There are so many wonderful mysteries not only in this world through which we journey but also right within each of us! For instance, did you know that the distance from your heart to your toes is, proportionally, approximately the same dis­tance as our sun to the most distant planet in the solar system? And did you know that all creatures — from the common garden gnat to the great whales that swim the seas — all have roughly the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime? What a mystery is this heart whose char­acter we share; how unfathomable, how attractive, how powerful, how potentially perfect is its undiscovered promise.

But down through the ages the Wise have spoken of a still deeper mystery. Great prophets and sages alike have long taught that this heart hidden in the center of us — our own physical heart — is but a three-dimensional reflection of an invisible Celestial Heart whose outpouring life secretly animates our own. Imagine something like a water drop shot out from the spray of a huge coastal breaker — complete in itself with all the qualities and capabilities of water, and yet only a microcosmic version of the timeless ocean from which it springs and to which it returns — and you’ll have some idea of this wondrous vision.

If this description of the heart strikes you as being majestic, tire­less, and timelessly magical, that’s because it is just that! And in some ways each of us knows this heritage to be true. Each time we intuit our native home to be among the unmeasured stars, or sense within us a vitality and capacity to give from resources without end, we have felt the beating of this Real Heart that dwells within our Hidden Self. And strangely enough, it is this vast potential that we feel beating in us that often makes our present state of Self seem so unsatisfactory, a captive of our own unre­alized possibilities.