This post is #4 in the blog series: Heart. See the series overview page for a list of all posts.
Heart Series recap: Remember in this heart series we are going for the gold—living our most joyous lives and contributing to the world in a positive way. We’ve talked about how the frequency of love animates our lives. Quantum research shows that we are one shimmering United Field of existence. The Circle of Light wants us to know that we have much more power than we realize. When we practice the new paradigm of consciousness, it allows the heart to supersede the brain. Yet, life is not always easy or pleasant. It’s often downright difficult. In this series, we’ve acknowledged our wounded hearts and dabbled in the practice of inquiry. Now it’s time to explore how our head often overwhelms our heart, causing us to lose our way. However, what often appears as a detriment can become a profound opportunity. So here we go, we’ll take a look at what cuts us off from our hearts.
What cuts us off from our hearts
Heart bypass #1: Mind
Spiritual emergence pioneer Paul Levy, a longtime Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, calls the usual mind
“a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul — a mind-virus within each of us and the collective …which prevents us from living our full evolutionary potential….The good news here, is that we can learn how to differentiate between our neurotic monkey mind and the actual downloads from our higher soul-self.”
But the fact is most of us have learned to lead with our minds, not our hearts. This is a problem because the heart is way smarter than the head. Research has shown there are over 40,000 brain cells in the heart. Rollin McCraty, Director of Research at the HeartMath Institute tells us that our “energetic heart — NOT our brain — is the gateway to our higher self!” He says the good news is we can entrain our brains to be in a coherent state with our hearts. For more information, go to HeartMath Institute for research, programs, and practices.
Thoughts bypass exploration: Let’s spend some time throughout the day watching our minds, consciously, like a hawk. What is the mind doing? Is it keeping us busy, hijacking our attention, or just aimlessly wandering around? Is it getting lost in social media, the news, surfing the web, or grabbing every message as it comes in? Is it replaying the same old stories again and again? Is it soothing us by humming tunes, or providing mind-candy like our next treat or purchase? Is it bringing up lots of negative thoughts, fears, or doubts? Take a look.
We want to get to know our mind’s crafty ways. We want to catch the way our thoughts limit us to 3D thinking. We want to recognize how our mind keeps us from experiencing our higher 5D frequencies. We want to see how we fill our minds with thoughts that crowd out the experience of our fuller selves. We want to prepare our mind to welcome our Higher Power. We want to learn how to have our heart show us the way.
Heart bypass #2: Feelings
Feelings are a natural part of our make-up. We humans have many, many, emotions continually running through us: anger, compassion, disgust, frustration, joy, sadness, grief, happiness, boredom, guilt, love, appreciation, to name a few. Most often, we only want to experience the positive emotions, but that is not how life works.
HeartMath science reveals that our feelings register in an electromagnetic field around the heart. It shows that our heartbeat actually synchronizes with the systems in our bodies, the Earth, and the cosmos. Wow. When our neural systems are out of sync, this creates negative emotions like impatience, frustration, and anger, and then, fourteen hundred biochemical changes have a “depleting energy affect.” This is very different from feelings of love and compassion, which we prefer, and are out to foster. HeartMath research shows that the feeling of love and compassion renews our energy and are the very “spiritual structure of our larger self.”
Jules Taylor Shore, an extraordinary therapist, looks at feelings from another angle. She says:
“Feelings are just a biological thing. Whether you like it not, emotions often run your life. But when you can have good relationships with them, they don’t rule you. You can learn to talk to your feelings, so they feel seen. You can help them feel validated. You can tell them that they are all welcome. In this way, they won’t run you. Or you can try to ignore them and push them away. Then they will run you. The thing is you don’t get to not have emotions because that’s just the biology of being human.”
In the end, we discover that feelings are a natural part of our psychological, biological, and spiritual make-up. Life presents us with emotions for a reason. Our higher consciousness wants our nervous systems to be in sync. Our higher power longs for us to befriend our feelings and uncover the tremendous higher selves that we are underneath.
Heart bypass #3: Unconscious beliefs
The heart doesn’t hurt because it is too open. The heart hurts because it wants us to uncover and release old thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that hang us up. Uncovering unconscious beliefs is an enormous opportunity. It’s a gift, a chance to dive more deeply into who we really are.
Unconscious beliefs can affect us in mysterious, irrational, and detrimental ways. For example, sometimes when I am about to step into an elevator, I feel a very subtle fear. I’ve learned that this fear is an unconscious reminder of being trapped in a windowless incubator at birth. At other times, I notice that my heart is numb. Occasionally I discover that my heart freezes and I find myself thrown back into a frightened childhood state. These kinds of occurrences happen to us because of messages we’ve learned early on. They inhibit our living a full, healthy, vibrant life.
It’s true, our journeys haven’t been perfect or easy or pretty. At times our lives have been deeply painful. Yet, through our struggles we have developed, often unconsciously, our own unique way of trudging on. Much of the time we are being influenced by the early messages we’ve adopted long ago as children. To help us clarify what’s unconsciously going on I‘ve developed a Wounded Heart Inventory. The inventory is designed to help us ferret out our own, unique, thoughts, feelings and beliefs that make us unhappy and prevent us from living our higher self.
I’ve listed various ways that we humans have learned to close our hearts down. These wounded-heart-messages come from listening and working with hundreds of people through the years—friends, students, police, executives, people with whom I’ve done readings, and my own personal experience. The phrases appear in no particular order.
Wounded heart inventory
I’m not good enough, nobody cares about me, I’m not lovable, the world is not safe, I have to do everything myself, I must be in control, I don’t trust. I have no support, feel betrayed. I’m invisible, all alone, afraid, confused. I’m an imposter, want to hide, must do things right. I have to help people. I sabotage myself. I’m lazy, must keep busy, hide behind my work. If I don’t live up to others’ expectations, I’ll be abandoned. I’m angry a lot, or afraid, trapped, depressed restless, bored. I’m too old, too immature, too small. I’m not bright enough, worthless, a failure, If I try new things I’ll be rejected, put down, look foolish. I’m too weak, too strong, have no confidence. I’m too much, not enough, defiant, picky, bitter, indifferent, obligated, irritable, insecure, emotionally needy, anxious, overly disciplined, cynical, helpless, useless, incapable, deprived, if people only knew. I’m always looking for stimulation. I’m selfish, unwanted, unworthy, need physical contact, have no personal identity, no significance. I’m often envious, melancholy, self-doubting, inhibited, emotionally blocked. I’m ashamed, self-punishing, cowardly.
You get the picture. This list could go on and on. Please read and choose the beliefs, feelings, phrases that most resonate for you. This is a private inventory, only for you. You may use what you discover later when we explore the hidden gifts of our feelings and unconscious beliefs.