Love’s Journey: Polishing the Mirror of the Heart

This program is eligible for a Hemera Fellowship. Learn more about eligibility here.

IDEAL FOR: All Levels

Why, tell me, if what you seek
does not exist in any place,
do you propose to travel there on foot?
The road your self must journey on
lies in polishing the mirror of your heart.

– Sanai

No matter our faith or practice tradition, like moth to flame, we are irresistibly attracted to that wellspring of love we call the heart. Deep inside of us, we know loves’ worth and how easily the heart becomes dusty and obscured. Seeking a remedy, we set our sight on polishing this mirror, allowing our innate luminosity to reveal itself.

There is a cost for this polishing: the gradual surrender of our limited self to the fullness that we are. At first, such a prospect may fill us with apprehension and the impulse to turn away. And yet, just like the moth, something draws us to this firelight we call love. And so, we willingly turn. Turn, mercifully, toward our vulnerabilities, turn toward the ways we have been less than true to ourselves and in our relationships with others; turn toward that which has hindered us from embodying our deepest values and ideals. All of these self-protective habits are what the Sufi’s call the accumulated “rust” on the heart. When met warmly and used wisely, our conditioned vulnerabilities become polishing agents revealing our radiance.

So dear friend, take heart, this is our lineage – the path of love that human beings across all contemplative traditions have walked for millennia. Integrating awareness practices and meditation, poetry and story from the Sufi and Buddhist traditions, we’ll co-create a community engaged in guided and silent practice and what the Sufi’s call Sobhet – a supportive, structured, and intimate form of meditative conversation and inquiry that invites us to bear witness to ourselves and one another as spiritual companions joined together to heal and transform the mind and polish the mirror of the heart.

The course is open to all. Attendance for the entire course is a prerequisite for participation.

How do you ever expect
for your heart to become polished
like a mirror
without putting up
with the pain
of polish?

– Rumi

Tuition (Includes Meals & Accommodation):
Private Bedroom, Private Bath – $2,190
Private Bedroom, Shared Bath – $1,390
Commuter – $1,065

Polishing the Mirror of the Heart Schedule >