How do you keep an open heart from breaking every day?
Here are ten tips from within and outside the box:
#1. Remember that you are a lantern, a flashlight, a watch tower in the dark. There is no need to react (ever) with fear or anger. You have the courage to reach inside the box. You have the courage to be held.
#2. Care for yourself. An open heart may suffer because you have moved it into dangerous territory. Not every situation requires your sacrifice. Certain types of giving move you too far from center.
#3. Remember the Universal laws of compassion—be and react with pure honesty but also non-violently and with a heart overflowing with forgiveness—like our friend Gandhi, ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ add a sprinkle of that guy Jesus, ‘forgive them for they know not what they do’.
#4. Sing and dance every day.
#5. Open up your heart to love beyond your imagination—make it a daily practice. Go beyond surface-level, default poisons (greed, anger, fear, delusion and yes, even ignorant bliss).
#6. Love Life itself, and all the experiences it contains. The pains, the cruelties, the joys and triumphs. They are all part of being alive. To love means loving indiscriminately. To love deeply means to expand.
#7. Move past the masterful illusory of the mind and its magnificent abilities to distract you from the present moment. Instead of living in a constant parallel universe of the angry past and the worried future, spend more time right here and now.
#8. Realize that some people aren’t equipped to receive the full force of your love. To send it to them may throw their world into chaos. Love these people gently, with your understanding instead of your passion. And know that there are always people who receive you, in full.
#9. Don’t be attached to outcomes, or try to control or force them either. Being the best you that you can be, sincerely, compassionately, creatively, is doing your part. You don’t need to do more than that. Let the reaction of the people around you be spontaneous, mysterious, magical and something that is intuitively gained. (We can’t force anyone to love us or to feel love.)
#10. Accept that sometimes your heart’s just gonna break. It’s okay to let it.
…..Laurana Wong & Tanya Lee Markul
there is this knowing that we cannot undo, cannot feel better about, cannot understand……our world wraps around us, pulling us toward deeper awareness and a cogency not easily earned without a spacious heart…..
And Only Light Will Remain
On the level of the world, there is horror, sadness, pain, grief and even terror in the air. At this moment, there is an almost apocalyptic sense of things starting to fall apart. I think our task is to open to that, to feel it, to embrace it…and then to snap out of it.
For beyond all this, if we gently extend our perception beyond the drama of the world — usually easier to do when our eyes are closed — we see something else: billions and billions of people in the world who are good souls with tender hearts, who want the world to be a kind and beautiful place, who want to laugh and create and play with their loved ones — and who are sensing, as you and I are, that the deep lovers among us had better step up. Our goodness is so needed now. In the words of Frank Ferrante, “Only angels can defeat demons.”
Close your eyes and allow yourself to imagine — even better yet, to know that this is not your imagination — a golden web uniting all the love in every heart, all the billions and billions of loving people in the world, and to hold that vision for at least two minutes. If enough of us make this a daily practice — building of course to more than two minutes — then no one whose heart beats at a less loving vibration will be able to act in a malevolent way. it will simply not be possible, once the collective vibration of love becomes so high.
We allowed this problem to happen, for a room not filled with light will always fall into darkness. In any way we have ordered our world according to this or that, but not to love, we have made ourselves vulnerable to darkness. But now we know! And now we can fix it. Now we can use our minds as they were created to be used. Now we can see the unity among us we have so willfully chosen not to see. We can forgive ourselves and others for our mistakes. We can dedicate our lives to love in a way that we have never done before. And then, in hidden yet sparkling concert with all the billions of other souls who are doing the same all around the world, we will co-create with God a wave of love and light so great that ISIL — and any other of our sleeping brothers who have arisen like demons from our darkness nightmares — will be gone from our midst. For we will have awakened. And only light will remain.
Amen…..Marianne Williamson
fierce angst meets fierce grace
We learn the way
by knowing our hearts.
…..Ivan M Granger
