MIND-BODY-SPIRIT Heartfulness: A Transformation System for Our Spiritual Anatomy BY VASU MURTHY
Fellow seekers of spiritual wisdom and growth! Let’s embark on an enlightening journey to explore the fascinating concept of Spiritual Anatomy and its profound impact on our spiritual evolution, guiding us towards oneness with the Ultimate. To do this, we will talk about the Heartfulness system and its main features. Basic Heartfulness Practices Heartfulness practices are based on increasing love, compassion and courage in our lives, resulting in a sense of ease with daily life and reaching higher levels of consciousness. The practice consists of four basic elements: relaxation, morning meditation, evening clean- ing, and night time prayer. The relaxation element offers progressive relaxation of differ - ent parts of the body. It takes about 5-6 minutes and produces good relaxation of the entire body. In Heartfulness meditation, we bring awareness to the energies of the heart. This simple process brings pro- found changes in consciousness and increases self-transformation. The evening cleaning process helps to remove emotional complexities and impurities that we collect in our subtle bodies throughout the day. Finally, heartfulness prayer cultivates an attitude of humility and ac- ceptance, and establishes our relationship with the source in the right manner. These four practices working together will create a virtuous cycle propelling us forward in our inner journey of transformation. People will experience progress quickly using this method. Once you are com- fortable with basic practices, there are some supplemental practices to
Fig. 1: Thirteen Chakras of the Heartfulness System
deepen the meditative state and overcome fear and anger. These are easy to do, yet powerful techniques that create rapid self-transforma- tion. Spiritual Anatomy of Chakras for Advanced Self-transfor- mation Many are already familiar with the traditional seven chakra model that is described in all yogic literature, i.e., the Root Chakra, Sacral Chakra, Navel Chakra, Heart Chakra, Throat Chakra, Third Eye Chakra, and the Crown Chakra. The Heartfulness system expands on this concept and presents a deeper view into the energy system of the body. Within the Heartfulness system, we find thirteen chakras that form the path to spiritual progress, and here’s where it diverges from the traditional approach. In this advanced system, the bottom three chakras — the Root, Sacral and Navel Chakras — are not given promi- nence, as they are more relevant to our existence in the material world and do not directly contribute to our spiritual growth. Instead, these thirteen chakras are thoughtfully categorized into three regions — the Heart region (Chakras 1-5), the Mind region (Chakras 6-12), and the Central region (Chakra 13) — each uniquely possessing diverse psy- chological characteristics that offer us profound insights and empow - erment on our spiritual journey. (See Fig. 1.) In the Heart Region there are five chakras, each one possessing a positive attribute as well as a negative attribute that needs to be tran-
52—PATHWAYS—Winter 23
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