Some of Julie’s early work in channel from 1987 where Micciah discusses Opening the Heart:
• Using the physical representation of the heart center to connect to the energetic open heart: Can begin by meditating on the heart chakra (energy center). Working compassionately and spiritually changes biochemistry. “Contemplate the heart of all living things.... the heart in each action you take and in each situation.” View Section
• Recommended meditations for opening the heart: Breath awareness; visualizing the flow of breath through and out of the body; bringing your devotion to everything you do; overcoming laziness. View Section

   Micciah: We greet you all, dear friends.

   Julie: We do greet you, indeed. This is Micciah Channel, and I’m Julie Winter. Micciah is an energy entity who works with me while I’m in trance, and while I’m in the trance state I have access to a point of view that seems to come from a non-physical realm. This series of programs is drawn primarily from videotapes taken during my regular classes. We want to expand our circle and include your energy and interest in our work.

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   Micciah: We greet you all, dear friends.
   Now, you wish to speak about the question of opening one’s heart. First of all, it is not really a one-time operation. It isn’t like turning a light on and then it is on. But the opening of heart energies, qualities, the emergence of a state of being that is filled with heart, is an unfolding. And, it has no end.
   You are all born into the physical world with open hearts. That is one of the reasons that babies are so compelling. Young animals of all kinds. If you put a baby in the center of a room with adults, they will all begin to watch. It is also why, or one of the contributing factors to why people who are tormented by the loss of access to their own inner compassion attack babies. It is really an attack on the vulnerability, on the openness which cannot be borne, cannot be watched, when there is much distortion. And this unfolding occurs at many levels. It occurs in all of the bodies, the physical body, — to use the model of many bodies — the emotional body. You can open the heart of your mind, of your thinking. One can be a compassionate thinker. And this opening, which is like waves of unfolding or revealing, you see. It is already the truth. All the compassion, all the love, the vastness of it, the reliability of it is already the truth. And as your heart opens, to use that metaphor, you unfold to the truth. So that you are filled with the grace and the vitality and the clarity and sometimes the ruthlessness of compassion. Compassionate heart, compassionate in the body, in the feelings, in the mind, and in the actions.
   The unfolding, or the revealing into the truth, affects your life in the most profound way. So that the risk of spontaneity, of contact, tenderness, of integrity in your speaking, that risk becomes natural. To lose the pathway into that unfolding is to lose one’s self in the mechanical, the mechanical aspects of mind, where there is just more and more thinking, no resolution, no healing. The mechanical aspect of body where you think, “Ah, this item, this body, is subject to attack from outside and attack from inside.” Where you try to fix the body mechanically. And the mechanical aspect of feeling wherein the ecstasy of ordinary life is lost, reverence for ordinary life is lost, and great excitement, the need for great excitement, or for oblivion, comes in. So drugs, alcohol, obsessively reenacted sexual encounters, and so forth come from the deadening of the feelings. So. Is this clear? The idea that you can kill for peace does not come from, uh, the spontaneous risk taking of an open heart.
   Please, what are your questions?

   Kayla: Yes. I would like to know if there is a physical correlate to the open heart. And, if there is, assuming there is, is there a... Can you start from the outside in? Can you start from the physical representation of the open heart and then feel the open heart? Can you start from the outside?

