As you know we held a public meditation for each of the Zodiacal signs in 1999.  These experiences were wonderful. Our very first effort at the Griffith Park Observatory was attended by about 35 people.  We did the meditation work in a very exposed area on the grass just to the side of the main entrance to the Observatory. 

It was a nice warm Southern California day and many local Los Angelenos were out and about at the Observatory. We sat in a large circle and did the meditation. Since there were so many people about, there was some concern about sounding the OM aloud, but we did; and it seemed to hang in the still air and reverberate for some time. We also sounded the Mantra of Unification aloud at the end of the meditation.

When I opened my eyes and looked around, there were people looking at us. But perhaps because this is Los Angeles and the unusual is not so unusual, or perhaps because the energy of love was present in abundance, the faces turned toward us were mostly smiling and the looks being directed at us were appreciative and friendly…at least to me. After the meditation we buried a rosy quartz heart in the center of the circle and some of us “planted” quartz hearts around the area and gave a few away to some of the people who were out that day.  It is interesting to think about the hearts we planted all over the City…they are there radiating the quality of love with which they were impressed.

Our outing at the new Getty Museum was the best attended, and it also attracted the most attention from the public. We made our circle in a corner of the lawn just off a main path that crosses over a small stream. The museum grounds were packed with tourists-- many from foreign countries-- and we were very visible sitting in a large circle on the lawn.

After the meditation as we were touring the museum, many people came up and asked what we had been doing. Each of these people were given an explanation of the Los Angeles Heart Project and a rosy quartz heart.

To me, the most wonderful and powerful of the meditations took place in the heart of Los Angeles in a rose garden which was exploding with bloom. This garden is in Exposition Park which is in the center of a very old and densely populated section of Los Angeles. It is a wonderful garden about 100 yards long and 50 yards wide. It is laid out in geometrical sections with different varieties of roses in each section. There are paths of grass between each section and it is altogether a lovely place.

On this very beautiful, balmy spring day, we were a smallish group of about 15. We sat in a circle on the grass where two or three paths intersected.  There were many, many people in the park with their children and cameras. There was at least one wedding group taking photos and having a gay old time.  There was a lot of chatter, laughing and conversation in at least three languages going on when we started the work. As it does, the meditative power created a small circle of stillness around the group. Then as we moved into the meditation the stillness grew, and the circle widened until it enclosed a relatively large area.  The garden around us became very quiet. Conversations, chatter all stopped, and held for the entire silent period of the meditation.  There was no sense of force in this.  The space became still very naturally. I believe we were working in a very old and very sacred place and simply tapped into the power of the garden’s Deva. Anyway it was a hair raising experience for all of us. When the meditation was over, it was as if life resumed. The people started moving about and human sounds again filled the air.

Another very wonderful experience was had by the group at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a complex dedicated to the performing arts in the center of  downtown Los Angeles, and the home of the Los Angeles Symphony. There is a large square in the middle of two of the buildings.  In the center of this square is a fountain in the shape of an even armed cross.

 At the very center of the cross is a wonderful sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz, “Peace on Earth”.

 After the meditation the group made a circle around the fountain and sounded the Great Invocation. Later one of the group managed to place a quartz heart in the center of the sculpture at the feet of the Madonna.

 Each of the meditations was held in a very public place frequented by lots of people, both local and tourists. Each had a special and seemingly different quality, and all were very powerful whether there was a large or small group doing the work. At the Los Angeles County Medical Center, we meditated next to a military compound that had tanks and trucks in it. We held a meditation in what is called Little Tokyo in an area just East of the main downtown district of Los Angeles. At the Huntington Gardens we meditated under a canopy of very old elm and eucalyptus trees.

As modern disciples working in the Western world, we often do not have the option of doing our meditative work in retreats, away from the “real” world of our everyday lives.  We have had to learn to work in the midst of what D.K. refers to as the “jungle of the Occident” with all of the noise, bad air, milling people, traffic and general commotion.  Our experience at the Los Angeles Public Library required all of our skill.

We were sitting on a grassy knoll about 50 feet from the corner of 5^th and Grand Avenue. It was the only unencumbered space available.  About 30 feet to one side of where we were sitting, the stairs leading to the main entrance of the library come up from 5^th Street.  Right under a large sign that prohibits bikes, skates and skateboards, a group of boys were very engaged in riding their skateboards down the stairs, as well as the cement banisters of the stairs and jumping a curb at the bottom.  Very active. The boys were apparently unaffected by the meditation but the sound of the skateboards seemed to take on a rhythm and was somehow wrapped or folded into the silence, which was intense.

Our last public meditation for 1999 was held by a small fountain in a garden area of the Los Angeles Union Station.

Hearts Around the World

Another aspect of our Heart Project had to do with the dispersal of the small quartz hearts that we blessed at our meditations.  We had hundreds of these hearts, many of which are buried and hidden in various locations around Los Angeles. In addition several hundred have been given to people all over the United States and the world. There are small, quartz, heart-shaped parts of the Heart of Los Angeles in just about every state, including Hawaii and Alaska.  There are several dozen scattered in strategic locations in Washington D.C., The White House, and the Lincoln, Jefferson and Vietnam memorials to mention a few. There are hearts planted in the United Nations Buildings in both New York and Geneva.

Hearts from the Los Angeles Heart Project are now residing in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, London, Bristol, Bracknell and several other cities in England and Scotland, a number of cities including Paris and Yerres, in France, several cities in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, India, in several provinces of Canada, Rio de Janeiro, Niteroi, Barra Mansa, and Sao Paulo Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico… The list is long.

Two of the most exciting of these Los Angeles heart transplants occurred in the mountains. Last May, just after the Taurus full moon, a group of Heart Workers planted a heart in the Alps adjacent to Mount Blanc on the terrace of the summit of Aiguille du Midi, about 12,400 high.

And last August another group of heart workers planted a heart on a sacred rock at 10,000 feet in the High Sierras of California.

Heart Project 2000

This year we plan to hold only four public meditations. These will be  held on the cardinal points of the year, the solstices and equinoxes. Our first outing will probably be on Sunday, the 19^th of March. This year we are planning to visit places where decisions are made in the very heart of Los Angeles. We are still scoping these places out.

One additional heart meditation outing is planned, and that is to visit the heart we planted in the High Sierras. This meditation will take place on August 14^th at the exact time full moon in the solar month of Leo.

As one of the results of doing this work this year, we have learned a lot of things -- among them the power of doing intergroup work and the fact that the heart is a dynamo of  joy, adventure, and discovery.  We have discovered that love, the central aspect of the heart, is known all over the world. People everywhere resonate to its frequency without words, without forms of any kind.  It’s the note, the music of life. We all hear it the same.

For my fellow heart workers and friends on the Path at Arcana Workshops, we are loving you,

-tom