Stoking the heart-fire
During a recent interview in which I spoke briefly about my tantra practice, I was asked to give an example of a simple exercise. Here it is.
Visualize (and feel) that within a void in the heart of your body is a flame. It flickers and dances with the rhythm of your breath. Into this flame, offer any experience. It can be anything: a feeling, an encounter, a momentary sense-perception. You can do this anywhere and at any time; in peaceful meditation in a woodland grove, sitting on a bus, whilst standing in a supermarket queue. Eventually, this will become a habit – see this post for some related discussion.
The heart-space or cave is the seat of awareness.
You can understand this fire as a sacrifice – a letting go, an offering to the goddess, to Śiva, to your own innate awareness. A highly abbreviated Homa. Fire is a beautiful metaphor for nondual awareness and expansive consciousness. Fire purifies. It dissolves everything into pure consciousness. Difference is dissolved, the fragmentation of identity; the differentiation between “I” and “other”, subject and object. Fire ultimately consumes itself. It radiates light, joy, and wonder.
The three eyes of Kālasaṃkarṣiṇī are the Fire (the cognizing subject), the Moon (the cognizable subject) and the Sun (the means of cognizing).
Sri Yantra by Maria Strutz.
Here’s the interview.
