that exists as a substratum of all dimensional change.
What does this look like for day-to-day experience? It cannot simply be a philosophy. Heart has to be something that we live. We get to live in a condition of completeness, a condition of integrity.
Integrity comes from an unwavering, uncompromised stance in time, where, come what may, we will act accordingly, following our principles and living with integrity. The only way to do that is to find that integrity and the heart coincide. Integrity means that you are living in alignment with truth. You are living almost in a state of choicelessness because you have committed to do what is righteously, choicelessly correct.
That means you will act with heart. The heart has one choice. It acts on behalf of the whole because the heart is what happens when the circle expands so much that it has no circumference anymore. There is no center of self, so there is no circumference. You are your neighbor, and you love your neighbor as yourself.
You love everything as yourself, and you act on behalf of everything as yourself because you are the totality. Heart says everybody is me, and it expands that circumference of identification.
Even within yourself, you have a left hand and a right hand. You have one organ and another. Your liver does not think it is your spleen, but they all act together on behalf of the totality, playing their essential roles. In the same way, each human being plays a role in the great concurrence of the universe in each moment.
It is quite simple. We can practice this. It is a metaphysical transformation that happens through small acts of kindness, an orientation of gentleness, a commitment to the truth, no matter how ugly it is or how beautiful it is, and utter humility, knowing: How could I be more important than any other part of the universe? I am as I am. Why have pride, either for better or worse?
When we feel the heart, we are feeling a warmth and radiance in our center that makes us feel at home. In this great expanse of the universe, we feel at home because we feel. It is a feeling.
Feel this warmth in your heart that is so warm and full that you could be in a cold snowstorm, a blizzard, and you would be fine because you are at your center, the center of the universe. That heart expands, and it actually can feel like it expands. There is an expansion that occurs. We feel this quality of the center, the heart, expanding to touch the totality.
We practice this through selfless acts. We do things for others. Forgiveness. Real, deep forgiveness. Forgiving the world. Forgiving everybody for the harm done in a state of unknowing illusion, when you are ready. Sometimes that stuff has to be processed.
Ultimately, we seek a state where we can let everything go and live in forgiveness, which is a gift, to be free of the past. In heart, we are free. We are free of the bondage of self. We are free of needing to be important. We are free of needing to know what is going to happen. We are free of all our questions.
This is the paradox. I encounter so many people who are scientifically minded, and they have so many questions to answer the universe. The answer comes when one stops asking the question and becomes the answer in silence. We are merely seeking to unlock ourselves from questioning because we will never find the answer in a question. As long as we are content with an answer, a cognitive conclusion, we will remain in the cognitive space.
The heart is the bliss of existence. It is absorption in the unknown. It is letting go to the currents of destiny. The heart is to be in that center where the storm rages around, and yet nothing changes within.
Desire, Freedom, and the Practice of Love
Desires are an enormous part of this. Human beings have desires, and desires are antithetical to heart in a nuanced way. A desire is a form of resistance against what is.
I am not talking about not being true to yourself and following your heart. That is not a desire. A desire is a resistance, an attachment. You have to be first in line, and if you are not, you are just going to tweak out. That is a desire.
Heart accepts. It always moves towards its true direction. It is the compass. But at every point along the way, it accepts its state. The initial conditions are accepted, and the derivative, which is the heart’s direction, the slope, is accepted in the moment.
A practice that we can do is to let the desires wither in their unfulfillment. Let them wither in silence. The fire of silence will wither the desires away. Many of them are impositions on a part of us that is not our true self. We pick up desires like a habit.
We have to have our Starbucks coffee, or have somebody respect us. These are all resistances. They are activities of the self. They are machinations of the self. The self, in that sense, creates a division between the self and the other.
But to be in a state of: I need nothing. I am complete. Imagine somebody who is super in their heart. They do not need anything. They are just so patient and loving. They ask nothing of another, and they give abundantly. They accept as things are given to them, but they do not grasp. They do not care much about what anybody thinks about them because they know who they are and they love themselves. More importantly, they see that everything is divinely perfect.
Every orange blossom in the wind is perfect. You do not have to find the perfect one.
Freedom is a big part of this. You have to be free of the personality. Be free of those things that irk you. They are going to be there. I just have to have this thing. It could be a physical addiction, a mental addiction, or an egoic attachment.
But if you let it wither in time, let it wither lovingly. It does not have to be cold turkey. You just say: I am not going to keep fulfilling this need that I am imposing upon myself, which is a shackle to my freedom.
Give up your war with existence and merge into it through love.
When we let those desires wither, we are giving up a war that we constantly have to keep vigilant to protect the self. I need this thing. I need that thing. There is this constant movement that we experience that does not allow us to rest in the bliss of existence.
We seek to rest. Rest in the heart. Rest, abide, dive into its depths. Abide in its warmth. Step out of the fight, the war with existence that almost every human being is in, except for those rare jewels you come across who are so loving and so in their heart.
They are a beautiful perfume in the world. They radiate their love, and they stand out. Some of them become famous, and some of them just touch the people in their lives. They are not necessarily recognized.
We can let every moment be a practice in the karma of heart. Every action can be a practice. Do not think of something as a means to an end, but as an opportunity to step into the state of heart. Perhaps I close the door gently. Perhaps I practice forgiving my neighbors for slamming the door every five seconds. There are so many opportunities to become more loving and to develop that karma that is more aligned with heart.
