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with George Whitten, Cincinnati, Ohio
(Originally broadcast over the X-STAR radio network and WVXU in Cincinnati)
Q. Mark, you have had a somewhat stormy past….What caused you to seek and find a spiritual path?
A. Yes, I suppose my past can be described as stormy….Between the ages of 14 and 23, during those nine years I was arrested probably 25 or 30 times for all manner of petty criminal behavior. I spent 7 of those years incarcerated in reform schools, county jails, a locked psychiatric ward, and a maximum security unit of the Texas penitentiary. I was angry at the world, had left home at 12 or 13 years of age and, really, I think, just trying to survive.
Ultimately, it was the Heart and the Grace of the Heart that lifted me out of that life. The last time I was arrested, I was actually and literally innocent. It is a long story filled with drama. The story is too long for our show. I often share it during my conference work. Nonetheless, the outcome is: I was touched by this Grace, and I was deeply and fundamentally changed by it. This happened in 1971, and I have not seen the inside of a jail since. My life since then has been spiritually motivated by my awareness of a Love, a powerful transforming and healing Love that I know can alter anything in the blink of an eye.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am still very human and quite fallible in that sense. At the same time I seem to be gifted with the ability to induct others into the experience of the Heart. And I have seen the power of this Love to redeem life.
Rumi invites us all into the Heart with these words, “Come, come, whoever you are! Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. Come. This is not a caravan of despair. It doesn’t matter if you’ve broken your vow ten thousand times, still come, and yet again, come!”
Q. What does it mean to open the Heart Center? How is Divine Love different from human love?
A. Opening the Heart Center is the experience of Grace or Divine Love. And this Love is not the same love we usually mean when we use the word. We love our parents, children, spouses or significant others. We love our country…some do. We love computers, cars, certain music or some movies. These are exclusive forms of love. Some people and some things are included in our love and some definitely are not. These are really descriptions of our preferences and possibly even our attachments. I don’t mean to condemn or pathologize any of these as they are a part of a rich life experience. At the same time, there is another quality of Love, a transpersonal Love that flows through us under certain conditions, and it is this Love we call Grace. It is a love that is inclusive. It is the Love that transforms us and heals us, and it can flow through us and contribute to the transformation and healing of others as well. I serve the awakening of the Heart Center from which this latter quality of Love flows. The experience of an awakening Heart is usually described as gratitude, wonderment or awe.
Many people have apparently had moments or glimpses of this Love. Generally it is remembered as a moment when one had a sense of his or her own divinity. As humans we are quite good at self-condemnation and self-punishment. The capacity to appreciate oneself just as one is at one’s present stage of development, just to feel all right about one’s self is an experience of the awakening Heart. Most of us have been touched momentarily by the image of E.T.’s pulsating heart or healing finger and this quality of Love is for everyone and flows from the Heart Center of us all.
However, many people don’t seem to know there is an actual Center of Consciousness in the center of the chest known as the Heart Center, nor do most of us know what we can do to awaken this center. And, in my experience, most do not realize the importance or significance of this awakening. From my present perspective, the Heart Center is the acme of human spiritual development.
Q. How does one get in touch with the Heart Center?
A. It is important to understand that the awakening of the Heart Center occurs by Grace; we cannot make it open. On the other hand, a sincere desire and willingness to experience this awakening tends to be very helpful. Physically touching the Heart Center (center of the chest) with reverence…certain images, for example, the image of the Sacred Heart or Immaculate Heart helps many. Although my name is Pope I know next to nothing about Catholicism. I just know this image touches people. Music and spiritual ritual are particularly helpful as well. The most important means of awakening the Heart Center is actually by means of induction. Just as in science where one can induct an electrical current in a conductor by simply bringing it into proximity with another conductor in which a current is already flowing, we awaken each other by being together in an environment where at least some of the participants are already experiencing the radiance of an awakening Heart. We awaken each other and we tend to take each other ever more deeply into the experience just by being together and by opening to it and also by offering ourselves in service to each other. This is, of course, the nature of the conference work I conduct where we unite in sacred community and in service to one another for the specific purpose of awakening the Heart Center.
