John J. Prendergast: The Deep Heart

Products By Author

The Deep Heart

Paperback Book

Starting at: $10.77

Also By Author

See All

blog

Post Views: 2,407

Guided Meditation: Accepting Your Experience Just as I...

John J. Prendergast — March 14, 2020

If you have traveled on the spiritual path even a little way, you have probably come across some version of “love what is”—a reminder that you should accept your experience as it is. However, this teaching easily becomes another injunction. Notice the should in the earlier sentence—it is always a red flag that the judging mind is at work.

The conditioned mind cannot accept unconditionally. It always has an agenda, even if it is well hidden. It secretly bargains and sends the message, “I will accept you [sotto voce] if you change or leave.” This approach is akin to welcoming guests at your front door while secretly hoping they will exit out the back—the sooner, the better! Guests—our unwanted thoughts, feelings, and sensations—will certainly feel this conditional invitation, even if it is unspoken. As a result, they will be much less willing to enter, relax, and reveal themselves. The result? What we resist, persists. So when your new arrivals show up at your door, put away your timer and share some aromatic green tea and a raspberry scone with them. Settle in and let them tell their stories and share their feelings. They just want to be heard and understood. Once they feel genuinely received, they will be open to a new perspective.

Are you willing to be with your experience just as it is, even if it never changes? This is a critically important checking question. Take a few minutes to inquire with the following practice.

MEDITATIVE INQUIRY

Are You Willing to Accept Your Experience Just as It Is?

Sit quietly where you won’t be disturbed, close or lower your eyes, and take a few deep breaths. Feel the weight of your body held by whatever you are sitting on and relax. Feel your attention settling down and in.

Think of a troubling aspect of your conditioning—an unwelcome pattern of behavior, reactive feeling, bodily tension, or invasive thought. Then ask yourself: “Am I willing to accept this just as it is?”

If your response comes from the strategic mind, there will be an honest no. This is good to see. If this is the case, try asking the question a little differently: “Is there something in me that already accepts this just as it is?”

If your attention has settled into the Deep Heart, you will find a yes.

Journey into the depths of your own heart with Dr. John J. Prendergast’s guide, The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence.

blog

Post Views: 1,848

Your Body Is Not What You Think: Looking Beyond the Ph...

John J. Prendergast — March 6, 2020

This model of a multidimensional body applies directly to the theme of the Deep Heart. I would not write about the importance of the heart unless I knew it intimately firsthand and also understood its critical role in psychological healing and spiritual awakening. If there are, as I propose, layers to the heart ranging from the relatively gross, through the refined, to the transcendent, then many of us will be able to directly or indirectly sense this in some way.

One of the easiest ways to sense the emotional and energetic reality of the heart area is to notice what we sense and feel when we fall in love or, conversely, when we lose someone we have loved via death or a painful breakup. Heart openings are intoxicatingly joyful, and heart breaks are extraordinarily painful. Have you ever wondered why this is the case? Are the opening and closing of the heart purely physiological, or might something else be going on? We will explore romantic love in a later chapter, but for now I’ll just acknowledge the central role that the heart area plays in human relationships and in genuine spiritual openings. The majority of popular songs and a large number of our most compelling stories revolve around love found and lost.

In order to explore your heart in any depth, it’s helpful to sense your whole body with as few ideas as possible. Clear the slate—be open to the possibility that your body is not what you think it is. Rather than approaching your body as a familiar solid object made up of skin, bones, muscles, organs, tissues, and cells governed by neural and hormonal networks, I encourage you to approach it differently—as a field of vibration filled with space.

In the next exercise, you will experience the body as a field of vibration. This meditation is inspired by the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, a key experiential text in Kashmiri Tantric Shaivism that was authored over a thousand years ago. It’s a good idea to record this guided meditation on your smartphone, and I recommend pausing between the steps outlined below for at least twenty seconds. Including the pauses, please allow for at least ten minutes in total. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, sit comfortably, and close your eyes.

BODY SENSING PRACTICE

Sensing the Body as Vibration

Take a few deep breaths and allow your attention to settle down and in.

Feel the weight of your body being held by whatever you are sitting on and let yourself be completely held.

Sense the bottoms of your feet, the tips of your toes, and notice a lively vibration. Imagine it growing stronger, gradually enveloping both feet, and then moving up both legs.

Sense the palms of your hands and the tips of your fingers. Notice a subtle vibration—a sense of aliveness.

Feel it enveloping both hands and slowly spreading up both arms.

Feel this sense of vibrant aliveness growing into your hips and shoulders.

And then into the belly and the chest, including your back.

Sense this lively vibration moving up the neck and into the head, suffusing the mouth, ears, eyes, and brain. Take your time.

