The heart box actually evolved from a synthesis of several meditations. The first involved opening the windows and doors of my mental house to the Light of God, in order to allow Him to penetrate my inner darkness. The second of these involved releasing all fear, as an emotional contraction of my heart, and so allowing my heart to remain open and loving in the face of vain imagining about outward appearance. The third concerned the idea that my self-image, or ego, as a by-product of my relative consciousness (carnal mind), was little more than a mental mirror. Only in the case of my ego, this self-reflective mechanism produced the self limiting equivalent of prison walls because of the habitual self-preoccupation it tends to induce. This as a direct result of an inherent bias towards, identification with and attachment to form; a very real tendency which similarly predisposes me to define a physical room in terms of its surrounding walls, instead of the inner space which is more truly its nature. 

 

Well, to make a long story short, I got a bit carried away one day and decided to go beyond opening the windows and doors of this mental house of mine. I decided to go all the way with God—to raise my mental roof and drop the mental walls I thought I had erected between myself and Him. In the very moment that I did, however, I had a rather profound insight—an unfolded box, such as the mental house of my ego, was really a self-enfolded and enclosed cross! God was not only out there, he was in here! I was not merely an isolated, separate, self-enclosed box. I had a hidden capacity to be ever so much more—- to make of myself living cross through which the Spirit of Divine Love might be made manifest. A Divine Child who never-the-less remained hidden in the darkened recesses of my own self-enfolded, egocentric, carnal nature until I was ready and willing to take up my cross daily and follow Him. 

 

What a wonderful image—my own mental house, closed and dark, finally completely opened to God’s Light, Life and Love, a living revelation of His own Heart—His very own Son shining forth from the midst of that once dark mental glass of mine. Thus, in the face of all appearance, all my self-imagined fears, all I had to do was remember to keep His Heart open and unboxed. Needless to say, I fell in love with the imagery, and immediately sought to translate it into a concrete and tangible reminder of “Christ In You, the Hope of Glory,” and the heart/box/cross was born. May The Perfect Gift serve as a constant reminder of God’s Perfect Gift—Eternal Life through Christ Jesus. May it also help us remember to keep our mental boxes open in the face of adversity, to keep our love for one another ever flowing, to crucify our self-love and self-interest on the cross of here and now, and, thereby, to allow the Love of God in us to shine forth in all its Glory.

 

©1992 RFHay

 

(Note: The number of Heart Boxes (HB) made and shared over the previous 14 (now 24) years is now up to 141. Original versions were made with mahogany and held together with brass hinges. Subsequent boxes have been made of nearly every wood imaginable, including some rather exotic laminates that used birch and black walnut.)