The Prayer of the Heart (hesychast meditation) generates the awakening of the soul and, later, self-knowledge is a complete spiritual practice marked by efficiency.
In Abheda Yoga the practice of this prayer is a particular case of a basic technique, called Ananta.
Christian Meditation of the Heart is pursued to achieve inner transformation and even spiritual realization through union with the Christ consciousness, but not only if we are in isolation,
but, above all, in the midst of life, as a spearhead of the Art of Living.
Effects on the human being
– ease in living purity and spirituality in the midst of life;
– ease in feeling “ourselves” more always;
-the fulfillment of pure desires and especially of the elevated ones – even without ever asking for it precisely;
– the possible difficulties of life that we have become accustomed to face sometimes will gradually disappear, being, however, replaced by other, more elevated and spiritual trials;
– our inner state and the multiple significant coincidences that will appear abundantly in our lives will make us feel especially lucky;
– amplification of willpower and intelligence;
– living, more always, a state of calm and relaxation, even in the middle of a restless activity;
– contributes to the achievement of health and harmony of the body;
– practical wisdom; inspiration and inner ability to always and disinterestedly do good; divine intuition and spiritual inspiration manifested in any field and moment of life;
– the whole life, both in the waking state and in all the other states will be impregnated with the divine nature of the primordial state or the perfect state; we will live life with intensity, easily centered in the present moment, noticing the miracle in ourselves and in others;
– the increase at very intense levels of the power to love, a state of intense affection without object; harmony and success in love;
– those around them tend to manifest an intense love and easily fall in love with the person who successfully practices the Prayer of the Heart;
– the appearance of an exceptional personal charisma, which can be an obstacle for the unprepared (can generate the appearance of pride and exacerbation of hubris) or a beneficial tool for the trained;
– physical, mental, mental, spiritual health and strength; blurring and, then, eliminating evil influences from our being;
– the appearance of paranormal powers (which, even if they are a temptation to fall from the spiritual path, if they will not amplify the pride and if they will not constitute a spiritual obstacle, they certify us a part of the success of the practice);
– the appearance of bright white light phenomena (the so-called taboric light) but also other intense and pure colors;
– ease and efficiency in carrying out any practices, regardless of the authentic spiritual path to which they belong;
– the awakening of the soul, followed in the higher stages by the revelation of the Self or the divine spark within us;
– an ever-deeper identification with the spiritual archetype of Jesus Christ;
– the deification of being.
Stages in Christian Meditation of the Heart
The first stage is called metanoia, a Greek word translated by the term “repentance”, but it means, literally, purifying asceticism, and this purification and focus of the conscience of the Christian practitioner is oriented at the level of the Heart.
Here, making the mind smoothly descend into the heart, he will get a real osmosis between these two somewhat polar aspects of the being, which will awaken the soul.
Metanoia comes from the meta (return) and from the noeo, which signifies our perception of reality. This refers to the return of individual human consciousness from the outer empirical world, from the ephemeral veil of universal illusion to the soul, to God. The first step of return or metanoia is the return to the Heart or the awakening of the soul.
The second stage of the prayer of the heart is nepsis – “awakening” – the ecstatic unification of being in the “crucible of divine grace.”
This is, in fact, a state of profound unity of the human Heart with the divine heart, an ecstatic unification of man in the “crucible of grace”, in other words in a condition of receiving the Divine Grace, because grace is, in reality, the grace with which God “anoints”, sanctifies the crown and the Heart of the human being.
It is marked by awakening, consciousness, hyperlucency, hypertension.
We must take care to withdraw from thoughts their vital force, but without struggling with thoughts, in order to pacify the mind and transfigure it.
The third stage is the plenary participation in the divine light and in the energies (divine powers) through the direct and direct “meeting” or fusion with Jesus Christ, in front of the Father, in the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit. This is divine realization, perfection, perfection or salvation.
The entire subtle force of man becomes an offering, metamorphosing into the conscious heart.
The entire vital energy is also unified in the heart and oriented as an offering to God, through sublimation and alchemization. “God can thus take possession of the lustful part (the lower part) of the soul (Gregory Palama) and thus restore the desire to its origins.”