   Micciah: Well, inasmuch as there really is no inside and no outside, that whole splitting between the inner and the outer is an illusion. But it is a real illusion! So, you can start from what you perceive as your body. You could begin by meditating, literally, on the heart center, which is right here. Goes all the way through the body, and the energy center, it is in the physical body and in the emotional body and in the body of the mind, it is in all the surrounding, dancing envelopes, the diaphanous layers, that weave around and through the physical body. Physical body is full of space, you know, there is lots of space between the molecules, between the atoms.
   So, you can start anywhere. In the physical model, the experience of compassion engages the newer portion of the brain, the largest portion of the brain, the kind of compassion of which we are speaking. And it has physiological counterparts, it changes your biochemistry. When you begin to work on a spiritual path... It always sounds so sort of sour and serious, the spiritual path, but [laughter] we don’t know what else to call it. When you begin to play with that understanding of the world, your biochemistry changes. The very substance of your cells, of your organs and your bones changes. Not in any way that we think you can measure scientifically at the moment. So you know when you are feeling loving, you can feel that chemistry in your body, it is even called a chemistry in music, yes?, except you are referring there to a sort of culturally induced trance called “falling in love.” But generally, well.... A trance of its own, let us say. But, you know when you feel loving in any way you can feel it in your body. So, yes, there is definitely a physical correlate.
   How would you go about falling into this rippling of the open heart from what you call the outside in? Well, you could contemplate, you could contemplate the heart of all living things, living beings, living situations. That would be a good meditation. As you go through your day, to be mindful — heartful? [laughter] — of the heart in each action you take and in each situation in which you find yourself. “Oh well, taking out the garbage doesn’t have very much heart.” But it does. That is what we mean when we say the heart is always there and you unfold into it. Or that is one example.
   Please continue.

   Carol: Could you talk more about what kinds of meditations you would recommend to us and how they work with the heart and other centers?

   Micciah: Yes. What kind of meditative practice will support your commitment to opening the heart at every level? Simple breath awareness done as a meditation, that is, to sit quietly with your spine straight and place your attention on your breath, which is the breath of spirit, after all, will begin to quiet you in such a way, like clearing a path, that you find spontaneously you are awakening to heart. And you can also visualize the flow of your breath into the heart center and the connection of the heart all the way down to the root centers and to the earth and all the way up to the crown center and to the sky. Feeling and sensing the way the heart is connected to heaven and earth. And, as we have said before, it is a balancing point, point of union. And that sense of union can then be expressed through the meditation of devotion.
   What is that? It is the commitment to live one’s life and to express the continued falling into heart, into spirit, both falling and being lifted, through your acts, through what you do. And this relates to what we said earlier. You can choose to contemplate the heart in every situation, and you can choose to bring your heart, to bring your devotion, into everything you do. Everything. Making phone calls, cutting your fingernails. The thinking mind tends to split everything and to say, “Oh, well that’s just the junky part of life,” you know. “I will save my heart for the magnificent moments!” [laughter] “For my art, or for romance, or for sexuality.” But the practice of devotion comes through your heart and out through your hands, and it goes wherever you go and touches whatever you touch.
   We would like to say a word here about laziness and about the possibility of using the will in a compassionate way. There is always an aspect of the self that says, “I don’ wanna.” [laughter] “Life is a great deal of trouble. It’s uncomfortable. It’s a nuisance. It’s very inconvenient. You have noticed, yes?, how inconvenient life is. It is just one series of inconveniences after another.” [laughter]
   So, how is it possible, without brutalizing yourself, without using the will in a sadistic way, to say, “No. Get going!” in the morning? But not to give up the will either. So, in opening your heart in this always ongoing and unfolding state, you can bring heartfulness to merge with your will so that you become in a gentle and also in a clear way a person who is as good as his or her word. So, this helps heal the split between the authoritarian heartless aspect of will that is crushing and, uh, the part of the self that wants to evade responsibility forever, who feels it is applied from the outside and something therefore to be rebelled against. This is all very delicate, this dance, you see, because you learn to keep your word, you learn about the heartful dance of commitment, that it is for yourself, it is for your own growth. You thought it was for someone else. So, when you bring your compassion together with your will, you have a magnificent bloom.
   We will leave you now. We share with you and with all of you who are not here physically but who watch us and are with us in that way much love, much joy. And we bid you a good day. We thank you for your heartfulness.

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   Julie: Channeling is a little like that. That’s the end for now. What we do in class at the end of a session is go over the information, talk about it, evaluate it, find out what works for us individually and what doesn’t, and we invite you to do the same.