THE TUNING OF THE HEART (1)

Post date: Mar 15, 2010 7:27:40 PM

25 oktober

THE TUNING OF THE HEART (1)

NO ONE in this world may be called loveless; at the same time, everyone is not necessarily full of love. Either the fire is burnt out and the heart has turned to ashes, or the heart has a spark of love in its depths just as the stone has a spark of fire which hardly ever shows itself. One may ask if it is not a weakness to be sympathetic, as it is the sympathetic person who gives in, and the one without sympathy holds on to himself; but sometimes the one who gives in is more powerful than the one who thinks that he should not give in. Very often a person does not give in owing to fear, doubt, or lack of confidence in himself, and often it is the brave and courageous who give in. It is not always a weakness, although in some cases it may be so.

Sentiment is often underestimated when it is compared with reason. This is a mistake, for where there is real sentiment it is much stronger, much more powerful than reasoning. The one who goes from one reason to another, and then again to another reason, is often found to be very weak. Besides the man of reason has no magnetism, he has only reason. He can argue, discuss, talk too much, but he does not attract. The man of sentiment has strong magnetism, he can attract without words because he has something living in him. In the man of sentiment is to be found the divine element, the heart quality.

Someone came to the great poet of Persia, Jami, and asked him ifhe would take him as a pupil and teach him spiritual truth. And Jami asked, 'Have you ever loved in your life?' He said, 'No, never'. Jami said, 'Go and love first. Let your heart be tuned, let it be melted first. Then come to me. Then I will show you the spiritual path'.

Sympathy is the mainqu-alitytobe cultivated in order to develop the spiritual faculty;nbut if one would ask me what I mean by sympathy, it is something I cannot explain. All such words are different names, different aspects of one and the same thing. What is called sympathy, kindness, mercy, goodness, pity, compassion, gentleness, humility, appreciation, gratefulness, service, is in reality love. And what is love? Love is God.

Many will object, 'But does not our heart depend also upon our everyday environment, on the circumstances oflife? If the environment is not agreeable, how can we make it right?' Indeed, the first stage of our development depends upon environment and circumstances; but there is nothing in this world which we cannot try to improve. There are many things that we can help and improve, if we would only try. Sometimes it is difficult, but often we think it is difficult while it is not really so. The greatest difficulty is loss of patience. When patience is exhausted things cannot be made better, and then they remain in the same condition; but when one really wants to make one's environment better and sacrifice all one can in order to do so, then one can. Too often one expects from others more than they are able to give, and that makes one helpless and dependent. Once a person has become so independent that without the help of others he can keep his feelings untouched, he becomes like the sun which bums without oil; and in that it differs from lamps which bum with oil, for when the oil is finished then their light goes out.

The relationship between the heart and the conditions of the outside world is such that it is the condition of the heart which influences one's life's affairs. When the heart is out of tune everything goes wrong; it makes the whole atmosphere out of tune.

The more keenly one studies life, the more one will find that the heart has an influence on both failure and success, on rise and fall, on favorable and unfavorable conditions in life. No sooner has the heart been tuned than conditions in life become better and ill luck is averted; wrong reasoning, people becoming tired and disappointed with one another, things going wrong, losses, all these things disappear as soon as the heart is tuned. It is difficult enough to keep a delicate instrument like the violin tuned, and the heart is incomparably more delicate; it is the instrument on which the soul, the spirit, plays.

The reason why the heart influences our life, is that the heart is like the seed out of which the plant has grown which we call our self. Thought, speech, and actiGn, like fruits and flowers, are the effect of the heart; what the heart produces is the same as that which was already in it.

Our heart is also closely related to the people we meet; to such an extent that in industry, business, profession, science, politics, and domestic life, in every aspect of life, the people we meet are affected and influenced by the condition of our heart. If the heart is out of tune, let a man be in his office, the factory, his home, among friends, in the club, in society, whatever he says or does not say, or whatever he does, his very presence will upset the atmosphere. Therefore the secret of magnetism, the mystery of attraction in a person, is solved by the study of the heart. If we are in tune, we tune others also; but if a person's heart is not in tune, then everyone in his presence also gets out of tune. That is the mystery of attraction and repulsion.

There is a still higher stage of our development, and that is the attitude of going forth and sympathizing with all we meet. This comes by understanding; the more understanding we have of human nature the more sympathetic we become. Even for those who do not deserve it we should have sympathy. In this way sympathy, which is symbolically like water, spreads in time; it will expand like the water ofthe ocean. It becomes an everlasting spring that rises and falls

Sympathy (Dilazari)

Sympathy is an awakening of the love element, which comes on seeing another in the same situation in which one has been at some time in one's life. A person who has never experienced pain cannot sympathize with those suffering pain. That person is living whose heart is living, and that heart is living which has wakened to sympathy. The heart void of sympathy is worse than a rock, for the rock is useful, but the heart void of sympathy produces antipathy

Sympathy can only be useful when man does not make the condition of the person with whom he sympathizes worse, but makes things better. The feeling of sympathy must be within, it need not manifest purely as sympathy but as an action to better the condition of the one with whom one has sympathy.