Flowering Hearts Over Coffee

 By Chalita Photikoe

“Setting right relationships is a major step in the path of Awakening.” –Sri Amma Bhagavan

As I sit in my childhood home having coffee with my 84-year-old mother, I am reminded of this teaching. My mother is moving back to Thailand and I am here helping her clean up the house, update her will, go through her finances, open joint bank accounts, and sign power of attorney forms. I have been praying for the setting right of my relationships for many months.

Our morning ritual consists of listening with an open heart to whatever my mother wants to share over a cup of coffee. Sometimes she reminisces about when my kids were younger. Other times she brings up my dad who passed five years ago. She says the current heatwave feels like Thailand and wonders how she’ll live in that kind of constant heat. She pats my hand and tells me she is going to make one of my favorite childhood dishes for lunch. I listen with an open heart.

More recently she's been sharing about past hurts. How she has judgements against other people. As she puts her hand over her heart she tells me she feels guilty about cutting off certain friends. She quietly talks about her fears of leaving the country she has known for 55 years to go back to the home of her origins. She has tears in her eyes, and my eyes well up too. I listen with an open heart.

She tells me how she has come to prefer more quiet than constantly listening to friends’ gossip. She shows me pictures of her siblings in Thailand and the fun trips they are taking. She shares that another friend from nursing school recently passed away. Her biggest fear is falling ill and not being able to care for herself, or losing the ability to walk. I listen with an open heart.

After many years of trying to understand, analyze, judge, and struggling to change my mother, I find myself simply experiencing her. When I pause to experience her, I’m able to more truly see her, beyond her personality or what she is saying. I can recognize the Divine Presence shining in and through her. I can witness her innocence. I am so astonished by this that tears run down my face.

“If you experience people, your heart flowers and synchronizes with Earth’s heartbeat. My Grace flows and your problems would be solved.” -Sri Amma Bhagavan

Our hearts naturally flower when we are drawn into the heart of God. The Divine Source within us awakens as the clear, silent, infinite, open space at the center of our being. When that happens, the living waters of Spirit can overflow with causeless love and causeless joy. It is a contagious and ongoing process! As we are healed and transformed within, people around us benefit, our relationships are restored, and our outer world begins to blossom with more grace and miracles. Over time we can dissolve in Love and Oneness with all that is. That is the Flowering of the Heart.