Another practice is not to look upon others with desire. The world is quite exploitative. We look upon others with our personal desire, seeking to fulfill our own gratifications, and that is not an activity of the heart.
The alternative is to look upon another and want for them freedom from desire, and to seek that within yourself as well. That is not to say you might not get the thing that would be gratifying, but it comes on its own, and it comes through synchronicity, a mutual fulfillment of two intrinsic parts of the universe fulfilling and collaborating with each other. That is not mutual exploitation. That is just correct.
Do not look upon others with desire. Do not look upon the world with desire. Live for integrity. Live for acts of righteousness. Live for doing what is honorable. Let desires wither in silence. Let them wither in their unfulfillment, and that very act is the act of heart.
Ultimately, there is this feeling of immortality. It is this feeling of complete richness. Everything becomes so beautiful when your heart is radiant.
The heart is also a faculty of knowing. People think they know with the mind. The mind logically makes sense of things. The heart is a direct perceiver. It expands to become the other, and in doing so, it knows the other by ontologically being the other.
There is this quality of knowing something ineffable. It is a feeling. You can know what the ocean feels like, what Jupiter feels like, or what Mexico feels like. There is just a feeling that is a tint of existence that can be apprehended by the faculty of the heart. It is a knower. It is an epistemology. The heart is an organ, metaphysically, of knowing.
I think that is what creates really brilliant people too. They know, and then their mind is well structured so that they can describe what they know. The poet has something to say. The artist has something to paint. The mathematician has something to share that is really beautiful because they know it in their heart.
To really consecrate oneself to the heart is a leap of faith because sometimes it feels like you are not getting the things you wanted. But find the freedom in that. It feels good to give everything away. That is the sentiment of the heart.
Never give away your integrity. Never give away having a full life. But does getting everything you want make a full life, or does giving it away and living in integrity and love make a full life?
Compassion, Knowledge, and Shared Values
Have enormous goodwill for others. Really care about another genuinely. Invoke that goodwill. Unleash it. The springs of selfishness unlock, and then you have enormous goodwill for others.
Kindness comes from practice. If you give a homeless person food and you see them grab it from you and gobble it up, there is this feeling: They were hungry. It breaks your selfishness shell. You see with compassion that there are people out there who are literally so hungry. Such a basic need.
You can do it in so many ways. Somebody has gotten their nails done, and it would mean the world to them if you saw how beautiful their nails are because they take pride in it. They find the beauty in it. To recognize that and see their heart open because they were seen. There are just so many ways you can love another.
Every time we do that, we dissolve that sense of separativity. That is the paradox. We become happier because when we act on behalf of ourselves, we become small. When we act on behalf of another, we become big. That sense of smallness is the suffering of the human condition, and love is its remedy.
This should be sitting there with mathematics every single year. First grade, second grade, third grade. We could have heart, heart, heart, heart, heart. Can you imagine if that were a part of the curriculum?
If you feel your heart, your mind becomes silent. It disarms. Then you can make a quantum leap of mathematical insight, not a continued modification of whatever you think you have conditioned your mind to know, but you can see through the genius of stillness. Einstein apparently went into stillness, and then he would see his answers. That is how it works. That is why we learn so much in the shower, because we disarm. Finally, it clicked.
Stand for what is true, as long as it is not an activity of your own ego. If you are bothered, if it really bothers you and just irks you the wrong way, that is usually an egoic orientation. But to stand for what is right, to the degree that is natural and reasonable in a particular moment, is not bad if it is done with a sense of dispassion.
Stand for the underdog, but dispassionately, not out of anger. I see a lot of people use anger in the name of love. You can never use anger in the name of love. You have to use truth in the name of love.
Truth is to see things as they are. I like to define the word “honor.” Honor is acting on behalf of the all. The honorable man or woman acts on behalf of the all. Truth is the guiding factor in what to do on behalf of the all, so be honorable.
Then there is a great degree of compassion involved. People are very confused, and it is hard to understand things. People are in such a variety of states of clarity and confusion. We have to be patient with them and with ourselves.
If everybody understood completely the atrocity of harming another and causing suffering, they would not do it. It is a misunderstanding that allows people to act on evil. So love and intelligence really do come together.
Righteousness is a good word when defined as doing the thing that is in alignment with truth, the right thing. But then there is also egoic righteousness, which is a different thing.
Inspiration, Motivation, and Intrinsic Action
There is a distinction between inspiration and motivation, and between aspiration and ambition. If you are being true to yourself, there is this energy of aspiring to something beautiful that drives you. Without it, there is no fuel. It is what makes the moment move. We have to move somewhere.
That is a wish of the heart. It can be utterly humble, innocent, and pure. You want to make beautiful music because you are a musician and you just love it. It is why you exist in space and time. Is that a desire, or is that inspiration?
You are not motivated by the results. I use the word “motive.” Motivated means that I have a motive. I am motivated because of my motive. But inspired means the breath. I breathe this into life. It is a part of what I am. It is why I exist.
There is such a nuanced subtlety that needs to be recognized because you could turn into a nihilist. If you say no desires, then you lose your inspiration, and that is not what should be done. Giving up those desires is the way to have the deeper desire, which I would not call a desire. It is inspiration that drives you.
If a desire is an activity of the self, that is different from being in integrity and being inspired. If I am inspired and I keep acting on that inspiration, I can only do that if I am free of all the egoic attachments.