Q. What is important for us to know and what is the difference between accepting others and changing others or between tolerance and appreciation?
A. Let me restate this. I believe the awakening of the Heart Center is the acme of human spiritual development. At a core level, perhaps not always at a conscious level, we all know there is one indispensable ingredient to all substantial spiritual transformation and to all true spiritual healing. Anyone, in fact everyone I know who has experienced a life transformation or healing will tell you they were touched by this unspeakable Love. In the words of Andrew Lloyd Weber, “Love changes everything, hands and faces, earth and sky…love changes everything, how we live and how we die.” Nothing is more needed, it seems to me, than this Love that unites us beyond personal differences. We must begin to realize that when we try to change or fix or recruit others, we are seeing something wrong and others nearly always resist us. On the other hand, paradoxically, when we can accept and even appreciate others the way they are, we are providing an environment that is naturally transforming and healing, the environment of inclusive Love. Today’s humanistic and transpersonal approaches to psychotherapy began with Carl Roger’s notion of unconditional regard for the client. The truth is we don’t know enough about anyone else or about life to know what’s right for others. We do know, at some level, that extending compassion and unconditional Love to others is perhaps the greatest service we can provide another soul. Recently, driving through Los Angeles, I saw a sign for a museum of Tolerance, and I thought that’s not good enough. We must learn to appreciate our differences, not simply tolerate them. This is the nature of the Heart to appreciate all of life.
Q. What does it mean that dealing with the Heart eliminates the need to focus on the problem?
A. Love does the transforming. It’s not so much that it eliminates the need, it’s just an entirely different approach. Through the mind we are trained to identify the problem then find and apply the needed solution. Working from the Heart, we don’t identify the problem because, from the perspective of the Heart, we ask not so much what’s wrong here; instead we ask what’s right about it or how does this serve? In this way we are opening our hearts to what the mind perceives as a problem and seeing it in a new way, through the eyes of Love and this Love then transforms whatever really needs transforming. In my conference work we have guidelines that remind us we are not there to work to help save, fix, recruit, or otherwise change others. We are invested in offering our Hearts to each other; we are offering compassion and unconditional love to one another and then just watching to see what happens. It is, in a sense, the difference between the ego trying to fix what it perceives is wrong and just holding one another in the radiance of compassion and unconditional Love.
Q. I have heard you express the idea of Love first, teach second. What do you mean by that?
A. This is my personal reminder that if I can’t love you the way you are, my attempts to teach you will probably be in vain. However, if I can love you the way you are, I embody the greatest teaching there is. Love first and the truth is we often feel no need to teach. Or you could say the need to teach is driven by our judgment/opinion of what is wrong with the other.
There are three injunctions that help us stay and live from the Heart Center. They are:
1. Make no judgments.
2. Make no comparisons.
3. Delete the need to understand.
Q. How about some suggestions for those who cannot attend your conferences?
A. Make an altar with images that touch you at the level of the Heart. Touch the Heart Center reverently and often asking for the wisdom of the Heart. Find a group of people or develop relationships with those who are interested in the awakening of the Heart Center and meet with the expressed purpose of just opening the Heart and listening with Love. Rev. Doris Hoskins of the New Thought Center here in Cincinnati holds occasional circles for the purpose of Heart awakening.
Q. Do you have some closing comments?
A. I would at this point just invite the listening audience to reach up and touch the Heart Center with reverence and consider the possibility that when you intend the Heart to others, you become a part of the Healing Presence Itself on earth, whether you are in the Circle K, walking down the street, in the beauty salon or wherever. Just offer the Heart silently to those around you. This intention can transform and heal others, and it will lift you into the Grace of the Heart.
We often take life for granted. The truth is we don’t know where we come from, and we don’t know where we are going. And much of what takes place along the way will be surprising and even shocking. Although life is often difficult, it is still a gift. Somehow we have awareness, and this gift is wondrous, filled with possibility and potential. In awakening we may hear the words of Hafiz: “Now is the time to deeply compute the impossibility that there is anything but Grace.”
Q. Mark, thank you for sharing your time and your ideas with us today.
A. George, it has been my privilege. Thank you for having me on your program
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