News at IAM: 2000

March 1, 2000
Contents

  1. Live seminar in Ipswich
  2. The new Webcourse
  3. New feature on our webpage
  4. Conference in July
  5. The Role of the Heart

Live Seminar in Ipswich at the Equinox

On March 18 and 19 Puran and Susanna Bair will lead a Level 1 seminar in Heart Rhythm Practice at the Main IAM center, in Ipswich, MA. This course is limited to 16 people, which allows us to offer "Dharshan," which we can't offer with larger groups at other locations.

Dharshan is a process of one-on-one meditation with a teacher, which reflects back to you the established qualities and new developments in your heart. This view of the beauty and power of your own heart is very helpful in understanding the reason for and growth opportunity of your current life challenge.

The course also features a sun-rise meditation at one of the most beautiful beaches in New England, just down the road from our center, a few days before the Spring Equinox.

New material will be presented in this seminar from the "Exercises for Life" that complement Heart Rhythm Meditation to make up the comprehensive method called "Heart Rhythm Practice." If you've had a Level 1 course in the past, this seminar will recharge your meditations and give you new tools for carrying the heart-centered condition into life. If this is your first exposure to this method, you will be given all the tools you need to get started.

For more details, click here.

The new Webcourse

The new webcourse just started on Monday. This course is a three-month exploration of the five stages of Heart Rhythm Meditation. It is the first time Susanna has led a webcourse on her own. For details, click here.

The next webcourse will be a "Meditation Forum" under our virtual home, the dome of the heart. In the Meditation Forum, you can experience the stages of Heart Rhythm Meditation and its applications by progressing at your own pace through a series of rooms within the dome. Each room will have its own leader, an Adept who will help you attain that stage of the practice and find within yourself the corresponding verification signal. Puran will be responding to messages throughout the Forum and writing the instructions for each room.

Look for an announcement of the Meditation Forum in the next few weeks. Some details we can provide are these:

  • Rather than a course for a limited time, the Forum is designed for on-going membership. You will be able to subscribe to the Forum on a month-by-month basis, or for a whole year.

  • Rather than moving through the stages with the same group, as in the webcourse, you will meet new people in each room, as you decide to progress. We expect these meetings will become very meaningful to all the members and give tangible form to the caravan to which we all belong.

  • Our experience is that a deep relationship develops with the teachers through the frequent, personal messages one receives and witnesses. The development of this relationship is frequently mentioned as one of the benefits of the webcourse, and we want to make this experience even stronger in the Forum, over a longer period.

  • Verification will be offered by the leader in each room.

  • Each room, corresponding to a stage in a level of the practice or an application area, will have its own artwork.

New feature on our webpage

Our website now receives 1600 hits a day, from 1500 different people a month, located in 50 different countries. To honor our frequent visitors, we've added a changing, weekly feature on our home page. When you go to: our Home Page, you'll see "New this week," a series of links to stories and writings from the IAM teachers.

Conference in July

Would you like to have four solid days of meditation and focus on your heart? That's what's offered at the Second Annual Conference on Heart Rhythm Practice, July 14-17. It will be held again this year at the rural Sufi community called "The Abode of the Message," near Albany, NY. This is the site of one of the first Shaker communities and the home of the founder of the Shakers. Many of the original buildings are still in use.

One of the most-loved aspects of last year's conference was the sharings-from-the-heart circle in which each person spoke to the group. We're keeping that, as well as the large-group meditations that gave us such a powerful sense of the Universal Heart that encompasses us all.

This year we're adding a Teacher Training session that will run for two days. Many therapists and health-care professionals are already teaching Heart Rhythm Meditation to their clients and patients. This training will lead to certification as a teacher backed by the Institute, enabling one to lead public seminars and certify the participants. Even if that is not your calling, you might enjoy and benefit from this training that provides the behind-the-scenes experience of why Heart Rhythm Meditation works so well compared to other methods of meditation.

For details, click here.

The Role of the Heart

As the Sufis see it, the heart is the fruit or the flower of the plant of which the soul is the seed. The heart is the whole object of creation. The beauty of the flower or the fruit is the proof of the beauty that was only a potential in the seed. The production of the fruit is the purpose in which the whole life of the plant culminates. If a plant lives but produces no fruit or flower, it has failed. But if it makes a fruit, the plant will continue to live through the seed of that fruit. Beneath the rose is the rosehip, its seed.

Beyond the soul is the soul of the soul, the spirit, which is one. So we reach unity, point Alpha, by going through our own souls. Beyond the heart is the heart of the heart, the Universal Heart that is in all hearts and of which all hearts are a part. We reach unity again, point Omega, by going through our own hearts. Our hearts accumulate our life experience and convey it to the Universal Heart, which absorbs it all. The purpose of our lives is to contribute our life experience to the One who ultimately experiences it.

Out of the flower of the heart a new seed is produced. All that is assimilated by the heart results in changes to our DNA which is the new seed expressed to the next generation. Did you know that DNA can be changed by life experience? Luther Burbank showed that 75 years ago when he produced roses with no thorns by talking to them and saying, "You don't need your thorns here. I will protect you."

Burbank was a mystic botanist. The plants believed him because what he said was a reality in his heart's energy. His protection became a real experience for them, and their DNA was changed. Today you can buy Burbank roses that are descendents of the roses that lived in his presence, and they still have no thorns, so many generations later.

Healing and accessing our hearts enriches our lives and makes our connection with each other more beautiful and meaningful. But the ultimate reason for doing this work with our hearts is that it affects the heart of humanity and causes an evolutionary development that is our gift to our children and to all children. Once the heart of humanity is touched, a change in the DNA of humanity is created. We can affect many more than our own direct descendents. That's the significance of "The Hundredth Monkey" incident where the learned behavior of monkeys on one isolated island spread instantly to monkeys on another isolated island.

The other part of the role of the heart is that it contains within itself all that we need to accomplish our mission of developing the heart. The tools for building the heart are contained in the basement, so to speak, of the temple that the heart can become. It is our attention to and exercise of these tools that cause the heart to develop. The tools are courage (F), compassion (D), collaboration (W), creativity (F) and compelling idealization (H). These correspond to the Height, Depth, Width, and Forward dimensions of the temple of the heart that will be constructed.

With love, Puran and Susanna