You cannot create beautiful music if you care what everybody thinks, or if you have to do it in a way that is not organically, naturally happening. That unfolding of organic happening through inspiration, I would not call desire.
One of the ways to access heart is to do what you love. When you do what you love, you are fulfilled. Integrity comes from being true to yourself, doing what you love, and making time to do what you love.
Everybody knows that feeling. My heart feels so great. I just painted, because you are a painter. Or you just ran because you are a runner. Your heart feels good because you are being true to yourself.
As long as one is being true to oneself, doing what one loves, and being who one is on behalf of the whole, that is very different from needing something attached to it and resisting what is on behalf of the small self without consideration of the whole. Maybe the real thing is: Is there freedom involved?
Doing what you love because you love to do it, there is nothing wrong with that. Everything is right with that. Autotelic means something done for its own sake. Mastery happens when you engage in something autotelically. But it is also heart. It is love because you are doing something for the sheer joy of it.
There is innocence in that. It happens automatically when you forget yourself. That is what makes the heart expand. That periphery goes away. That circle of self disappears. There is no circle anymore because you are just spontaneous action of heart and love moving as a part of the universe.
Your intrinsic nature is unfolding organically. But that does not mean there is desire there. There is the organic unfolding, like a rose opening in spring. The rose does not desire to open. It simply fulfills its organic, intrinsic nature and does it through time, in humility.
Humble rose. We can be humble roses.
Meditation and the Embodiment of Love
Bhakti is the yoga of heart. It is the path of love. In heart, we follow our heart, what feels right.
One technique that we can use while we meditate on the heart is to really give up, let go, forgive, awaken something, and generate love. Generate it in the heart. Find a way. Use compassion, whatever is appropriate for you.
Find that substance in vast amounts. Be patient. Transform. Feel gratitude for the meditation. Feel the heart center. Look to eternity in the moment.
You do not have to have all of this understanding. It is not required. There are people who love pure bhakti. This is bhakti jnana. Jnana is the yoga of understanding. Bhakti is the yoga of love. When you put them together, the understanding can protect the love, and the love can deepen the understanding.
But there are people who are just pure bhakti. What matters is that you are loving. You may get it, but it may be difficult to articulate because you do not have the words for it. You embody it very profoundly, and you understand it even though you may not articulate it because you do not have the words.
Understanding is a good thing. It is one of the ways that I protect the sanctum of love. It is the moat around the castle. Understanding does that for us. But if I use big words you do not get, it does not mean you are less loving. Perhaps you are more loving because love does not require that. Love is an embodiment.
There are three-year-olds who are enormously loving. There are four-year-old and five-year-old children who have a lot of love, those rare, super-compassionate kids that I have noticed every now and then. They do not necessarily have the words for it.
Ultimately, I love the nothingness of loving. I do not need anything. I do not need to use any big word either. It does not matter. That letting go.
When we get together, we hold the wavelength, and it is mutually supportive. We are all on a journey. Some years your love is higher, and some years it is lower because of whatever might have happened in your life. But I think this is the journey. This is the highest love that we can possibly experience. To me, it is the main value.
My teacher always says, “Heart first.” When you meditate on the energy field, all of it, start on the heart. You do not sit in the navel center the whole time, the third eye the whole time, or the crown. Start on the heart and do most of it in the heart. Heart is the most important energy center because it is your center energy.
It is a great simplifier. It simplifies your life. You do not get into all the complexities of who did what, whether they owe you this, or whether you should be mad at them. It is just pure and simple love.
Gratitude is one of the greatest principles for this. Gratitude means being aware of your blessings and being without entitlement, so that we even recognize the blessing of being in space-time. You get to be a person driving a car and having somebody crash into it. One day, when we are gone long from now, we will not have a car to be crashed into. We are grateful for color, the sky, breathing, body parts, English, and Spanish.
Heart is my value. I would rather have that than anything. When it gets into light and freedom and heart and love, they all connect. Peace, they are all part of the same thing. But I like to think of it as just the radiance of heart.
Kindness, to be kind. What a gift.
Full Transcript
Opening Practice and Group Check In
Adam Wes That's really great, for more people to enjoy and just get settled. Let's cultivate the energy for the group, building a field of energy deep in our experience. Bring your attention to the heart center. Presence.
Let's see, who are we missing? Ariella, Daniel, Andrea? Anybody else? Then we can get started.
Welcome, everybody. A few of you were trying to be here on time, and you were. Thank you. I know you had things going on.
How's everybody? How is your practice going? Are you meditating every day?
Nice. And the rest of your practice? That's not the whole practice. Anybody want to share anything or ask any questions?
Eslam O Oh, God.
Vinh T Go ahead, Omar.
Adam Wes Yeah, let's hear from Sam.
Eslam O Hey, everybody, and thank you. I've been heart maxing. I don't know if that resonates, but I've been maxing my awareness into the heart center. I've been meditating on why the heart center is at the center of the chest and not at the center of the organ.
Then I started going through the rabbit hole of metaphysics, the lattice, Indra's net, the Flower of Life, the higher dimensions, and how this is like a blueprint that is streaming down and projecting the center. We feel it from this dimension, even though it's in a higher dimension.
That's what I've been meditating on, and I wanted to share that with you. If you'd like to reflect on that, I would love to hear from you.
Adam Wes Well, it's quite synchronistic that you brought that up, because guess what today's topic is? It wasn't decided right in this moment. I've been working on it. The sermon is heart for today.