In other words, through Divine Grace we can live at the level of the Heart the deepening and essentialization of any desire.
The origin and the essential cause of any desire is called within Christianity “the eros of God”, of which John the Great or Revelation speaks very deeply, eros who addresses his call even to the “man of desire” (to the human being characterized mainly by the plane of the most diverse desires and aspirations) and which, THROUGH TRANSFORMATION AND NOT BY DENIAL,
it makes worldly desire become eros (love) of God.
This is a veritable Alchemy of the Heart, closer to us and much more important than external alchemy, which rarely turns ordinary metals into gold.
For the one who exalts his soul to God and thus places it in God, the body is transformed and alchemized and becomes a abode of God. It shares the momentum of the soul and joins it in Godly communion.
This transfiguration of eros (love) into agape (divine bliss) is a constant of the Christian tradition.
“Happy is he who has a longing for God similar to the one the lover has, mad for his lover”, say even the parents of the church.
The text of the utterance in the Christian meditation of the heart:
“Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have mercy on me…”
“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me…”
A more special formulation, different from the traditional method, but more accurate, is
“Lord Jesus Christ, give me Your Supreme Grace…”
From the practical esoteric perspective of the Heart-AdAnima Way, the repetition of the name “Jesus” is very effective from a spiritual point of view.
Attention!
There are variants of the prayer of the heart that end with “have mercy on me the sinner…”. It is a partially wrong practice, which can also have negative effects, due to the impregnation of the subconscious, through repetition, with the idea that we are sinners. This error slipped for various reasons into the practice of some hesychasts reduces much of the value of this exceptional practice.
There have been voices that have motivated the obstinacy to maintain this wrong practice in the idea that we must be humble and devoid of pride, but we assure you that for this it is not necessary to make permanent in ourselves the idea that we are sinners but
to become free from so-called sins as quickly and as safely as possible.
However, until the supreme spiritual realization we are still “sinners”, but this state is necessary, in fact, to be less and less present and not more and more present.
For people who want to practice, however, a longer version of the Prayer of the Heart, we mention here the version
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me ,your believer…”
Practical method
1.Se approach a meditation posture, even on the chair, with palms facing face down on the knees.
2.Se achieves a better interiorization, removing our attention from the information that comes to us from the sense organs and from the subtle perceptions;
attention should be focused on the area in the middle of the chest, inside the physical body;
we relate to the most concrete existence of the living Jesus Christ in us, intuiting Him as a special, miraculous personal and energetic presence, located at the level of the subtle space of the Heart.
(images of Jesus Christ crucified are not as effective);
it is good for it to remain as a background attitude throughout the practice.
3. We say “Lord Jesus Christ…” , we inspire with the mental utterance,
we consciously relate more intensely to the Space of the Heart, and we can even make a more intense reference to the living presence of Jesus in our Heart; we grasp the special quality of the inspired air, which we associate with the subtle nature of Jesus Christ;
4.We achieve a full retention of breathing (we hold our breath with our lungs filled with air), of a natural duration, so without forcing.
5.We exhale, saying, at the same time, “have mercy on me”.
6. We become aware of a very pure, luminous and very high energy outpouring, which floods our entire being with a special state, corresponding to the presence of the energy of the Christ plan in our being, and which accumulates mainly at the level of the Spiritual Heart.
7. The breath becomes slower and slower and eventually becomes very subtle, almost imperceptible.
We can leave the rhythm of breathing (when we feel the need), performing the prayer faster than this and becoming aware of the two main times without special effort.
We can then give up even the longer utterance, addressing only the mental utterance of the name of Jesus.
In the advanced stages of practice it is no longer necessary to utter the prayer mentally, it “flows into the heart” as if it were still uttered on a very subtle level.
THE FUNDAMENTAL STAGE – the famous “ORA ET LABORA”
We can continue the process also in the waking state, in everyday life, in all activities in which we do not need special concentration or it is not necessary to maintain a mental process to solve a problem.
Of course, it is not the case to achieve this during activities that require special attention and that are also characterized, possibly, by a certain degree of dangerousness.
Leo Radutz
