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.
Becoming is the action that births our womanhood, rather than passive act of being born (an act none of us has a choice in). This short, powerful statement assured me that I have the freedom, in spite of and because of my birth, body, race, gender expectations, and economic resources, to define myself for myself and for others.
To know your faults and be able to change is the greatest virtue.
I'd rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.
It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me - such bullshit.
Trust who and what you are, and the universe will support you in miraculous ways.
The mind of one who practises doesn't run away anywhere, it stays right there. Good, evil, happiness and unhappiness, right and wrong arise, and he knows them all. The meditator simply knows them, they don't enter his mind. That is, he has no clinging. He is simply the experiencer.
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