How do you think with your heart?
An attempt to answer a reader’s question – by ~Jean
Posted on March 14, 2013 by Jean
It’s a tough question to answer, because it is something almost impossible to talk about.
Heart (Photo credit: mozzercork)
To think with your heart, you have to be living in your heart, and living in your heart is a personal experience that each one of us has to personally engage. When we’ve been there, we absolutely ‘know’ it, and for everyone I know who’s lived there, there isn’t another place on earth we want to spend our time. Most of us will spend our lives trying to get back there, or trying to stay there.
The journey into my heart began unbeknownst to me in my late fifties with a desire to finally get my life right. It had never been right, and I’d been told all sorts of lies, like my body chemistry was out of balance, so I had to take drugs, and, yes, I would soon get better. Not! I was on those drugs for over forty years, and I never got better, because I never had a life, not like the life I thought I was supposed to live. (How I finally got off doctor prescribed drugs is another story altogether and perhaps for another time.) I’d even told myself the lie that God was telling me this was all I was supposed to have/do, and I needed to accept that fact. How else to make sense of it all?
About seventeen years ago, I was scrubbing a toilet in our guest powder room, and I sat back on my haunches to listen to a not-very-nice comment to me from my ex-husband. It was not until about a year later that I realized the voice that spoke to me then was not me simply ‘having a thought’. It addressed me in the third person and said, “Jean, your life is almost over, and you haven’t lived yet!”
I didn’t shut that voice down, and so the Universe’s energy began to act, within weeks it became almost like a maelstrom, and to make a long, amazing story very short, I simply walked out of a life I couldn’t tolerate anymore and wound up living in the basement apartment of someone I hadn’t seen or heard from in over forty years on Capitol Hill about one-half block from the Supreme Court building, in Washington, D.C. I’d already started divorce proceedings. By doing what I did I threw myself into both PTSS and the Kundalini Awakening. I was so asleep that I never even saw any of it coming.
Although I knew there would eventually be a divorce settlement, I was broke – and I was utterly alone.
It was being alone that actually saved me, because getting my life together was entirely up to me. There wasn’t going to be anyone coming along to save me. I decided I wasn’t going to move forward until I’d figured out what had happened to me, and so I looked for a therapist. I went through seven of them in rapid order, because they all told me it would take the rest of my life to heal. I said that I was already old and didn’t have the rest of my life; there were other things I wanted to do besides heal. Finally—and I’m really short-cutting the story here, I called a woman whom I’d repeatedly missed when I’d tried to contact her earlier. We connected, and there was something in her voice, I would now say it was the level of vibration, when she told me, “Jean, I think I can help you,” that told me indeed she could—and she did. We worked together almost every day for maybe a year. I’ve never seen another therapist since then, about ten years ago, because the tools I learned from her have been sufficient for me to manage my life and to find and get the help I’ve needed as I moved forward.
In the beginning, it was total hell, because I felt like I was pulling myself up out of a deep, dark well by my finger nails. Every time I made progress, however, I knew it, and that is what kept me going. I can’t tell you how many times I called her in total terror, asking her to teach me to think differently about something—and she always did. There were no secrets, there was no weird silence, as I wandered around in my own inner darkness. I knew exactly what we were doing and why: rebuilding my primal brain; learning lessons about how to move through life that my parents were simply unable to teach me; just being ‘heard’ as for the very first time in my life I regurgitated the nightmare that had been my life—and was validated as a human being instead of being told I was the problem. She offered advice that kept me safe so that in my ignorance I didn’t get into trouble, but more than that she empowered me all along the way and she taught me how and why she was doing it. She gave me the tools and instruction I needed to walk through life. She taught me about energy and how to read it, how to know when the energy coming back to me was good, or bad, and then she taught me what to do when it was bad in order to keep myself safe—and even what to do if it was good.
More than anything, though, for the first time in my life I experienced genuine, caring love from a woman who had also walked my path back from sexual abuse, which, by the way, I did not remember until I was in my early sixties. To this day, I carry the look in her eyes deep within my heart when she told me I would eventually hold her love for me within myself, and that I wouldn’t have to look outside for it anymore, that love would be within me. I can remember walking the Hill with my little dog, taking photographs of the beautiful dooryard gardens there, and simply practicing getting in touch with and feeling the love energy that comes from our hearts and trying to hold the feeling of her love for me in my heart. I worked at this for days on end. I must have recited at least a thousand times, I’m not the best, but I’m good enough. I made up my mind I was going to heal these wounds, somehow. I didn’t know how, but I knew how a journey of a thousand steps starts, and so I started.
