Your heartbreaking perfection (and mine)
The spiritual heart, re-examined
It’s a truism in the spiritual self help arena, that our most profound personal evolution tends to arrive through heartbreak. Under intense emotional pressure, the spiritual/energetic heart quite literally breaks open, they say, and it’s that very bursting of the heart’s inflexible energetic structure, that allows new opportunities for growth, flow and higher divine connectivity—despite the dreadful pain and mess.
Um, okay. All of that is undoubtedly true.
Heartbreak can certainly be used as a springboard for greater spiritual awakening. But you know me…I’m always wondering about that so-called need for suffering as an intrinsic part of our spiritual journey.
IS there actually a need? Is great personal pain and breakage a true prerequisite for an open, flowing heart?
Or are we overlooking the obvious question here? Why is there a seeming quality of rigidity in our spiritual/energetic heart in the first place? Is this calcification of the heart simply another symptom of the disconnected world we live in?
I would say the answer to that last question is yes. It’s what inevitably happens when we perceive ourselves as separate from nature and separate from each other. Separate, seemingly, from all that is.
Tree gazing
All of this pondering about our disconnected hearts, has come about because lately Steve and I have been forced to chop a number of willow and ash trees on our land, to stop them touching the bare powerlines running directly overhead.
Trees provide a useful illustration of what happens, when we disconnect from the source of all life. Left to its own devices, a healthy living tree sends vital information, water and nutrient up from the ground and into every one of its own cells. At the same time it draws down life force from the ethers, to power up every branch, twig, leaf and bud. There is constant flowing connectivity happening, throughout its living being.
When a limb is cut off from the body of the tree, that means it’s simultaneously been cut off from the earth’s nutrients, as well as the life force of the universe. So because communication with the parent tree stops, all freely flowing nourishment ends as well.
Slowly over time, the severed limb hardens and dries out. Which is great for firewood, but not so great for the structural integrity of the branch itself: It’s been gradually losing suppleness and flexibility all along, so it’s only a matter of time before it inevitably cracks and splits under internal pressure and stress.
It seems to me the human heart is not so very different from this. We’ve become estranged, disconnected from the heaven and earth that support us. We don’t remember what it’s like to live in oneness with all that is.
It’s nobody’s fault, but there it is.
So the rich spiritual knowing and sacred life force that should be flowing freely and effortlessly through our magnificent hearts…? Not so much. Cut off from our divine truth, gradually our hearts have calcified, becoming less flexible and supple. Less attuned to all that is.
Naturally, then, breakage is necessary, if you want those open channels of nutrient-rich divine love to start flowing again.
(Because all of that infinitely awesome goodness is always right here, 24/7, of course. It’s part of who you are; part of your divine truth. It never goes away. Infinite awesomeness is the default setting of this universe, and it’s poised to flood into your lived experience, the moment your crunchy-hard heart obstructions are cleared away.) (But you prob’ly already knew all that.)
So this is why I’ve been pondering the question. Are our beautiful sacred hearts truly designed to activate and grow only under intense internal stress and agonizing pain, thereby opening the floodgates of emotional/spiritual goodness?
Because frankly, that don’t seem right.
Don’t you think?
Wouldn’t it make more sense—since we, like the trees, ARE beings of nature—that our hearts should naturally know heaven and earth connectivity, flowing with continual spiritual nourishment?
But that’s not where we find ourselves at the moment, is it.
Not unlike the severed tree limb, humans have been cut off from our own knowing for a long time. And because this is so, the magnificent spiritual heart slowly withers, hardening over time. Eventually, when outer events or internal stresses become too great, the calcified heart breaks open…potentially rediscovering its own true nature in the process.
The practice of an open heart
In one of Michael Singer’s early books (I forget which one), he speaks about a yogic practice of keeping one’s heart open, no matter what is occurring. Happiness, sadness, pain, rage or joy, the heart stays open equally for all of it.
I was really struck by that idea back then, and briefly tried it. Briefly, because it probably goes without saying that it’s a bit harder than it sounds. To begin with, it requires that you stay present enough in your mind and body, to be able to choose open-heartedness in every moment.
And then there was the question of actually wanting to choose an open heart in every situation. Which means a steady commitment to ending judgment, hatred, grudges, jealousy, and all the rest of it. Because an open heart allows for none of that.
An open heart is generous and expansive. It’s the seat of endless spiritual wisdom, and I would say it’s also the seat of true health—mental, physical and emotional. The open heart functions at a higher level; lower, grubbier human attitudes and behaviors automatically block its true sacred expression. (And lower, grubbier me, I couldn’t keep it up for more than a day or two. So that was the end of that.)
But even though it’s more or less impossible for average ordinary humans to keep it going for long, the cultivation of an always-open heart is a great aspirational practice. Especially in these transformational times.
Because we’re supposed to be able to wake up each morning utterly gobsmacked by the phenomenal radiant beauty of our own miraculous self. All the while effortlessly noticing the same divine beauty in everybody else. That’s the hallmark of a connected, flowing heart.
And this is what’s coming. It’s a good idea to prepare for it, if you can.
Because, contrary to some otherwise-brilliant teachings, it’s the heart that is the actual command center of a fully integrated spiritual human being. Its joyous wisdom and luminous power take precedence in every situation we encounter. And in this way of being, the mind humbly takes orders from its vastly superior officer.
Like it or not, we’re all heading—one might even say ‘hurtling’—toward this incredible way of being. The entire universe is cheering us on.
Seams of gold
There’s an ancient Japanese ceramic repair technique called Kintsugi. When a ceramic object breaks, rather than trying to disguise the repair, they highlight it with pure gold. And the restored piece becomes exponentially more beautiful and interesting, because of the break and repair. A true work of art.
I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.
We all have some version of ‘disconnected tree limb syndrome’ going on. Although our individual hearts vary widely in their ability to feel, empathize and open up to life, we’re all ‘on the spectrum,’ so to speak, of calcified separation consciousness.
So what to do, while we’re still dancing in and out of the ‘heartbreak is necessary for spiritual growth’ paradigm?
Not saying we should go out of our way to seek heartbreak, by the way. But heartbreak happens. And when it does…?
Kintsugi. Make it beautiful. Surrender to a restoration process greater than yourself. Let your breakage be thereby alchemized into gold, making the vessel of your own heart all the more richly exquisite for its honest repair.
The other option, of course, is the one we humans usually go with: Yet more self-protective scar tissue. And the 30 or 40 years of pointless searching that inevitably follow, for ways to soften its calcified overlay.
It’s a no-brainer, really. Go for the gold. Because we all deserve to know just how spectacular we are, right?
Besides, sometime soon, we’re all going to need those pre-opened heart cracks flowing with gold: They’ll act as ready conduits for the awesome shimmering radiance of life itself pouring in.
All in all, it’s a hell of a work in progress, this spiritual know thyself business, isn’t it?But when you look closely, you’re sure to find golden seams of pure joy.
I absolutely love “Go for the gold “