The Kernel of the Heart- 30th August 1993

Dearest _ ,
Upon your brow is written, of the immediate woes and strife, the weighted decisions, the challenges set before you, the urgings, the comparisons, the cautions and the concealed – nonetheless you are expectant of receiving great and powerful truths, believing yourself coherent and able to withstand their potent draught.

So many of the cares of today are inconsiderate to the gravity of our destinies, whilst our future paths are clearly marked by this our conduct. Therefore we are immediately required to set about sorting our preferences of concerns and acknowledge them thus. For worries unattended to are as unpredictable as Pompeii in a red fog - we are best advised to address all concerns, meeting them before they meet us.

What of those fretful issues to which there is little resolve? This we may make peace with. If a man contains upsets, deep upsets which contrast his happiness, he may consciously accept the sting of it, as it once again hovers in close to him, and de-power this centre of aggravation by forgiveness. We either come to forgive ourselves, others or even circumstance, and thereby reduce the tension and disarm the embattlement.

Now to maladies within the cavity of the chest: With love restrained, there are 'cold spots', frozen and aching, where the children of the heart have hidden, afraid to come out. For all of those expressions never imparted, for tears and happinesses withheld, for love unaccomplished and love unfulfilled, for misplaced trusts and ideals quashed, grim niceties that deterred a true word, denial of self and denial of Providence in turning from God and the space that remains - the inner altar of Him, to wit the fount of life, your life, all life - the insolentries and unsympathies, the residual of acidic cruelties, sarcasm, blame, vengeance, false pride, arrogance, intolerance etc. These are some of the contributing aspects to such 'cold spots' as suffered within.

Should a man believe that harmony may be reintroduced to his temple by a simple inoculation of exterial force? And we are not without Love already! We are not without the reaches of the subtle energies and ethers, of which we may be composite or reflective to.

Dysfunction of the mamilla, though disconcerting, is irreconcilable to the associated problems of a dysfunctional heart. You may suffer argument unto yourself, believing that the pouring from self should be limited, that one must contain love in composure, and at the same time underestimate the value of your prayers. 

For when love goes out from a man, it goes out, and by its very nature it is not, in this process, required to 'give back' a satisfaction in any way. In other words, the experience of love in issue from, may contrast the totality of exaltation experienced and actually stimulate no centre within a man, save to be able to pour out all the more. Affection, contrary to this, may be well satisfying, for this becomes an inspired reveling in favored associations, from the subliminal to the advanced. If I enjoy affection I am rejoicing in the better parts of said relationships and the heart is glad.

However love is like the purest of water to whom we accredit no taste and no color. The receiving of love is all that we live for. It is true that much follows after this fact. The poet's melancholy fears the demise of all true love, and much is fancified according to the popular muse. Regardless of abstractions the reality is ever-present; it is the buoyancy that supports our being and all other beings besides.

The Love of our Father is anything but impersonal. We are because it is.

As for meditations, the image of the lighthouse is an excellent invocation. There we behold the constancy as represented in the outpouring of the light - of the love - significant to the space it reaches into, significant to the penetration of the darkness, whilst ever the great purpose on behalf of those who are in need of its light.

There used to be a story of a crypt which did conceal the seed of an ancient tree. The deceased had been sealed in a leaden case, the seed still contained in his hardened fist. The tree, of which it was but a germ, was to be of great worth as a preventative and as a remedy to many ills: afflictions that caused death and grief to old and young.

It is a rather long tale, but the upshot of it was, that eventually the seed was prised from the corpse and put to the rich soil with vast and hopeful expectation. However it did fail to take. There was no bonded union and the seed remained intact, refusing to sprout.

As the seasons turned over, they did pluck it back out from the ground and replant it in firmer, then looser soil; with water and then without, and so forth; but still the seed remained seed.

Disgusted and with disappointment, it was eventually surmised that there was no value to be had, and that either by corruption or inadequacy this marvel of a tree was not to be brought forth into the world.

And so it became a worthless curiosity which was commissioned to sit upon a plaque within a glass cabinet, along with several hundred other oddities for public display. There became the standard one line joke - "A dead man's remedy that will not subscribe to life!" And it was soon forgotten.

However, as with most famed articles, there was a presence of truth about this tiny seed, which had been invested with much conjecture. For all around the country there became a new variety of tree sprung up, and each and every one of them were ethereally bound to this precious seed. In point of fact, the owner from whose hand it was taken, knew of its remarkable link to life at a distance - dependent on it - and for reasons of security, planned to conceal it with his burial after long provision for care during his life.

However, the trees for which this seed was the parent, did go unnoticed by those who sought their properties, and flourished neglected. Came maturation, pods popped and birds pried, plucked and pecked the precious seed-peas. The birds as a result of this, became so overfull with life that the motion of the wings sweeping across the breast would enliven the currents around them.

You see, there may be mighty activity coming into and through the smallest of beings. These birds fed from the revivifying tree, and in turn gave out all that was not required, for them to be. Their tiny presence would alight at a distance a man, or to a child who was dejected or ailing miserably; and then in a passion of sympathetic understanding their need would be answered by the movement and presence of this empowered friend, for they knew also of the related properties and their purpose of prescription.

This is the nature of Love. It finds its way through mediums that will have it, go to it and give it. The men would not have profited similarly by scalding the leaves or boiling a brew, this was not the case, for the special nature of this tree was in relationships as ethereally supported from one to another, and by such we are suckled and sustained.

The tree would not be owned selectively to this or that community privy to its properties. And the men could not determine which foliage and what bough bore the effervescent vitalities, as the birds did see it a’ blazing, as if on fire.

Now the seed that was in the hand is one and the same which is kernel to the heart. All effort made manifest in the world, Love's efforts, are linked to that kernel. The offspring is always for the greater world and for so many who are as strangers to us, and yet dependent on our safekeeping of love's seed and our tenuous relationships without. Personal maturation does come after death, by which we truly come to eternal life.

The greatest affliction is a loveless life (and in life after death also) - the remedy being the giving freely, cultivating loving itself.