I'm actually a little bit hesitant to do this sermon because it feels like the sermon. It feels like the most important one. So I just thought, "Oh, I'm going to do it. I'm just going to do it." I kind of hold off. There are three of them that I hold off on. This is one of them.
The Heart as the Center of Being
So, heart.
The word "heart" usually means the center. The heart is where change meets eternity. The center of the wheel touches that changeless place at the axis.
So when we go to the heart in this world of physicality, it's the center because it is where the changeful meets the changeless. It's where time touches eternity. That's why we use the word "heart."
It's important to see this because that means the heart is the center of your being, not your brain, not your pelvis, not some other pinky or your clothing, but your heart. It's actually the center, with three chakras above and three chakras below.
But it goes deeper than the metaphysical astral center into the causal center. There is a deeper heart in a deeper plane of existence. You might say the heart is that trans-dimensional point of knowing in which all dimensionality exists, the dreamer that dreams up dimensions, times, and spaces.
This is all quite metaphysical and philosophical, but really, the heart is a very practical thing that we have to practice to find out its gift. Because when we exist in the heart, we are living in a state of utter completeness. There's a sense that we need nothing because we are so unassailably whole.
We have touched our immutable side. It's the side of ourselves that can neither be created nor destroyed because it is the quintessential aspect of existence. It's very ontological. There's a part of us that exists as a substratum of all dimensional change.
I apologize for all the philosophical words. I'll bring it down to Earth here in a moment, but I'm going to connect us with the cosmos for a moment, so I must create that bridge.
What does this look like for day-to-day experience? It can't simply be a philosophy. Heart has to be something that we live. We get to live in a condition of completeness, a condition of integrity.
Integrity comes from an unwavering, uncompromised stance in time, where, come what may, we will act accordingly, following our principles and living with integrity. The only way to do that is to find that integrity and the heart coincide.
Integrity means that you're living in alignment with truth. You're living almost in a state of choicelessness because you have committed to do what is righteously, choicelessly correct.
That means you will act with heart. The heart has one choice. It acts on behalf of the whole because the heart is what happens when the circle expands so much that it has no circumference anymore. There's no center of self, so there's no circumference. You are your neighbor, and you love your neighbor as yourself.
You love everything as yourself, and you act on behalf of everything as yourself because you are the totality. So heart says, "Everybody is me," and it expands that circumference of identification.
Even within yourself, you have a left hand and a right hand. You have one organ and another. Your liver does not think it's your spleen, but they all act together on behalf of the totality, playing their essential roles. In the same way, each human being plays a role in the great concurrence of the universe in each moment.
It's quite simple. We can practice this. It's a metaphysical transformation that happens through small acts of kindness, an orientation of gentleness, a commitment to the truth, no matter how ugly it is or how beautiful it is, and utter humility, knowing, "How could I be more important than any other part of the universe? I am as I am. Why have pride, either for better or worse?"
And we feel the heart. Metaphysically, when we feel the heart, we're feeling a warmth and radiance in our center that makes us feel at home. In this great expanse of the universe, we feel at home because we feel. It's a feeling.
We want to try to feel this today. Feel this warmth in your heart that is so warm and full that you could be in a cold snowstorm, a blizzard, and you would be fine because you are at your center, the center of the universe.
That heart expands, and it actually can feel like it expands. You can get it to metaphysically crack open the toroid. There's a toroidal shape. It's like a donut. If it expands, for me, it almost feels more spherical, but there's an expansion that occurs.
It looks like what it looks like, right? The head goes back because the heart's pushing the chin up, and the shoulders go back because the heart's expanding them out forcefully. We feel this quality of the center, the heart, expanding to touch the totality.
We practice this through selfless acts. We do things for others. Forgiveness. Real, deep, deep forgiveness. Forgiving the world. Forgiving everybody for the harm done in a state of unknowing illusion, when you're ready. Sometimes that stuff has to be processed.
But ultimately, we seek a state where we can let everything go and live in forgiveness, which is a gift, to be free of the past. In heart, we're free. We're free of the bondage of self. We're free of needing to be important. We're free of needing to know what's going to happen. We're free of all our questions.
This is the paradox. I encounter so many people in our community who are so scientifically minded, and they have so many questions to answer the universe. The answer comes when one stops asking the question and becomes the answer in silence.
We're merely seeking to unlock ourselves from questioning because we'll never find the answer in a question. As long as we're content with an answer, a cognitive conclusion, we will remain in the cognitive space.
The heart is the bliss of existence. It's absorption in the unknown. It's letting go to the currents of destiny. The heart is to be in that center where the storm rages around, and yet nothing changes within.
Desire Freedom and the Practice of Love
Desires are an enormous part of this. Human beings have desires, and desires are antithetical to heart in a nuanced way. A desire is a form of resistance against what is.
I'm not talking about not being true to yourself and following your heart. That's not a desire. A desire is a resistance, an attachment. You have to be first in line, and if you're not, you're just going to tweak out. That's a desire.
Heart accepts. It always moves towards its true direction. It is the compass. But at every point along the way, it accepts its state. The initial conditions are accepted, and the derivative, which is the heart's direction, the slope, is accepted in the moment.
A practice that we can do is to let the desires wither in their unfulfillment. Let them wither in silence. The fire of silence will wither the desires away. Many of them are impositions on a part of us that's not our true self. We pick up desires like a habit.
