Affairs of the Heart

Sit a moment with your eyes closed and tune into the sound of your own heartbeat. Can you sense the physical presence of the heart beating in your chest? Can you imagine what it looks like? Can you hear the heart beat or do you feel the pulse somewhere in your body? Do you get the sense that your heart has a personality of its own? Is it like a wee animal in your chest? Does it have an energy around it? Does it glow? Or is it dark? What feelings do you hold in your heart? Is it robust, is it fragile, is it brittle, is it hard, is it soft?

Is it loved?

We might take good care of our physical heart by eating less salt, watching our alcohol intake, reducing saturated fats, taking exercise and lowering our blood pressure.

Do you take care of your etheric heart? Do you nurture your heart centre?

The heart is the most powerful instrument of peace that we have at our disposal. It has the amazing capacity to transmute hatred into love, to filter emotions and increase compassion. Our external worlds are our internal world made manifest, so what is your heart projecting? Is it the broken heart of tragic victim or is it the brave and tender heart of a warrior of light?

Mrs Tweedie said that the Divine is unlimited so in order to love the Divine our hearts must be broken so that their capacity to love is also unlimited.

Kahlil Gibran said that pain is the breaking of the shell of our understanding.

Today I have listened to 4 different stories of heartbreak. It felt like the right theme for this post. These 4 stories confirmed for me what I have sensed for a while - the collective heart is suffering. The heart of humanity has so much sadness. Can we apply Mrs Tweedie's vision to the collective heart of humanity - are we breaking our hearts together so that as a race we can break the shell of our understanding and expand our immense capacity for love?

My poor heart has been some through some tough times in my life. It experienced loss at a young age and more recently took a kicking in and out of "love". Unbelievable as it is to me now I used to think that I was quite hardhearted. I used to shut down at other people's pain and be cold and hard in the face of tragedy. I recently recieved a shamanic healing in which I saw my heart as an animal; I might have expected my hardheart to be a leathery snappy crocodile but to my surprise it was a tiny, fluffy, terrified little rabbit.

How I wept when I realised that I had left this baby rabbit to fend for itself in a hard, cruel world. It was this realisation that helped me to see my own vulnerability and to show myself compassion. (My heart is now a healthy happy thumper of a rabbit bouncing merrily and freely over meadowlands in the sunshine)

The heart chakra is called Anahata in sanskrit, which literally means the "unstruck sound". In a way the definition unstruck sound defies understanding - for me it hangs in my mind as a starkly beautiful and profoundly spiritual awareness without my mind being able to actually process the meaning. It has meaning of course, the unstruck sound is about potential, it is about the melody as yet unsung, the love that is yet to be loved, the power beneath the still waters, the iceberg beneath the water.

The heart that beats and feels and breaks and weeps is the tip of the iceberg. The full heart, the heart that is as wide and long as the universe itself is untouched by the suffering of our lower selves. Would it be too much for me to say that, for me, the heart is God. It is the union of spirit and earth. It is the centre of creation and of destruction. The yin, the yang. The light and the dark. They meet at the heart centre.

How can you look after your spirit heart? How can you nurture yourself?

Well, what do we do for the physical heart? We avoid fat that clogs it, salt that makes it work too hard, alcohol that thins the blood and stress that tires it.

What clogs the spirit heart? Heaviness, sadness, tragedy, loneliness and self pity (the fat we indulge in).

What makes the spirit hard overwork? Caring more for others than we do ourselves, over analysing ourselves, not holding ourselves in compassion, buying into life's dramas (the salt that adds "flavour").

What thins our spirit blood? Anger, small mindedness, lack of compassion for others, bitterness and lack of forgiveness - for ourselves and others.

What stresses our spirit heart? A loss of hope, of vision, a sense of futility and pointlessness and an absense of light.

So. To look after the heart the remedy is simple. Be lighthearted. Love yourself as much as you love others. Forgive yourself and forgive others. Culture compassion. Breathe. Release patterns of thought and negative behaviours by examining them and noting to yourself how they now longer serve you. Rest. Laugh. Love.

If you care for people you love then love yourself before you can care for them no longer.

If you only have yourself to love then make sure you do it well, you have no excuses!

Namaste