The Recognition of Our Heart (Karen Sprute-Francovich)

This talk involves a discussion of the relevance in our lives of the Pratyabhijna Hridaya, a sutra text written about 1,000 years ago during a flowering of practice and tantra in India. It was written in Sanskrit and contains twenty sutras, which are short statements or pearls of spiritual wisdom. It rests on the view that manifestation arises out of consciousness which steps itself down into form. Many in the West have the experience of growing up and learning that we are not enough and so constantly strive for improvement. But we suffer when we identify with our limited circumstances. The path of spiritual and yogic practice can loosen misidentifications and bring us to recognize our heart, our real identity as the whole in every part. We can open to Grace, possibility, and undivided love as well as purification. The first sutra in a sutra text generally contains the whole transmission. Feminine pronouns are used in this sutra text which is in keeping with its tantric roots. The Goddess of awareness overflows into form, which expresses itself in the multiplicities of creation which are never separate from their source. We are each an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. Every perspective is necessarily partial and limited to an unknown degree. Contraction becomes so dense by sutra nine that there is no remembrance of connection to the whole. Sutra ten begins the great path of return. All the players in myths are us. Instead of running away from parts ourselves, we can see everything as an aspect of the Goddess with “jaw-dropping wonder.” Sacred texts are alive, and classic ways of studying them are discussed. We can recognize truth in ordinary life, but we remember and we forget… Karen is a teacher of all the aspects of Yoga--the physical and philosophical, the scientific and the mystical. She is a long-time student of Lee Lozowick.