The Heart
What does “the heart” actually mean to you?
Fifteen years ago, I started to practice a so-called “heart-centered” type of yoga. Although I did not know what this meant, I started to experience moments of unprecedented vulnerabilty. I met parts of myself for the first time and began to feel more like myself and “authentic”. Unexpectedly, tears or a smile could come up for no apparent reason.
My heart began to melt.
A couple of years later, I started to practice meditation. The approach that touched me the most was mantra meditation coupled with somatic awareness. Occasionally, these techniques brought in me an exquisite quality of vastness, warmth, and peacefulness. One day, I even saw myself floating in a pool of golden light. Something hardly describable - some soft force - was maintaining my upright posture from within, completely effortlessly...
Litterally, I was held.
Nevertheless, I had hardly been able to acess my heart, or even love itself. My beloved, who had practiced the yoga of the heart for a while, led me and some friends one day through various experential exercises focused on the heart. Through her guidance, I finally opened to my heart.
Deep inside me, I then knew I could not be separated from the rest of the world - in contrast to what I had always thought.
The heart not only keeps us alive. It also interconnects us with all that is: the seen and the unseen, what we can fathom and what we cannot.
Love and Beyond
It’s hard to talk about the heart without speaking about love. Recently, a dear friend of mine and I discussed about love and what we meant by it. To my suprise, we did not use the same definitions.
Most (if not all) of us grew up learning to save love for romance. Everywhere, this is what we’re told and sold. Although we also know we can “love” chocolate, traveling, and our family, we still seem to keep the magic words “I love you” to intimate partner(s).
Is romance all there is to love?
According to the ancient mystic spiritual traditions, love goes much beyond. Love is the essence of what and who we are; but we forgot.
Though we easily disconnect from it, love is always here - available inside and around us. Our task is to reestablish the connection so we can remember.
A way to start is to be honest about our feelings. As poet John O’Donohue said, we humans are unique in that we have a heart; and our heart is made to feel. Our heart, in fact, can hold it all - joy, grief, fear, bliss... and love itself.
Love describes the vast capacity we all have to meet life as it is, with an open heart - a willingess to be receptive and undefended.
In a way, this is a bit what happens when we fall in love.
We’re eager to open up and take a risk, perhaps driven by an existential longing to reconnect to love. Openness and risk-taking are two sinequanon conditions to enter the heart.
Inevitably, when the heart opens, heart break too becomes a possibility.
As we develop our emotional awareness - through e.g. therapy, yoga, ancient wisdom, healing modalities, etc - we learn to experience our feelings with less fear and, gradually, we understand that, indeed, the heart can hold it all.
We also learn to express how we feel in the moment, towards a person or in ourselves. Yes, it is vulnebrale and raw. Yet the reward is that love becomes more tangible and palpable... including love towards ourselves.
Hence, when I tell my friend I love them, I mean that I feel touched by them, I care for them, and I am willing to stay in connection with an open heart. I welcome them into my life. I trust that, together, we can hold both the joys and the pain alike.
Note that love does not imply the duty to endure everything. Boundaries too are necessary; and we can set these with love. Clear limits and definitions, for example, can express our love and care for both the other and ourselves.
Respect, sincerity, transparency.
The willingness to stay open.
Friendship, kindness, acceptance.
Vulnerability.
Faith, trust.
How would YOU describe love ?
Back into the Heart
Falling in love, sharing ourselves, opening to the whole.
One dimension of the heart touches the external world.
However, yogis also emphasized the heart’ s internal dimension.
Self-love - yes, but not only.
The inner world of emotions and self-understanding - yes, but not only.
The heart carries the deep knowing that we are undeniably interconnected with the rest of the universe - and we can come to feel this truth viscerally.
