The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life (12 page)

 DEEPAK CHOPRA

Every child has played hide-and-seek. And you know when you play hide-and-seek, there is a part of you that doesn’t want to be found out and there is another part of you that wants to be found out. So we lose ourselves and ultimately we find ourselves. That’s the play of life.

In a way you spend your whole life playing hide-and-seek. On the one hand, you hope not to be found, because you are comfortable with the personality you’ve assumed. On the other hand, you want to be found, because, deep down, your personality chafes against your true self. To resolve this discrepancy, align your personality with your soul.

 MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

That shift from body identification to spirit identification, that is the meaning of enlightenment. And that is the same thing as saying “going from the perceptions of the mind to the knowledge of the heart.”

By shifting your attention from your head to your heart, you connect with your true self and develop the courage to be who you really are.

 MARCI SHIMOFF

When we look at life through the eyes of love and through the eyes of the heart, everything changes. The world outside may or may not change, or may not appear to our liking, but when we change how we’re perceiving it, when we move from our thoughts to the feelings of love, everything in the world around us appears different.

When we look at the world only through our thoughts, through our minds, it can seem difficult or hostile. We have 60,000 thoughts a day and 80 percent are negative, but when we drop our attention into the heart and we start living more from the heart, life appears different. The world looks different.

 MARCI SHIMOFF

Instead of a negative place, it becomes a friendly universe. Einstein said that the most important question a person can ask
himself is “Is this a friendly universe?” and the people who are happiest answer, “Yes, this is a friendly universe.” That doesn’t mean that everything is always going your way. What it means is you believe that this is a universe that is on your side.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
HAMLET

Keeping your heart open keeps you connected to your essence. Your true self is effectively a universal self, your true identity, part of something much bigger that we might call the “soul of the world.” You are your soul first and your body second. Your body is merely an envelope that enables you to function in the physical world, whereas your soul transcends all the sensory perceptions, dimensions, and other elements of that physical world.

Just by being ourselves, we are borne toward a destiny far beyond anything we could imagine. The Being I nourish inside me is the same as the Being that suffuses every atom of the cosmos.

—DEEPAK CHOPRA,
UNCONDITIONAL LIFE

Staying aligned with your heart and soul connects you to the universe.

Human beings are made of body, mind, and spirit. Of these, spirit is primary, for it connects us to the source of everything, the eternal field of Consciousness.

—DEEPAK CHOPRA,
THE SEVEN SPIRITUAL LAWS FOR PARENTS

 ECKHART TOLLE

You reach God not by reaching out, which for thousands of years most humans have done when they talked about God. Their eyes would go upward and you would look for God up there somewhere, but nobody ever found God up there. There was even a Russian astronaut who came back from space and said, “I didn’t see any God up there.” And of course he didn’t, because God is the divine dimension that is the essence of who you are, and that is heart. The heart of the universe, the heart of who you are.

There is no difference between your true self and somebody else’s. We are all connected. As Tolle writes in
The Power of Now
, “You just can’t feel it because your mind is making too much noise.”

 NEALE DONALD WALSCH

In my awareness, in my deep understanding, all of us are manifestations of the divine. That is, each of us is a singularization of God itself. And I think the experience of that occurs when our hearts crack wide open. And we see our true identity, we see to the deepest part of who we are.

From the moment you come into being, you are your soul. Your soul gets all the vital functions going. And because your soul is immaterial, it cannot die. Your personality will die, but your soul will live on.

Dr. Kathy Magliato, a cardiothoracic surgeon who writes about the heart’s many meanings, frequently witnesses patients’ final heartbeats as they move between life and death. “Something very definite, very distinct leaves their body when their heart stops,” she says, and she believes this is their soul. She also believes “that the soul resides in the heart,” because once the heart stops, the soul departs.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN, “SCIENCE AND RELIGION”

Your soul, your universal self, adopts an earthly personality. Your personality tends to emphasize the differences between you and others, but when you recognize that you are a spiritual being having a human experience, that we are all spiritual beings, you see the connectedness and realize that you are first and foremost a soul.

 GARY ZUKAV

Instead of being insignificant and powerless, you begin to glimpse something, something that can be terrifying at first—that you are a compassionate, loving, powerful, and creative spirit.

You are here to live from the heart.