The Luminous Heart
The deepest way of being you
🌕 Today’s Moonday Monday reflection is on identity. Identity as the answer to the question “From where am I living?” as opposed to the usual “Who am I?” rumination.
For much of my life, I thought the spiritual journey was about becoming someone better.
A better Christian.
A better husband.
A better coach.
A better contemplative.
A better version of myself.
But contemplation has a gentle way of undoing our ambitions.
It asks a quieter question.
Not…
“Who should I become?”
But…
“From where am I living?”
That is a very different question.
For years I assumed the heart was simply another part of me.
The place where emotions lived.
The opposite of the mind.
A softer, more intuitive way of knowing.
Now I wonder if the contemplative tradition has been pointing to something much deeper all along.
Perhaps the heart is not another part of us.
Perhaps the heart is the deepest way of being us.
Kathleen Dowling Singh writes these breathtaking words:
“Mystery is expressing itself in every moment through the boundless interbeing of our precious individualities. We might as well allow ourselves to live it gratefully, with deepening awe. Our spiritual task is to grow in our acknowledgment of mystery, to open, to surrender into it, to allow it.”
And along with that gem 💎 I find myself remembering these words from mindfulness meditation author and teacher Sharon Salzberg:
I return to these sentences again and again.
Each time they invite me to notice something astonishing.
The Mystery is not waiting somewhere else.
It is not hiding behind the next retreat.
Or the next insight.
Or the next spiritual breakthrough.
It is expressing itself…
right here.
Through this breath.
This body.
This conversation.
This ordinary Monday morning.
This joy.
This grief.
This life.
The contemplative path is not about entering the Mystery.
It is about awakening to the Mystery that has never stopped expressing itself through us.
That changes the way I understand Centering Prayer—a twice daily, receptive, ~twenty-minute silent meditation practice.
One of the three principal architects of this method, Trappist monk Thomas Keating, described the practice as consenting to the Divine Presence and Action within.
Over the years, I’ve begun to see that this consent is not merely something we do for twenty-five minutes each morning and evening.
It becomes a way of inhabiting the whole of life.
Or perhaps more accurately…
It becomes the discovery of a different place from which to live.
Cynthia Bourgeault once described it beautifully.
She said that through meditation our sense of self gradually comes to rest in what the Eastern traditions call the witnessing presence.
From there, she says, we can “turn on” the ego whenever it is needed.
Something that represents snapshots of “me.”
I love that image.
Another helpful aspect to consider about the nature of the human ego is that it becomes something that serves.
Not something “I”/we are.
It serves, like the waiter in a café from the famous Van Gogh painting above 👆.
It still takes and works to map and remember orders.
It still answers emails.
Makes trips.
Develops boundaries.
Learns to be hospitable.
Goes home when work is done and changes personas.
Pays the bills.
Raises children.
Leads meetings.
Laughs with friends.
Serves the world.
The provisional small self has not disappeared.
It has simply stopped pretending to be “all of me,” or, put another way, it is relative to and not the center of reality.
Then Cynthia says something that makes me smile every time I read it.
She says she holds the ego “the way you hold a child who is having a temper tantrum.”
Patiently.
Tenderly.
Without panic.
Without shame.
And then she adds these words:
“The ego lives under your roof too, and I don’t think real spiritual progress is made by throwing out any of the inhabitants of your house.”
That may be one of the wisest things I’ve ever heard.
Nothing in us needs to be exiled.
Not fear.
Not anger.
Not grief.
Not desire.
Not our preferred number on the Enneagram.
Not even our provisional small self.
Every part of us belongs.
But not every part of us is meant to lead.
The luminous heart is where they learn to belong together.
This is why I have gradually stopped thinking of the heart as merely the place of feelings.
The luminous heart is where body, mind, memory, imagination, awareness, and love begin to move in harmony.
The luminous heart is where separation softens.
The luminous heart is where the provisional self finally discovers it doesn’t have to carry the unbearable burden of being our ultimate identity.
The luminous heart is where Grace gently whispers,
“You were never asked to become your own foundation.”
Perhaps this heart is what I have been trying to describe with the phrase Luminous YOU.
Not another self.
Not a better self.
Not a spiritual identity to achieve.
But the spacious Presence in which every part of our humanity is welcomed, integrated, and held in Love.
The Luminous YOU is not somewhere beneath your humanity.
It shines through your humanity.
It is the radiance of ordinary life becoming transparent to extraordinary Love.
Perhaps that is why the heart feels so different from the conceptual mind.
The conceptual mind seeks certainty.
The luminous heart can bear mystery.
The conceptual mind seeks conclusions.
The luminous heart remains open.
The conceptual mind asks,
“What is true?”
The luminous heart asks,
“How shall I belong?”
And perhaps those are not two different questions after all.
Thomas Keating often reminded us that the spiritual journey is one of consent.
I have come to understand that consent less as something I offer to God…
and more as relaxing into the astonishing realization that God has never withdrawn God’s consent from me.
Even when I forget.
Even when I resist.
Even when my provisional small self is convinced it must hold the whole universe together.
Grace waits.
Patiently.
Lovingly.
Silently.
This is what I have come to call G.O.D.
The Grace Of Disillusionment.
The grace that gently dismantles every identity too small to contain who we truly are.
The grace that doesn’t destroy the provisional self…
but lovingly puts it back in its proper place.
The grace that keeps inviting us home.
Not to another version of ourselves.
But to the deepest way of being ourselves.
To the Luminous Heart.
Reflection
Where have I been living from lately?
My fears?
My roles?
My achievements?
My carefully constructed story?
Or from the quiet spaciousness of the heart?
Today, perhaps I don’t need to become someone new.
Perhaps I simply need to come home…
to the deepest way of being me.
So beautifully expressed, Logan.
So packed full of wisdom its bursting😅🙏💖
Thank you as always Logan,
Btw I wondered if you are familiar at all with Internal family systems therapy? So much of what you describe about all parts belonging and yet not all parts being fit to lead is an incredible parallel here.
So good, thank you thank you. Gonna share some of this with my contemplative prayer group this morning