Sacred Heart
While I was traversing the California coast without a place to live, throwing caution to the wind, and allowing Great Spirit to guide me, I found myself in the most beautiful place I had ever been - Big Sur. I discovered a hermitage that essentially functioned as a silent retreat with Christian monks holding daily prayers on the side of a cliff that felt like the edge of the universe. On the cliffside, each guest received a small personal cottage with a view that transplanted you firmly into the rhythm of Nature, birds flying in and out of your personal outdoor space filling the stillness with song. Each cottage had a name, mine was “Sacred Heart.” The name resonated with me immediately as I had known for some time that my ultimate mission was to come into the heart space. I had lived for so long in the thinking mind, the egoic mind, and it caused immense suffering. I knew that my thinking plagued me but had very few tools to combat it. As I trained clinically, I was confronted with information that acknowledged emotions but it was all still talked about, interpreted, and spoken to from the intellect. Not until I found modalities that pulled me kicking and screaming out of the thinking could I fully appreciate what it meant to live from the Sacred Heart.
When you begin to move into the heart space, you find yourself closer to true feelings and the truer essence of what your mind body experience is navigating in the moment. The thinking mind cannot tell truth from falsehood so it is often stuck regretting the past or attempting to predict the future, often fueled by fear and the gnawing attempt to survive as a separate being. However, what is not false can never truly survive, so the ego mind goes on and on with no resolution in sight, clawing at attempts to prove its worth when there is none to be found. As long as identity with the ego and your thinking is caught in its web, you too will be clawing for worthiness in all the wrong places. You must choose consciously to bring your awareness down to the heart space as you slowly begin to recognize you are not the damaged thinking.
You are not your feelings either but they represent a more accurate portrayal of what is meant to be experienced in the present. The heart space is always present focused and always guides you true. If you need to be with grief, loss, or other challenging emotions, the heart space will lead you to them. You can attempt to escape into thinking but this will only perpetuate the stuckness. Other forms of toxic emotions like fear and anger do not arise from the heart space. No fear exists in the heart because fear is not really an emotion, it is a survival protection against emotion. Fear is a function of the nervous system which is wired from birth to scan for danger and threat, training the brain to avoid such possibilities. Since the ego is based in the illusion of separateness, it is threatened by anything that makes it feel unworthy or unaccepted by others. Recognizing the falsity of such threat and danger allows you to move through such blockages and into the heart space.
When I refer to the heart space, I do not mean the physical organ but the energetic chakra. The feelings in this space are not the same as temporary waves of emotion that may need to pass through. Feelings of love, gratitude, and peace are timeless, just like the heart space itself. If you find yourself confused and overwhelmed, you are coming from thinking and from fear. Forgive yourself for this and remember that the heart does not promote tension or stress and always welcomes you home. All feelings in the heart space are beautiful, even the ones that bring tears, for allowing the vulnerability to emerge leads to growth and healing. As you move through the sticky feelings, you gain access to the true power of the heart, the grace, love, courage, and power. As you open, you allow yourself to tune in to a more natural rhythm and pace, a flow more aligned with universal intelligence. From this energetic heart space, you allow intuitive wisdom to guide you and to lead the way. Thinking supports heart as opposed to the other way around.
To lead by a sacred heart means to eschew the ego mind and let go of chasing, wanting, or striving. The heart knows all is provided and abundance stems from within. From this place, you find the courage to lean into perceived challenges with ultimate faith as Spirit flows through you. With faith, all experience becomes a medicine for highest growth and understanding. As the heart space expands, the light of your consciousness expands with it and your true voice emerges, a voice unencumbered by the complaints, judgments, and fears of ego. Practice coming into the sacred heart, learning the lessons meant for you, and the guidance leading you home.