We have to have, I don't know, our Starbucks coffee or whatever, or have somebody respect us, right? These are all resistances. They're activities of the self. They're machinations of the self. The self, in that sense, creates a division between the self and the other.
But to be in a state of, "I need nothing. I am complete." You can feel this with people, right? Imagine somebody who's super in their heart. They don't need anything. They're just so patient and loving.
They ask nothing of another, and they give abundantly. They accept as things are given to them, but they don't grasp. They don't care much about what anybody thinks about them because they know who they are and they love themselves. More importantly, they see that everything is divinely perfect. They're all perfect.
Every orange blossom in the wind is perfect. You don't have to find the perfect one. I'm, of course, quoting The Last Samurai right now. It's a Zen thing.
Freedom is a big part of this. You have to be free of the personality. Be free of those things that irk you. They're going to be there, right? "I just have to have this thing." It could be a physical addiction, a mental addiction, or an egoic attachment.
But if you let it wither in time, let it wither lovingly. It doesn't have to be cold turkey. You just say, "Oh, wow. I'm not going to keep fulfilling this need that I'm imposing upon myself, which is a shackle to my freedom."
I said this yesterday: Give up your war with existence and merge into it through love.
When we let those desires wither, we're giving up a war that we constantly have to keep vigilant to protect the self. "Okay, I need this thing. I need that thing." There's this constant movement that we experience that doesn't allow us to rest in the bliss of existence.
We seek to rest. Rest in the heart. Rest, abide, dive into its depths. Abide in its warmth. Step out of the fight, the war with existence that almost every human being is in, except for those rare jewels you come across who are so loving and so in their heart.
They are a beautiful perfume in the world. They radiate their love, and they stand out. Some of them become famous, and some of them just touch the people in their lives. They're not necessarily recognized, actually.
We can also let every moment be a practice in the karma of heart. Every action can be a practice. Don't think of something as a means to an end, but as an opportunity to step into the state of heart.
Perhaps I close the door gently. Perhaps I practice forgiving my neighbors for slamming the door every five seconds. There are so many opportunities to become more loving and to develop that karma that is more aligned with heart.
Another thing I really like is not to look upon others with desire. This is a big one. The world is quite exploitative. We look upon others with our personal desire, seeking to fulfill our own gratifications, and that is not an activity of the heart.
As men, I think we tend to do this. We see a beautiful woman, and this is the most gross example. You say you feel desire, but what is the alternative? The alternative is to look upon another and want for them freedom from desire, and to seek that within yourself as well.
That's not to say you might not get the thing that would be gratifying, but it comes on its own, and it comes through synchronicity, a mutual fulfillment of two intrinsic parts of the universe fulfilling and collaborating with each other. That's not mutual exploitation. That's just correct.
Don't look upon others with desire. Don't look upon the world with desire. Live for integrity. Live for acts of righteousness. Live for doing what is honorable. Let desires wither in silence. Let them wither in their unfulfillment, and that very act is the act of heart.
I was writing that to myself yesterday because I contemplate these things a lot to stay connected with them. It's paramount to me.
Ultimately, there's this feeling of immortality. It's this feeling of complete richness. Everything becomes so beautiful when your heart is radiant.
The heart is also a faculty of knowing. People think they know with the mind. The mind logically makes sense of things. The heart is a direct perceiver. It expands to become the other, and in doing so, it knows the other by ontologically being the other.
There's this quality of knowing something ineffable. It's a feeling. You can know what the ocean feels like, what Jupiter feels like, or what Mexico feels like. There's just a feeling that is a tint of existence that can be apprehended by the faculty of the heart.
So it's a knower. It's an epistemology. The heart is an organ, metaphysically, of knowing.
I think that's what creates really brilliant people too. They know, and then their mind is well structured so that they can describe what they know. The poet has something to say. The artist has something to paint. The mathematician has something to share that's really beautiful because they know it in their heart.
Even look at the body language. They know it, right? Why do people do that? I just did that intuitively because the knowing is here.
All right, I'll leave on a final note. To really consecrate oneself to the heart is a leap of faith because sometimes it feels like, "Oh, I'm not getting the things I wanted." But find the freedom in that. Maybe just give it a try.
It feels good to give everything away. That is the sentiment of the heart. Never give away your integrity, though. Never give away having a full life. But does getting everything you want make a full life, or does giving it away and living in integrity and love make a full life?
Any questions? Ariella? I want to talk to Ariella.
Ariella Yes.
Adam Wes Hi, Ariella. I'm sure that resonated with you a lot.
Ariella Oh, thank you, Adam. Those were beautiful, beautiful words, and the whole concept. Certainly, when I'm doing that, I'm feeling so much better.
Compassion Knowledge and Shared Values
Adam Wes I feel like I'm missing a couple of things. Enormous goodwill for others. I got a little intellectual there.
I'm looking at Ariella and thinking, "Oh, I want to have enormous goodwill for Ariella, to really care about her genuinely." To have enormous goodwill, to invoke that, to unleash that. The springs of selfishness unlock, and then you have enormous goodwill for others.
Kindness. It comes from practice. If you give a homeless person food and you see them grab it from you and gobble it up, which doesn't always happen, but sometimes it happens that way, there's this feeling of, "Oh my God, they were hungry!" It breaks your selfishness shell. You see with compassion, "Oh my God, there are people out there who are literally so hungry." Such a basic need.
