By Kabir Helminski
One of the earliest teachings on Sufism that I received more than thirty years ago was about “polishing the mirrror of the heart.” The understanding of this idea continues to unfold with new and deeper implications.
We continually polish the mirror of the heart in order that the heart might reflect the guidance, inspiration, and intelligence of the Divine.
Every reaction, aversion, judgment, desire, entanglement, and compulsion we feel inside ourselves can be transformed by conscious repentance, conscious gratitude, and conscious love. These can be expressed simply by the words: Forgive me. Thank You. I love You. The You, in this case, is the Divine.
Conscious repentance, conscious gratitude, and conscious love polish the heart until what reflects in the heart is the Divine intelligence.
The clear heart is the best guide to living. The state of positive emptiness, equanimity, and peace is a kind of “zero” state, an emptiness that is a plenum of abundance.
The heart which is the inner state of ourselves is also a hologram of all. Therefore, whatever thought or judgment, blessing or curse, good or bad we hold in our hearts has an effect, both on us and on the other, whatever the “other” may be, animate or “inanimate.”
Everything that we experience as a problem is within ourselves. Consequently the solution to the problem is also within ourselves. We can heal. We can forgive. We can bless. We can create abundance. All of this is possible through the positive action of polishing, purifying, clearing, cleaning what is within us.
Egoism contaminates all aspects of human life and must be cleared. Thought forms, negative attitudes, self-destructive attitudes are collective phenomena that people pick up like a flu or fungus.
Forgive me. Thank You. I love You. These have the power to neutralize and erase those psychic toxins.
Spiritual tradition counsels that spiritual masters purify the souls of their students. Actually, it is the constant inner spiritual work of the more mature human being that not only continues the purification process for the master, but also has its effect on the student. The detoxification in one appears in the other as a result. Therefore the whole world is responsible for the whole world. Everyone is potentially responsible for everyone.
The ultimate happiness of everyone is to love and be loved. Therefore there is no greater and more effective work than loving, living without judgment, blessing AND TRANSFORMING every negative thing that comes into our consciousness.
No negative thought within ourselves is completely contained within ourselves, nor is a positive thought limited within ourselves. We can heal other souls, transform relationships, bring order and harmony into the world by the continual consciousness of, acceptance of, and gratitude for what is .
As we come to understand how much the Divine Beneficence supports us, blesses us, guides us, we can surrender into what is without fear, judgment, or resistance. We fall in love with it. We trust it as the essential source of action.
By continually polishing we transform our own inner world and everything around us.