Now let go of any focusing and sense your entire body as a diffuse field of lively vibration. Notice that it is difficult to tell exactly where your body ends and where the so-called world begins. Allow this sense of vibration to extend out into space in all directions: front … back … left … right … up … and down.

Rest in and as this expansive sense of vibrant spaciousness as long as you like.

Journey into the depths of your own heart with Dr. John J. Prendergast’s guide, The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence.

blog

Post Views: 407

Is What You Seek Actually Already Here?

John J. Prendergast — February 15, 2020

As we let go into the current of truth, it gains momentum, and an increasingly intimate inner dialogue unfolds between our conditioned mind and our unconditioned nature. If you want to cooperate with this process (which I assume you do), it is important to honestly examine your motives.

MEDITATIVE INQUIRY

What Do You Really Want?

Find a quiet, comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed, close your eyes, and take a few deep breaths. Let your attention settle down and in, resting in the heart area. When you are ready, ask yourself: “What is it that I really want?” Let the question go. Don’t go to your mind for an answer. Just wait, listen, sense, and feel. The response may come first as a sensation or as an image before it becomes a word. Or it may come first as a word or phrase.

Whatever comes, check for inner resonance. Does it ring true for you? Something usually lights up, enlivens, releases, or opens up in the body if you have touched an important inner truth.

***

It is crucial to be honest with yourself. Usually we have mixed motives. I certainly did. Even as I was highly interested in discovering what is true, I was also looking for approval from others and wanting to survive. Social acceptance and physical safety are fundamental, closely intertwined desires, and we often need to play them out until we see through them. This usually takes time.

If you believe that your happiness depends upon finding the right partner or career, or upon accumulating wealth or power, you may need to explore these options in order to discover their limitations. Conceptual insight—knowing that happiness does not depend upon circumstances—is rarely enough. Your life experience is a vital curriculum, and there will be a number of opportunities to experience its fierce grace.

You may be able to speed up this process by asking yourself what you imagine you will gain if you acquire the objects or meet the goals you are seeking. As a thought experiment, complete some of the following sentences that resonate for you:

If I find the right partner, I will feel _________.

If I have children or grandchildren, I will experience _________.

If I have enough good friends or belong to the right community, I will feel _________.

If I have the right job or career, I will be _________.

If I have enough money and own a home and nice car, I will be _________.

If I have better health, I will _________.

If I eat enough delicious food, have great sex, travel to enough interesting and exotic places, and work hard enough, I will finally _________.

If I am at the right place at the right time in the future, I will _________.

If I discover my soul’s purpose, I will _________.

Then ask yourself:

Is it true that what I seek is not already here?

If you let your heart wisdom answer, this last question can be a mindbender. The strategic mind will be stunned. If you trust your heart’s answer and act on it, you will master life’s curriculum much more quickly, avoiding some of its remedial dead ends.

As intention clarifies, attention focuses.

Of course, we can gain some degree of transient satisfaction if the above if-then statements are fulfilled, but there will always be an underlying sense of dissatisfaction until the Deep Heart is consciously recognized. My teacher Jean Klein often observed that “the object never fulfills its promise.” Certainly not for long. Have you noticed that once we attain an object or reach a goal, the hunt is soon on again? Although part of us enjoys the drama of the chase, it is the respite from the search that we most want—the true homecoming.

Once we discover an underlying wholeness in the depths of our being, the relationship to desire changes. We are much less attached to getting what we want and much more grateful for what we have. It is a path of natural contentment rather than willful renunciation. An inner sense of fullness arises that is increasingly independent of circumstances, and we feel happy for no particular reason.

Journey into the depths of your own heart with Dr. John J. Prendergast’s guide, The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence.

John J. Prendergast, PhD, is a spiritual teacher, author, psychotherapist, and retired adjunct professor of psychology who now offers residential and online retreats. For more, please visit listeningfromsilence.com

Buy your copy of The Deep Heart at your favorite bookseller!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

You Might Also Enjoy

podcast

Post Views: 6,862

Michael A. Singer: Releasing Blockages to Inner Flow

Michael Singer — October 29, 2024

The question of how to find peace in the midst of uncertainty has been on our minds a lot lately. Listeners of this podcast have heard many of Tami Simon’s guests speak to this central challenge of our times. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, we’re thrilled to share what one of the world’s leading spiritual teachers has to say.