I remember well the first time in a healing group when I did a rebirthing exercise and felt the love of the group for me. It was almost too much for me. I liken the feeling I had then to what I imagine it is for someone who has been in a concentration camp for a lifetime (which my therapist said I was), who has imagined having a milkshake or root beer float and a cheeseburger, but who finds to their dismay when they are finally free, that they simply can’t eat that kind of rich food yet, not after the horrible rations they have been forced to eat for all those years. I had to begin to feel love in tiny, tiny bits until my body adjusted.
All of us who were working together there at the Center were being honest about the fact that something wasn’t working in our lives. We all wanted something better than what we’d had, and we were willing to work for it. We weren’t wearing masks. We weren’t trying to appear ‘whole’, because we knew we weren’t. This honesty, this willingness to get down to the bottom of our wounds to find out who we really are is a necessary part of the pathway into our hearts. If we want to live in the higher dimensions, I believe it is a necessary part of each person’s pathway.
When we are open and honest about ourselves, we no longer judge others, using standards that have absolutely no meaning in the higher dimensions: color, race, education, money, outer looks, cars, houses, clothes, jewelry, and on and on—endlessly. We see others as people on a journey of their choice, like we are. After all, we all incarnate here to learn lessons. Probably the most important lesson to learn is that outer ‘things’ are meaningless. After all, we don’t know why someone decided to be short, or ugly, or poor, or very rich, or handsome. What did they hope to learn when they chose these attributes? We just don’t know. This time around, before they incarnated here did they decide they want to move to a higher dimension? That is something we don’t really know either, yet we judge them for not ‘getting it’, over and over again, and I include myself here, as well. It is so hard to break away from such judgments and just love someone where they are!
Believe me there isn’t anyone here who doesn’t have their fair share of wounds, because our wounds, which are what create our separation from God, are a part of Duality. When we have done the inner work to heal our wounds, then we have a chance to live with some clarity from within our hearts. To me, this means that our hearts rule our minds and our minds respond in service to our hearts. We become a thoroughly integrated human being. If we have clarity and are in touch with our hearts when trying, for instance to make a decision, our hearts will never, ever give us bad information. On the other hand, our minds are all about keeping our egos safe, and getting rid of our egos means learning humility. Humility means we can acknowledge willingly that we don’t have all the answers, that we don’t always have clarity about a situation, and that, yes, our egos still get in our way. . . and we are sorry that we’ve made a mistake. In other words, we aren’t into lying to ourselves or to others anymore about who and where we are.
Huge numbers of people aren’t even close to wanting to try to live this way, and that can present problems for those of us who do. Are we supposed to love such people anyway? Are we supposed to expose ourselves to them? I think the answer is a partial yes, because ‘yes’ doesn’t mean we have to be close to them, or let them get close enough to us to hurt us. We don’t have to throw our pearls before swine. Turning the other cheek doesn’t mean being a doormat! (That was a huge one for me! I can remember the exact, precise moment when that gem of a gift was given to me!) Importantly, this means, as well, that we don’t judge other people for having a different focus in their lives than we do. We are all going to return to God, sooner or later, and no matter how we may feel about it, it up to them when and how they decide to make their own personal journey.
What I think this means is that we begin to seek out people with whom we feel good, people who can like us for what, where, and who we are. More and more, we are slowly finding one another. How do we know when people like us? We begin to read the energy that comes from them! Do we feel comfortable with them and can we be genuine with them, or are we always measuring our words and actions. If the answer is the latter, then in the long run, their energy probably isn’t healthy, and such friendships are headed for problems. Of course, there is also the very subtle problem that we may unconsciously be hiding ourselves behind a mask, and we may not be presenting ourselves to the world as who we truly are. We may have been doing this for so long as a means of protection that we don’t even know we are doing it. Then, the responsibility to be ‘real’ with people before we judge them as wanting is most definitely ours. Gradually, gradually, one at a time, though, we begin to create new friendships and a very different life, but until we do, we can live in a lonely place.
