Deepak Chopra
This weekend I was in New York City, a happy participant at the launch of Fred Matser’s new book Rediscover Your Heart, at which he urged us to do exactly what the title says. That means we don’t act from what our head tells us, but from what our heart tells us - and since our heart is always loving and always in the present moment, we can let go of grudges, doubts, history, prejudices and so on….. Those are all things created by our minds, not our hearts.
Fred wasn’t alone in saying this. His book has a foreword by no less a person than Mikhail Gorbachev, and was introduced that evening by Carolyn Myss, Deepak Chopra and Jerry Jampolsky. It was an extraordinary occasion, by any standards.
But the words that stuck in my mind most, amid so many wonderfully expressed thoughts, were these by Deepak Chopra, ‘You can’t fix the world if you don’t you fix yourself first.’
We can fix anything, but we must start with ourselves. If we want to fix the problem of violence in our cities we must address the problem of the violence in our hearts first. That doesn’t mean we don’t have police details and so on. It means that we must look inside our own hearts first so that we don’t just seek to repress whatever it is we don’t like, but we take the time to understand that it is a reflection of some part of us.
That’s puts Voltaire’s suggestion that we should cultivate our own gardens in a very different light, doesn’t it?
on July 21st, 2008 at 10:55 am
Yes, Allan, I agree - we really do need to cultivate our own gardens, open our hearts, practice loving kindness.
That is the first step in transforming the culture. If we each worked on our own transformation, we would not have the time or the need to try to impose our values on others.
I often notice that if I feel a strong need to change or fix someone else or some situation I hear about it,I am usually projecting my own baggage onto the situation, or using the issue to avoid my own baggage. It is often really me that needs the ‘fixing’.
And at least in part, that is what writing memoir is all about ! Opening our hearts, and taking responsibility for our lives and the stories we bring to them.
Thanks Allan, - I’ll add Rediscover Your Heart. to my ( very long) books -to- read list
With loving kindness,
Jean