Karma Yoga is fundamentally a way of connecting to the purity and authenticity of your intention. It is an offering of yourself, letting go of all that is limited, letting go of the personality and the ego into the Self, an offering to the very depth and essence of your Being.
Through this surrender, you become a vessel through which Awareness, Presence, Stillness can move and express. And from here, you can act from that Stillness in all aspects of your life.
Without training, it is very difficult to simply drop everything and be absolutely present for more than a few seconds. For example, although the culmination of meditation is this simple presence—just sitting, nowhere to go, nothing to do—if you try this offhand, you’ll notice that almost immediately, the mind steps back in and that presence is concealed.
So in meditation, we use anchors for the mind. This could be awareness of the breath, repetition of a mantra, visualization, etc., as suggested by various traditions. It matters mostly the anchor is stable, calming, and points towards that silence beyond the mind.
Just as you have anchors in meditation that support you in opening to Stillness, the same is true for the practice of Karma Yoga, which is none other than meditation in action. Whether you are engaged in a formal act of service or simply going about your daily activity, you can use anchors that bring you back to Presence, back to the Present Moment, and reconnect you to the depth of your Being.
Anchoring in the Heart Center
A very powerful anchor, which we also engage in Hridaya Meditation, is anchoring in the Heart Center.
The heart is a space of natural intimacy and depth. It is your connection to the most intimate core of your being.
Even on a physical level, there is something about the physical area of the heart that people generally feel deeply linked to their sense of self. When you refer to yourself, you may even point to it—“Yes, it’s me!” Or when you feel something very intimate, some deep emotion that shakes you to your core, you touch your heart.
From a non-dual perspective, how could it be that any part of the body is more indicative of the Self? Isn’t the Self everywhere and everything?
Yes. And yet, Ramana Maharshi says about the Heart Center: “Everything is the Self. There is nothing but that. So the Heart must be said to be the entire body of ourselves and of the entire universe, conceived as ‘I’. But to help the practitioner, we have to indicate a definite part of the Universe, or of the Body.”
So, from your limited perspective, you find this kind of threshold within the realm of limitations that points beyond it. Resting your awareness there, you deepen gradually from an experience of the heart as an object of concentration to an organ of perception, a way of feeling and understanding through the heart, and, finally, it opens into the open space of Reality itself, not only your heart but the Heart.
Anchoring again and again in the Heart Center is a way to connect directly and immediately to the depth and intimacy of your own being, a sense of coming back home. You come into a space where you can simply drop away any masks, any plans, any filters, any expectations, any effort to control or manipulate the moment or the experience.
The Heart Center is a space in which you become naked and transparent, allowing all external elements to drop away. It connects you to an intimacy with yourself and also an intimacy with the Present Moment. As filters and veils drop away, you are simply transparent and available to the Moment as it is.
Awareness of the Heart in All Activity
Just as in meditation, this anchoring in the Heart Center can begin as a formal action: again and again, you return your attention to the Heart Center as an object of concentration.
After some time, as you may have already experienced in meditation, the Heart starts to reveal its natural depth, natural intimacy, and sweetness. And the more you rest in this, the more the openness of the Heart, the openness of your Being, comes through and becomes natural. You are simply resting in the Heart, without any effort or contrivance.
As you start to stabilize this centeredness in the Heart, you stabilize your centeredness in the intimacy of Presence. Its sweetness pervades your being and your life more and more. It is no longer just about where your mind is focused but a quality of awareness that pervades your entire experience, underlying all activities, all thoughts, and all states you might experience.
As you go about your day, you will encounter so many different thoughts, resistances, different aspects of yourself, etc. And yet this core, this stability, becomes the background of any experience. You feel this intimacy as the background of your life. No matter what happens on the surface, this depth, this sweetness, this Presence is there.
There may be thoughts or no thoughts. You might again be absorbed in the personality or different tendencies as they arise. But at the same time, you’re aware of this deeper dimension of your being, and you can rest back in That again and again. You can allow That to become the stable foundation from where you are living, where you are anchored, seated, settled.
In the Bhagavad Gita (15.15), Sri Krishna says, “I am seated in the hearts of all living beings.”
God abides in your heart. When you abide there, there is no separation between you and the Beloved.
Simultaneous Awareness
Very practically, throughout your day, you can start to cultivate and practice a simultaneous awareness of actions on the surface and the stability of the depth of your Being.
You are working, talking, cooking, cleaning, or whatever it is you are doing, and at the same time, you bring awareness into the Heart. Again and again, no matter how many times your mind wanders off, you simply repeat it, bringing the awareness into the Heart Center.
This isn’t a practice only for when you have quiet time on your meditation cushion. It’s for your entire life, including (and especially) the times when you’re totally lost in the mind and its distractions. Whenever you notice that you are absorbed in thoughts or strong emotions, anchor in the Heart Center.
Of course, there are other anchors you can use, like awareness of the pauses in the breath or asking, “Who am I?” These work just as well in daily life as in meditation!
Centeredness in the Heart, however, has something very sweet and natural about it, and it can be particularly effective in the midst of intense emotions.
In those moments when you feel swept away by something external, pause, take some time, and center in the Heart. It can be as simple as that. No need to force or change anything; just remember that core of your being. Remember that something exists—that you exist—beyond all those fluctuations, which are by nature superficial and impermanent.
This anchoring in the Heart Center and attitude of detachment, so inherent to Karma Yoga, comes from recognizing that there’s a deeper domain of your being, something deeper than the personality and deeper than the layer of thoughts. Anchors can help you to open and to recognize this domain, to center in this Presence, no matter what else you are doing.
David is a Hridaya Yoga teacher and contributor to our blog.