In the meantime, as we begin to fill up our space and time with new friends, we can also experiment with things we would like to ‘do,’ things that perhaps we have never done before. Take a class, learn a new skill. It needn’t be earthshaking or life-changing, but it will introduce us to a new world and people who might have similar interests. One of the best books I know for getting into your heart, is called, believe it or not, The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron. (It was always my dream to start a support group of people who wanted to follow this book’s prescription. I say ‘believe it or not’, because in my opinion this book is not just for artists! It is for people seeking to create a better life for themselves. Take a look at it, and you likely will see what I mean. Yes, you can look at it in its narrower focus, but as I see it, its focus is much, much broader: If you will follow its prescription, you will without doubt begin to change your life.
Why do I say this? Because this book teaches many of the things I was taught by my therapist, and they worked for me! I lived the new, quantum view of the world: when I changed how I felt, I changed my life! I drew different energies to myself
Recently, I moved away where I lived before because although I deeply love the people there, they simply couldn’t hear me. The windows shades on their eyes came visibly down to me when I would try to speak of my inner journey and of the things I was discovering about the financial situation, about ETs, about the science of the times in which we are living. These are highly educated people with well-developed intellects, and I have since learned these are the kinds of people who seem to have the most trouble with this shift in consciousness. It seems they have taken pride in their well-developed intellects, but, sadly, they have trouble understanding that life isn’t going to be lived from that place anymore, and they don’t seem to want to hear this fact. Each time they rejected me, and I tried joining many different organizations and groups, instead of shutting myself down, which they specifically told me I should do, in order to belong—you know the old phrase, go-along-to-get-along, I kept on going farther and farther down the rabbit hole. I came to the place where I had decided what I was going to do with my life? How was I going to survive?
Some friends had told me I should start a blog, and finally when nothing else worked, I sat there and cried out in pain, asking if that was what I was supposed to do, and that was how my blog began, for which, by the way, I have never spent one single penny. For the first time, the energy that came back tome from it was good, and so I knew this was something the Universe, the quantum field, God wanted me to do. It has kept me going through some pretty rough times as I have continued to heal.
I’d tried for eight years to move from this place I’d intended to make my final home, a place I’d thought was heaven when I went there, and I never could, mostly because moving meant stretching my finances too far. Over a year ago now, though, I travelled with a group in Arizona into the canyon lands headed by Ron LaPlace, who teaches for Drunvalo, and then we studied at Drunvalo’s Illuminated Heart Workshop. This wonderful journey changed my life. The entire time, we lived in our hearts, and it was an amazing experience. You couldn’t have found a more diverse group of people, but we were/remain all ‘in love’ with one another. There was no judgment, but there was support, guidance, and love enough to go around. When a couple in the group heard of my plight concerning moving, they suggested I come live there in their town.
I started the ball rolling out in Sedona, and apparently the Universe was on board, because it supported me all the way. When I got home, I began to make arrangements to have things packed and moved, someone looked at my condo twice, bought it without inspection, and as I boarded the plane two-and-a-half weeks later to a place I’d never even seen, the check from the sale was deposited in my bank account!
When I got fearful as I made the transition to a totally new life, I had only to recall how I had felt living in my heart during those two weeks together in Sedona, and I found the courage to continue on my path. I’d learned to read the energy, to trust not only myself (all those years on my own), but the Universe, and I’d dared to be who I really am, even though I received put-down after put-down from good people who simply couldn’t understand me. I’d learned not to judge them, but that I needed to love myself first and foremost, because iI’d learned that if I had ‘me’, then I would be okay. I’ve found a small group of people where I now live who are on this path. There are wonderful alternative medicine and healing modalities available here, some of them very advanced, making use for instance of quantum biofeedback. Lots of people here are at least very much aware, and for that I am thankful. Many do not understand things as I do, but they give me the beautiful gift of allowing me to be who I am, and that as I see it is indeed a very special gift.
This is pretty much in a nutshell what my journey to living in my heart has been like. Do I live there twenty-four hours a day? No, I don’t. Like everyone else, I get lost, but somehow I do get back there. It’s all about living life surrounded by a feeling of love. My life was so awful, I was willing to die—or get it right. I didn’t want to settle for making do. Not everyone makes that choice, but somehow I think it was a part of my contract before I came here. I don’t want to experience Duality anymore, and I’ll do whatever it takes to leave it behind. I also have the sense that whatever it is we each decide to learn when we come here, we never choose something we cannot accomplish. Do we sometimes duck our contract with ourselves after we get here? Maybe, but I just don’t know, and I can’t speak for anyone else. Anyway, I hope this helps you understand what it means to learn to live in and think from your heart. Perhaps my words will start an interesting discussion.
Hugs and love to you all,
~Jean
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