Putting the work first

You must find it in you to bring the work alive – beyond where the teacher left it – even if this means heresy. To bring the work alive you must be able to make the distinction (feel the difference) between the life in the work, and the life in yourself doing the work. They are not the same. If they coincide it is only externally. When the work comes alive one feels reverential and humble, raw and vulnerable almost to the point of tears, only too pleased to be present and of service, or one is simply too engrossed and busy to register any feelings at all. When you come alive doing the work then your energy manifests, the spirit rises, you feel great, you're in control, you've never been better, you've never been quite so full of self. It all boils down to what precisely you put first in your life. If it is you then you live a life ruled by gravity – desire – the forces of acquisition – egocentric. If you put the other first, whatever that other may be – the person in front of you, the work, the teaching, the teacher, anything but the self – then suddenly you are free of the gross forces of selfishness, and instead you float and dance in a space governed by connectedness and the energy between – the third heart. Your dance – your internal life – takes you always outside the gravitational sphere of influence of other peoples selfishness, not by avoiding but by existing in a more active and refined reality – a more inclusive reality that sees selfish blobs for what they are – lumbering, sluggish, of no consequence – absolutely unable to enter the reality you exist within.

The work we do – the Heartwork – is so simple it borders on the trivial. Can you stand in front of another person and be open and honest and just connect? The answer is always yes, everyone and anyone can do it – everyone has it in them to be a human being, if only for an instant. The struggle for all of us is to extend that instant – let it reverberate into all aspects of our life and our reality. To do this we must put the work first – we must have had the blinding and earth shattering insight that everything, including our humanity and humanity at large, hinges on this work. Then, as my teacher would say, we are ready to begin.