What does it mean to follow your heart?
Does it mean you do whatever you like? Your heart is more powerful than you think; your heart can lead you to illumination, if only you have the faith, courage, and insight to follow it.
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Illumination, the goal of human development and the longing of every heart, means manifesting in your body, mind, personality, and behavior the pure qualities of Love, Harmony, and Beauty, to explore the potentials of all being, and to accomplish the purpose for which you were created, becoming a fully-realized version of yourself.

Over the millennia, spiritual masters of different traditions have laid out the steps of illumination, but these have long been carefully guarded secret teachings, shrouded in mystery, hidden in paradoxical stories and koans.

• Farid ud-Din Attar, who wrote The Conference of the Birds, described the first 9 Steps of the Path in allegorical terms.
• Abu Nasr as-Sarraj (died 988) described the path of spiritual development through Step 9, though in a way that can only be understood by those who have been through it.
• The Yogi Patanjali described a sequence of meditations from dharana (concentration) through seven levels of samadhi, which describes a small portion of the path in great detail.
• In the 20th century, Erik Erikson, Daniel Levinson and Clifford Anderson described their research into adult psychological maturity, but psychological maturity is far from the end of the path. Their studies end at Step 5 of the Path because they didn’t consider what’s possible in spiritual maturity. Furthermore, spiritual maturity does not correlate to physical age.

The path to illumination has often been presented as purely spiritual, never touching on worldly concerns, seeing spiritual development as something that happens far from the pressures of everyday life. Now, Puran and Susanna Bair present a heart-centered path of spiritual transformation that integrates all parts of a complete life — relationships, career, family, goals, and health — into a radiant, loving, fullness.

Puran and Susanna are spiritual masters and lineage holders in the tradition of Universal Sufism as taught by Hazrat Inayat Khan. They are the founders of IAM Heart and have taught Heart Rhythm Meditation to thousands of people over the last 35 years.

Follow Your Heart — Table of Contents

Dedication
Acknowledgments
The Map-Makers
1. The Process of Becoming
2. The Three Big Questions
3. Realization
4. The Benefits of Each Step
5. Mentoring at Each Step
6. Life as a Journey
7. The Greatest Statement
8. The Labyrinth
9. Step 1: Commitment
10. Step 2: Testing
11. Step 3: Knowledge, Competency and Trust
12. Step 4: Idealization
13. Step 5: Expertise
14. Overview of the First Five Steps
15. Step 6: Unlearning
16. Step 7: Unity
17. Step 8: Guidance
18. Step 9: Illumination
19. The Steps of Relationship
20. The Steps of Career
21. Stage Four of Service
22. Internal Signs of Progress
23. The Evidence of Progress
24. The Culture of the Heart
Appendix 1. The Parable of the Bull
Appendix 2. The Conference of the Birds
Appendix 3: Phrases for Each Step
References