The true feeling of the heart can seem hidden and often gets overlooked in mainstream culture. Conditioned experience can train us to move in six different directions: forward or backward (past and future), left or right (likes and dislikes), and above and below (heaven and hell). Most primary and natural to humans is the direction of the heart, the discovery of our truest essence. These questions were asked of Prajna.

What was the impetus that invited you to begin your spiritual journey?

I remember having an intense yet secretive curiosity about God at the Catholic Church where I was baptized.

The death of my Godmother on my 10th birthday had a huge impact on me. Being at the noisy funeral parlor, I climbed up to look into the large casket, at my aunt's dead body, and, I still felt something was very alive.

Everyone around me was mourning her death in the traditional Irish way, yet I knew something didn't die. That unexplainable recognition fueled my spiritual search.

I needed to know what lives on, what remains, what continues after the death of the body? This type of spiritual inquiry then led me to a variety of both Western and Eastern spiritual practices.

Your children have been big teachers for you - have they influenced your teachings?

Before my daughters were born I was in the honeymoon phase of spiritual awakening. I had the freedom to live and practice according to the spiritual ideals that I understood at the time.

When my first daughter was born it was as if I went to heaven. I was working on the translation of the Ribhu Gita, a dialogue between teacher and student on the nature of reality.

I had the good fortune to read it daily all the way up to when our midwife caught my daughter. The birth was so smooth, and I had the same deep recognition of life prior to birth, a continuum, just as I felt at my aunt's death.

Two years later the honeymoon was over and everything that I never thought could happen to someone with my experience happened.

Life turned completely upside down and inside out with the birth of my three months premature twins. I was helicoptered to Stanford Hospital for this birth and didn't leave until four months later with two tiny babies who finally reached 3.5 pounds.

The very natural experience I had with my first daughter instilled a certain confidence in the innate wisdom of the body and the capacity of a child to inform the mother about what is needed. I was told these babies would never be able to nurse, eat normally, see and all sorts of things.

In the midst of what appeared to be extreme outer circumstances with teams of specialist, interventions, bright lights, and lots of noise, my heart cracked wide open, an innate life force spoke louder than the odds. These babies did nurse, they do eat and they do see.

They've gone far beyond anything that was said to be possible. One of them is now talking and walking independently.

I really don't teach much of anything, yet I continuously draw from the direct experience of being dragged to my knees over and over again with the complexities of meeting life with my daughters.

Rather than try to teach something that cannot be grasped through intellectual understanding, I point directly to this innate innocence, love and wisdom that resides in everyone. Then the light of wisdom or love can lead the way. Buddha said, be a light unto yourself. Christ said, you are the light. My daughters said, we are this light.

You give silent retreats - what are some benefits/experience for the attendee?

A primary benefit is discovery that mental noise is not a problem. It is the belief that thought is a problem that's the problem. I offer a form of guidance that relaxes the struggle with thought, emotion or the body to be a certain way as a prerequisite for meditation to happen. Once people relax the tendency to grasp or push away thinking or feeling states, they are very surprised by what happens. The mind looses its grip, the body relaxes and the wisdom of the heart becomes available.

Your practice is Hakomi Psychology - explain what is it?

Hakomi is a way of looking at how we are organized in relationship to the world. Awakening to our authentic selves is only the beginning of being able to express our fullest creative potential. Hakomi integrates the use of meditation, sensitivity (or non-violence), and the body to study and transform experience. By working at the boundary of where the mind cannot reach, we use present moment experiments to go beyond any sense of limitation or separation.

What is your greatest joy?

To watch people see, say, and do things they have never done before, just like my children. To listen to someone's story of limitation, and to watch it change. The other day, a woman came to me and said: "I'm ready to me done with phony me." She was referring to a very critical voice that controlled everything she did in life. We ran an experiment together. At the end of the hour, she could not remember ever breathing so freely, a tight contraction left her belly, her voice changed and she forgot why she came to see me. This is joy!

Prajna can be reached at 530-274-1405, www.prajna-satsang.org. A day retreat is July 16, from 11:30-6 pm-call 530-265-2084 for more information.

ooo

Suzie Daggett is the publisher of the INSIGHT Directory of Healing Arts Practitioners; (530) 265-9255, www.insightdirectory.com. Look for the eighth Edition of INSIGHT, now available at many local outlets.