You can do it in so many ways. Somebody has gotten their nails done, and it would mean the world to them if you saw how beautiful their nails are because they take pride in it. They find the beauty in it. To recognize that and see their heart open because they were seen. There are just so many ways you can love another.
Every time we do that, we dissolve that sense of separativity. That's the paradox. We become happier because when we act on behalf of ourselves, we become small. When we act on behalf of another, we become big. That sense of smallness is the suffering of the human condition, and love is its remedy.
Erich Fromm talks about this in The Art of Loving. Good book, by the way. Another good book is On Love and Loneliness by Krishnamurti. They all talk about these things.
It's not a part of our curriculum. It should be sitting there with mathematics every single year. First grade, second grade, third grade. We could have heart, heart, heart, heart, heart. "How did you do in Heart 8, Sam?" The eighth year of studying heart, right?
Can you imagine if that were a part of the curriculum? Let's do it. Let's make that happen. I want that. That's a part of my curriculum. That's why we're talking about it here.
We have people from this autumn cohort here, Benny and Vinh, and this is supposed to connect with your math practice. If you feel your heart, your mind becomes silent. It disarms. Then you can make a quantum leap of mathematical insight, not a continued modification of whatever you think you've conditioned your mind to know, but you can see through the genius of stillness.
Einstein apparently went into stillness, and then he would see his answers. That's how it works. That's why we learn so much in the shower, because we disarm. "Oh my God, finally, it clicked."
All right, any questions? Thank you. Any questions before we have our awesome heart meditation?
Yeah, Sam, please. I love it.
Eslam O I find myself a very loving person. I embody the beings that I encounter. They are me. You are me. Everybody's me, and I am you.
But at the same time, I have this contradiction that I don't know how to reconcile yet. I find this impulse, this righteous impulse, to flip tables and chase merchants out of temples. It's a phase that I haven't gotten over yet, this righteousness of seeing injustice being done unto other people and then having to fight the other half that is bringing injustice to the first half.
Adam Wes Well, if you're standing for something true, as long as it's not an activity of your own ego. If you're bothered, like, "It really bothers me. It just bothers me," you can tell when you're irked the wrong way. That's usually an egoic orientation.
But to stand for what is right, to the degree that is natural and reasonable in a particular moment, to flip tables in the temple as Jesus did, and I think that was the allusion you were making there, is not bad if it's done with a sense of dispassion.
Stand for the underdog, but dispassionately, not out of anger. This is a problem. I see a lot of people use anger in the name of love. You can never use anger in the name of love. You have to use truth in the name of love.
Truth is to see things as they are. This is a sound argument. It's logically correct. It's as mathematically true as anything. Merchants should not be in the temple because it hurts everybody.
I like to define the word "honor." Honor is acting on behalf of the all. The honorable man or woman acts on behalf of the all. Truth is the guiding factor in what to do on behalf of the all, so be honorable.
Then there's a great degree of compassion involved. People are very confused, and it's hard to understand things. People are in such a variety of states of clarity and confusion. We have to be patient with them and with ourselves.
If everybody understood completely the atrocity of harming another and causing suffering, they wouldn't do it. It's a misunderstanding that allows people to act on evil. So love and intelligence really do come together.
Righteousness, I think, is a good word when defined as doing the thing that's in alignment with truth, the right thing. But then there's also egoic righteousness, which is a different thing. I think that's what you're trying to reconcile. That's beautiful.
Eslam O I took the word "selfish" and redefined it. I am righteously selfish in terms of serving the Self, as in oneness and unity and interconnectedness.
Adam Wes Yeah, I guess it depends. There's only one Self, right? Brahman. Samsara is Brahman. Samsara is all of creation, the Sanskrit word, and Brahman is the soul of the universe.
Usually, Atman is Brahman. I'm going to look that up. Never mind. I have to do that in my own time.
How about you, Mom? You're a very heart-centered person, and I hope I wasn't too intellectual for you.
Colleen No, you were, so I'd much rather hear your intellectual friends talking. I'm contemplating what I hear.
Thanks, Adam.
Adam Wes But you know a lot about love and heart. You are one of the most advanced people. I try to learn from you and how you do it.
Colleen I'm not sure about that, but let me hear what everybody else has to say.
Adam Wes She's got a lot of humility.
Kara, would you like to say anything, and then we'll get started meditating?
Inspiration Motivation and Intrinsic Action
Kara M I don't want to open a can of worms, but how do you reconcile the balance of desire versus motivation? I find that different kinds of desire can act as a positive motivation in my life. I'm interested in how you would distinguish those two.
Adam Wes I love it. Last week, you weren't here, but we actually talked about motivation. That was last week, right? We talked about making a distinction between inspiration and motivation, and between aspiration and ambition.
If you're being true to yourself, there's this energy of aspiring to something beautiful that drives you. Without it, there's no fuel, right? It's what makes the moment move. We have to move somewhere.
That's a wish of the heart. It can be utterly humble, innocent, and pure. You want to make beautiful music because you are a musician and you just love it. It's why you exist in space and time. Is that a desire, or is that inspiration?
You're not motivated by the results. I use the word "motive." Motivated means, "Okay, I have a motive. I'm motivated because of my motive." But inspired means the breath. I breathe this into life. It's a part of what I am. It's why I exist.
