Processing Negativity through the Heart

I’d like to give an example of how negative emotions, when intentionally processed through your heart, turn into powerful consciousness-expanding experiences.

Loneliness can be quite painful. I know people who were so incredibly affected by loneliness, that they built their lives around trying to create so many outings with people, attempting to limit the amount of loneliness they would have to feel.

When processed through the heart, loneliness morphs into longing. When one is open to the experience, longing clearly becomes a deep inner call to find our way back home; to our true home, our true origins, our true self. The longing itself has the power to be a tool that directs us on our path of truth and love.

In the 1980s, before I met my teacher, and after I got bored of reading spiritual books, I found New Age Music. I found a small store in Berkeley, Ca. called Sound Choices. I started buying cassettes in an entirely different genre of music than I had been exposed to. Prior to then, I was used to only R&B and Pop.

In this store, I found some music by an artist named Omar Faruk Tebilek. I took the cassette home. The very first song is called, ‘A Call To Prayer”. As I listened to this song, I felt it take my consciousness deep into regions of my heart that I had never been. I felt it bring out a sweet but agonizing cry from deep within; a cry that called for my home and my self, in a way I had never felt before.

I would sit in silence and listen to it over and over again.