From My Heart to Yours

The heart knows. I can see it. I can feel it.

My heart knows when I am lying to myself. When I am hesitating. When I am sabotaging myself.  When I am trying to avoid truth. When I am doing what is easy instead of what is risky.

It knows. And I don’t always listen.

And it’s okay. But it also hurts. The small cracks these moments leave in my heart have caused the structure to be a little less forgiving, a little more unstable, a little less willing to get too excited.

And it’s okay. It’s safe. I am keeping myself safe.

And my heart is different from my intuition somehow. They’re definitely collaborators and conspirators (sometimes). But they’re not the same.

My heart is the place where I know strength and structure, the container that could hold anything, even when it’s broken and worn. It is a place where trust and surrender live and love because they can and they must.

My intuition is the place that shows me how to act. It seems more ephemeral to me. Like the quick breath on the back of your neck when no one else is around – and you don’t fear it. You recognize it.

Here’s what I know (so far) about tapping back into the heart. (Maybe this can be a Valentine’s Day gift to yourself. Even if it is a highly commercialized and annoyingly pink holiday.)

Your heart knows no seasons. (And I also think it perks up with all of the chocolate.)

Come Back to Your Heart Now

What I know to be true is that what I think is not what I know. The way I respond and react in the world is often not logical or reasonable. I respond because that’s the way I’ve responded before when I’ve felt a certain way or been with a certain person. I am a constellation of habits. And these stars guide me to easy places, to places that I used to call home.

To tap into who I really am, I need to separate from what I know. This doesn’t mean I (or you) need to run off to a deserted cabin in the woods (though that sounds GREAT sometimes). What it does mean is that it can help to disconnect from time to time. Get away from the computer (after reading this blog, of course). Step back from who you normally hang out with. Find a new place to explore. Read a new book. Journal about the things on your mind right now. They’re important even if no one knows.

I take a new role, the role of the one looking at myself. I see myself as a whole person who has lived a life and learned some things and has feelings about it all. I stop and look at those feelings. I am sad. I am mad. The other day I texted some friends about how I was sad. And I just put down my phone and cried. And I also watched myself cry. I offered myself compassion. Of course, you feel like this now. Of course, you are having a hard time. That makes so much sense. Of course, my darling, of course.

And the one that I actually find the most challenging is: don’t try to fix anything. I let it be messy and awful and horrible. I sit in the feelings until they are a little tamer and a little more manageable. I put the internet aside, the self-help books away, and even the coping strategies that ground me are placed in another room. I just allow myself to be the way I am. Because the more I do this, the more I see how my heart can hold it too. My heart is not something that even needs fixing. It needs care. It needs validation. It needs the magick that is being so present that you can’t and won’t turn away ever again.

Don’t Look Away

It is easy and delicious to dissociate. To pretend it all has meaning or to find the bright side. It is so easy for me to vent and rage for about five minutes before some reflex in me says: “but others have it worse” or “stop being such a downer.) The more I look at myself and the way I am, the more I can feel myself holding myself. The more I can deepen into the heart that is mine. That knows and cares and holds.

My heart is a wondrous creature of life, my life. It might give a side eye to intuition and it might remind me again and again about how much it has been through. It is rooting for me with every beat, with every moment I make it through.

I invite you to take a listen, a look, and a breath to be with the heart of yourself. For me, this is the magick that fuels all other magick. And notice, I didn’t talk about love. But that’s there too.