There's such a nuanced subtlety that needs to be recognized because you could turn into a nihilist, right? If you're like, "Okay, no desires," then you lose your inspiration, and that's not what should be done.
I would say that giving up those desires is the way to have the deeper desire, which I wouldn't call a desire. It's inspiration that drives you.
If a desire is an activity of the self, that's different from being in integrity and being inspired. If I'm inspired and I keep acting on that inspiration, I can only do that if I'm free of all the egoic attachments.
You can't create beautiful music if you care what everybody thinks, or if you have to do it in a way that's not organically, naturally happening. That unfolding of organic happening through inspiration, I wouldn't call desire.
Desire could almost be used as that word because it seems desirable, right? Maybe that's what you're trying to reconcile. Does that reconcile it for you, or do you still feel something is unresolved?
Kara M Kind of. I think it's just a matter of being really precise in the definition of both of those things. I try to figure out which things motivate me in my life, and the word "desire" definitely shows up in the way I would articulate some of that stuff.
Adam Wes But is it a pure desire? I wouldn't use the words "pure desire," but I'm meeting you where you're at in terms of your semantics. Is it a pure desire? I think you could know if it's a pure desire or not. Is it a beautiful desire?
Kara M Yeah. I don't know. If you try to strip away all of that stuff, then you could end up with some inertia, you know?
Adam Wes One of the things I was going to pick up my phone and read, and I'll just paraphrase what I wrote or translate it into the moment here, is that one of the ways to access heart, which I didn't mention, and I'm glad we're bringing this up right now, is to do what you love.
When you do what you love, you're fulfilled. Integrity comes from being true to yourself, doing what you love, and making time to do what you love.
Everybody knows, "Oh, my heart feels so great. I just painted," because you're a painter. Or you just ran because you're a runner. Your heart feels good because you're being true to yourself.
As long as one is being true to themselves, doing what they love, and being who they are on behalf of the whole, that's very different from needing something attached to it and resisting what is on behalf of the small self without consideration of the whole.
Maybe the real thing is, is there freedom involved?
Kara M Yeah. I definitely have been coming back to freedom a lot recently. When I did my core values exercise many years ago, that was the first one I came up with, and it's been guiding ever since.
I think that if it's doing what you love, then perhaps it's excluded from that definition of desire.
Adam Wes Yeah. It's pure desire. It's an inspired action, right? It's innocent. Doing what you love because you love to do it, there's nothing wrong with that.
Kara M Yeah.
Adam Wes Everything's right with that.
Kara M Yeah, it's the whole means to an end versus end in itself, right?
Adam Wes Yes, autotelic. Did we talk about autotelic? Autotelic means something done for its own sake.
We did a talk about art and mastery, and mastery happens when you engage in something autotelically. But it's also heart. It's love because you're doing something for the sheer joy of it.
There's innocence in that. It happens automatically when you forget yourself. You see, that's what makes the heart expand. It's the same theme. That expansion, that periphery, goes away. That circle of self disappears. There's no circle anymore because you are just spontaneous action of heart and love moving as a part of the universe.
Your intrinsic nature is unfolding organically. But that doesn't mean there's desire there. There's the organic unfolding, like a rose opening in spring. The rose doesn't desire to open. It simply fulfills its organic, intrinsic nature and does it through time, in humility.
Humble rose. We can be humble roses.
I wouldn't say that's desire, but if that word is deeply connected with your semantics, maybe recognize that some desires are pure and some are not pure. Some cause pain for everybody, and some cause love and joy for everybody, in that sense.
Cool, thank you. I hope that was helpful. Thank you for considering everything I've shared. I really love this topic, and I love to get together with friends and work philosophically to the point where I feel more connected with it and we all feel more connected with it.
Talking about heart for 45 minutes? Wonderful. Meditating on heart for another 15? Wonderful.
Maybe we should have done half and half. We tried to do half and half, by the way, Benny. But like I said, it's Heart Day. Heart Day 2025? 11/11 is Heart Day. That's funny.
Let's meditate. Woo, Heart Day. That's funny.
Can you hear the music? Is it a little soft? How about now, David? David's my sound guy. Okay, cool.
Meditation and the Embodiment of Love
By the way, bhakti is the yoga of heart. It's the path of love. Bhakti.
In heart, we follow our heart, what feels right.
One technique that we can use while we meditate on the heart is to really give up, let go, forgive, awaken something, and generate love. Generate it in the heart. Find a way. Use compassion, whatever is appropriate for you.
Find that substance in vast amounts. Be patient. Transform.
Feeling gratitude for the meditation. Feeling the heart center. Looking to eternity in the moment.
Namaste. When you're ready, you can come out of the meditation.
All right, Colleen. Mom?
Colleen I know you like to hear what colors I see, but they were kind of getting in my way because I was contemplating, thinking about what you said.
Adam Wes That's the thing. No thinking while meditating.
Colleen Well, I couldn't help it. I did see a lot of purple and green, but getting back to what you were saying, when you said, "Be true to yourself," and it just comes naturally, and that's how your heart expands, I was thinking about you around family, thinking about you doing your coding that you love so much, and thinking about me when I just listen to classical music, watch classical dance, or am around kids.
It's so true. It just opens up your heart. You don't have to think about it because it's just true to yourself.
Adam Wes Love it. Beautiful. I was doing a small amount of thinking while I meditated too, which we try not to do, but it happens sometimes.
