The Heartfulness Way

The heartfulness way is one of meditation, cleaning and prayer – this book explains its principles in an informal conversational manner with the current guru of the lineage and a younger practitioner with 15 years of experience. The overall journey is one from selfishness to selflessness, from the reactive mind to responsive heart, from imprisonment in the folds of ego to freedom from ego, from contraction to expansion, from restlessness to peace, from darkness to light – all through a specific practice of meditation. There is a useful quadrant with one axis as focused/unfocused and the other as effort/effortless – meditation is in the upper right quadrant of focused effortlessness while in the lower right is daydreaming, lower left frustration and upper left concentration. There is much wise advice for the spiritual seeker as well as specific instruction on the lineage techniques. The aim of 'cleaning' is freedom from patterns of thinking, emotional reactivity and behavioural tendencies - in Sanskrit samskaras - an important practice in our times of sensory and emotional overload. Then there is the specific prayer to be said and meditated on just before sleeping. Here I found the English translation awkward even if I understood the importance of its meaning. I myself have used a special formula every night for more than 30 years, so I know its significance. Even if one does not want to follow this particular path, the book valuably distils a lifetime of spiritual insight.