The heart is like a mirror. When we dust it off, we are able to see ourselves. The dust is all our stuff - guilt, anger - this stuff is reflected back to us. Practice removes the dust from the mirror of our hearts.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that emotional burdens can cloud our self-perception, and self-reflection can help clear these distractions.
Krishna Das uses the metaphor of the heart as a mirror to illustrate how our emotional struggles, such as guilt and anger, can obscure our true selves. By practicing self-awareness and emotional healing, we can clear away these negative feelings and achieve a clearer, more honest understanding of ourselves.
In practice
In a meditation workshop, one might share this quote to emphasize the importance of self-awareness.
If we know anything about a path at all, it's only because of the Great ones that have gone before us. Out of their love and kindness, they have left some footprints for us to follow. So, in the same way that they wish for us, we wish that all beings everywhere, including ourselves, be safe, be happy, have good health, and enough to eat. And may we all live at ease of heart with whatever comes to us in life.
Grace surrounds us and holds us like the sky holds everything in it … and as soon as I find a way to let go of my story, I keep seeing over and over again that grace is always here and it includes the forgetting and the remembering. The practice is the opening of the hand to catch the raindrops, which are always falling. If you don't open your hand, you get wet, but you don't get much to drink.
Chanting just hits you and you want to be a part of it. That’s the point of this whole thing. That’s what cuts through all the ‘stuff’. You get lit up. You don’t have to know what it means.
Love is what we are; we don't get it from somebody, we can't give it to anybody, we can't fall in it or fall out of it. Love is our true Being.
It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.
I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth.
Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper. Many times, I just sit for three hours with no ideas coming to me. But I know one thing. If an idea does come between 9 and 12 I am there ready for it.
Ridicule is the best test of truth.
When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with God, he is of no more use to his fellow men: he puts himself on a pedestal, away from the common run of men.........If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to serve.
Appear to know only this--never to fail nor fall.
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