One thing that came to me, hopefully briefly, was that you don't have to have all of this understanding. It isn't required. There are people who love pure bhakti. This is bhakti jnana. Jnana is the yoga of understanding. Bhakti is the yoga of love. When you put them together, the understanding can protect the love, and the love can deepen the understanding.
But there are people who are just pure bhakti. What matters is that you're loving. You may get it, but it may be difficult to articulate because you don't have the words for it. You embody it very profoundly, and you understand it even though you may not articulate it because you don't have the words.
I think understanding is a good thing. It's one of the ways that I protect the sanctum of love. It's the moat around the castle. Understanding does that for us.
But I wanted to tell anybody here that if I used big words you didn't get, it doesn't mean you're less loving. Perhaps you're more loving because love doesn't require that. Love is an embodiment.
There are three-year-olds who are enormously loving. Or let's say you see some four- and five-year-old special kids who have a lot of love, those rare, super-compassionate kids that I've noticed every now and then. They don't necessarily have the words for it.
I just wanted to say that to you. Not to say that you didn't understand, because clearly you did understand.
Colleen No, a lot of it goes over my head. Thank you.
Adam Wes Well, I use a lot of big words that are philosophical, and that's a part of me being inspired by language. I like those words. They're very precise. They have very specific meanings, and I find them mathematically precise. That's what I like about them.
But ultimately, I love the nothingness of loving. To be like, "Okay, I don't need anything. I don't need to use any big word either. It doesn't matter." That letting go.
Namaste, Mom. Nice job with that.
Colleen Thank you, Adam. That was very nice.
Adam Wes Thank you. Ariella?
We're getting off in three minutes, by the way, everybody.
Ariella This was just incredible, Adam. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You put into words what I feel, the loving of the oneness that we all are. A song came up to me: "Love to the world, to all the boys and girls."
Adam Wes Totally.
Ariella It was just wonderful. Thank you, thank you.
Adam Wes Wonderful. Thank you for being here. I think each of us is drawn together because we have common values around love. That's why we're here. When we get together, we hold the wavelength, and it's mutually supportive.
We're all on a journey. Some years your love is higher, and some years it's lower because of whatever might have happened in your life. But I think this is the journey. This is the highest love that we can possibly experience. To me, it's the main value.
Heart. Heart is my value. I would rather have that than anything. When it gets into light and freedom and heart and love, they all connect. They're all part of the same thing. Peace, they're all part of the same thing. But I like to think of it as just the radiance of heart.
Kindness, to be kind. Oh my gosh, what a gift.
How about you, David?
David P Hey, everyone. I had this great experience. Without thinking, I just loved my heart. It was a feeling of love in my heart.
Adam Wes Beautiful.
David P My heart was so grateful. It was loving me back.
Adam Wes Oh.
David P I loved that. But that was the beginning because then my whole body started joining the party and thanking the heart. Again, without thinking, it was like my arms and everything. I was just observing this. It was like a party.
Adam Wes Love it.
David P It was, of course, very loving. The heart was giving back. Then some images of my day, my early days, today, a week ago, or years ago started popping up in my memories. My heart was just throwing love to those images, even if they were difficult or not, even if they were good or bad.
I'm talking about traffic incidents, a crash incident. My heart was like, "What a beautiful human being who crashed your car." It truly was doing this.
It was great. At the same time, you mentioned forgiving, so I said, "I don't need forgiving. I just need loving," which is the same, by the way. But this was the thought that came to my mind.
The outcome was, "This makes my life really much simpler and easier. If I just throw love to everything, I don't have problems."
Adam Wes Beautiful.
David P I don't need any concept at all. I just need this connection with my heart. I had this great meditation.
Adam Wes I love it.
David P Thank you.
Adam Wes Wonderful. I love that your whole body, your kundalini, joined in. My teacher always says, "Heart first." When you meditate on the energy field, all of it, start on the heart. You don't sit in the navel center the whole time, the third eye the whole time, or the crown. Start on the heart and do most of it in the heart.
Heart is the most important energy center because it's your center energy. It can bring a lot of kundalini opening. Wonderful.
It's a great simplifier. It simplifies your life. You don't get into all the complexities of who did what, whether they owe you this, or whether you should be mad at them. It's just pure and simple love.
And to be grateful for everything. Gratitude is one of the greatest principles for this. I can't believe I didn't say this. Gratitude means being aware of your blessings and being without entitlement, so that we even recognize the blessing of being in space-time.
You get to be a person driving a car and having somebody crash into it. One day, when we're gone long from now, we won't have a car to be crashed into. So it's this lack of entitlement. We're grateful for color, the sky, breathing, body parts, English, and Spanish.
Entitlement and gratitude are something to add to the list. I believe I left those out. Thanks, David. Wonderful.
David P Gorgeous. Thank you.
Adam Wes All right, it's 7:18. Does anybody have anything really burning that they want to share? If you do, you can share quickly. If you don't, we should probably let everybody go.
Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate every single one of you. Let me be grateful for a second. Thank you for being here and holding space for me to be who I am and to do what I love. It means a lot to me.
I could cry. I cried a little bit. Thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you, Kara. Big hug. Hugs, hugs, hugs. Give somebody a heart-side hug. That means you go on the other side, heart to heart.
I think I gave Kara one when she came to Venice. I always do that with my mom. All right, guys. Bye, everybody. Thank you.
Ariella Love and blessings.
Adam Wes Have blessings.