Sekhem All-Love: Bringing the Soul Home to the Heart

Love, longing, and the body

Love can be felt through different layers of experience. There may be affection, care, longing, trust, desire, attachment and the powerful bodily chemistry that accompanies what is commonly called being in love. These experiences can overlap, but they are not always the same.

In this inquiry, begin simply. When the person is present, ask: “What would you like to receive?” Allow the answer to reveal what is actually seeking attention.

Sharing: “I would like to know what I need to receive. My struggle is that I love everybody. I have lots of love for everybody, but I have never been in love. I was married to my former wife for eighteen years, but I was gay. I loved her, but I was not in love with her. I had my husband for sixteen years before he passed away. I loved him, but I was never in love with him.

“Now I have created a new paradigm for myself, and I am grateful for it, because now I can be there for me. I am learning to love myself, but I am not opening that heart space completely to be in love. Maybe I am not supposed to be. I do not know, and I am okay with that, but I do not have the clarity to know. There is energy there.

“There are also the little voices in my head saying that I am not worthy of having love, that I am going to die alone. Those messages go back and play.”

The practice does not require an immediate answer about whether a person is supposed to be in love. It allows the energy, the longing and the messages in the mind to become visible so they can be felt directly.

Listening beneath the feeling

A song can be used to open the inquiry. This song is about love and about the different endorphins and bodily processes that can contribute to the feeling of being in love.

Some animals mate for life, including swans, wolves and penguins. Other animals respond to instinct in a different way. A male cat that senses a female cat in heat may immediately follow that powerful, overwhelming instinct. Human beings also carry powerful instinctive responses within the body.

The song moves through these questions and images:

“A fleeting high, a spark in the night, or something. Joy, dopamine, dancing inside, lifting the soul for a moment in time. But when the weight begins to fall, despair can echo through it all. We chase the feeling. Is it craving for true desire? Is it endorphins? Is it divine? Endorphin-ly sublime. Dopamine sparks joy. Serotonin calms the flame. Each emotion spills and lingers deeper still beneath the tide. True love is forever inside.

“Trust as oxytocin flows slow, a sacred warmth the heart can hold. Betrayal cuts the open sea, breaking apart the sweetest dream. Still beyond the tears and pain, love remains.

“What is love? Is it only trust and opening trust, and the ache when trust is broken? Notice the mind moving into the past, old wounds reopening. Notice the future creating fear, stories. Not the craving, not the fear. Love is here. Love is here in darkness.”

After listening, remain quiet and feel what the song brings forward. Then bring all attention into the heart. The heart is associated in this teaching with the release of endorphins, especially through the thymus gland, and this is connected with the burning or “I am in love” feeling that can arise in the heart.

Let the soul meet the heart

A previous experience of love, even when it was felt vicariously, can provide a doorway into the feeling.

Sharing: “I experienced it vicariously. It was not my love that I was feeling. I felt it through a client while giving a massage. A being came into the room who was totally infatuated and in love with this woman. The feeling was so strong that I had to back off a little to make sure they were okay. I massaged them, and I received an expression of love. I could feel that love. But that was it.”

Let that remembered taste of love become available now. Close the eyes and feel it. In a Sekhem initiation, the heart center can become activated. Patrick Zeigler describes his first experience of this as a “spiritual heart orgasm,” the deepest love feeling he had experienced. It was not connected to anyone or anything. It felt like coming home, as though the soul were coming home into the heart.

Use the earlier experience as a bridge. Imagine the soul, understood as a spiritual being, having a love for you that is very strong. Begin to feel this. Breathe it in and feel the presence. Continue breathing it in.

The All-Love mantra can support this process. When love is felt while saying the mantra, the practice can help bring attention to the beginning of the bodily response, like a small tickle in the heart. Continue to breathe and allow the feeling to develop.