Here, Tami talks with bestselling author Michael A. Singer about deepening our ability to maintain inner peace while living in an unpredictable, uncontrollable world. Singer addresses audience-selected cards from his Living Untethered Card Deck, as he and Tami discuss: why we do our inner work; staying in the seat of the Self; consciousness and objects of consciousness; how our thoughts and emotions can distract us into identifying with them; when your daily life and your spiritual life are the same exact thing; the energy called Shakti; rattlesnakes and butterflies; letting go of resistance to what is uncomfortable; the ego as a set of thought patterns we protect at all cost; accepting the deferred pain that comes when we release the past; the meaning of freedom and the liberation of the soul; trauma, psychology, and physiology; Michael’s advice—practice the simple things first; allowing the energy of what we experience to pass through our hearts; a commitment to living free; compassion versus sympathy; discovering your inherent greatness; learning to relax in the face of disturbances; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

blog

Post Views: 305

Learning the Art of Thriving Online

Amelia Knott — October 14, 2024

Amelia Knott is an art psychotherapist who specializes in the mental health impacts of hustle culture and social media. In the video below (3:22 minutes), she shares her inspiration behind her written and illustrated workbook, The Art of Thriving Online: Creative Exercises to Help You Stay Grounded and Feel Joy in the World of Social Media and invites you in on the journey of reimagining a healthier relationship with the digital world.

You can also read the video transcript below:

It’s been half my life—literally half the years of my life—lifting my chin for pictures, anticipating the critical gaze of a digital audience, offering my presence half-heartedly to the world around me to to draft a clever caption, choose a flattering filter, and watch as my phone tells me if this time my work will be rewarded with worthiness.

Too many nights avoiding myself, letting the blue-light-lullaby of my screen become a substitute for true soothing. It’s been half my life; holding up the mirror of comparison to everyone’s best days and hottest takes, highlight reels curated with effortless nonchalance, and now the mirror of comparison to a perfected self made in the algorithm’s image. It’s been half my life of fractured attention, commodified vulnerability, fury, and fear taking turns with despondence.

What if my real life stopped being my body or the land, and became the non-place I devote my hours to?

And it’s been half my life wandering daily into the galleries of artists’ and thinkers’ most beautiful ideas. Half my life keeping far-away loved ones close.

It’s true that the Internet gave me my career, my marriage. It made visible the threads of similarity across a quickly dividing globe. It showed me life-saving examples of people who survived what I needed to survive and it broke my heart open at the things no one should have to.

I like to misquote Carl Jung when he said something almost like “a paradox is our most valuable spiritual tool.” I’m not interested in finding the elusive, singular hack that will make screen time less alluring forever. I’m not interested in a lifetime of cycling through eras of detox and excess. Vacillating between the high of a new regimen and the crash of shame when social media works once again, exactly as it was designed.

I’m a therapist. I know that hacks can be tools, or bandaids. A self-help, step-by-step, sales pitch plan can feel like salvation, but it’s not the medicine of being in an evolving conversation with yourself. I am more interested in making art. I’m more interested in learning to tolerate the tension between social media’s danger and its magic. I’m more interested in learning to like myself, unsolved.

And when I’m learning the same lesson, again, the hard way, I know that my allies in finding safe passage through the digital age are art and writing. Creativity is how we imagine a different future.

So I wrote us this book. It’s a place to start that conversation with yourself about what is really happening between you and your screen; who profits from the ways it harms you, and how to protect the parts of it that are genuinely good, because parts of it are.

So if you are ready to join me—an art psychotherapist who both loves the life her phone enables and desperately needs to put it down—we’ll make some art. We’ll sit in the stunning and maddening paradox, and we’ll find creative ways to author our own definitions of real wellbeing when we choose to be on social media.

And together we’ll find the art of thriving online.

podcast

Post Views: 5,664

Christina Rasmussen: Life Reentry: Exiting the Waiting...

Christina Rasmussen — July 23, 2024

There are certain experiences that are completely and utterly devastating, yet seemingly impossible to articulate and share. Grief educator and author Christina Rasmussen calls these our “invisible losses”—and they are often more perplexing and difficult to navigate than the overt tragedies we all endure in life. In this podcast, join Sounds True’s founder, Tami Simon, in conversation with Christina Rasmussen about her new book, Invisible Loss: Recognizing and Healing the Unacknowledged Heartbreak of Everyday Grief.

Filled with unique perspective and compassionate insight, this dialogue explores the place of uncertainty and stagnation known as “the waiting room”; the original self, and how we get disconnected from it; the impacts of an “us vs. them” experience; how to identify your primary invisible loss; three inner narrators—the survivor, the watcher, and the thriver; reclaiming our forgotten “thriver memories”; the cost of seeking approval; saying yes to what you’ve always wanted to do; cleansing our patterns of fear; the practice of mental stacking; the Life Reentry model; reframing our experiences and taking action from our wisdom; why the place of death is also the place of creation; and more.