Open My Heart

"Love is not a matter of getting connected. It is a matter of seeing that we already ARE connected within an intricate web of relationships that extends throughout all life. It is a realization of 'no boundary' -- that we are all made of the same stuff, riding through time on the same spaceship, faced with the same problems in the world, the same hopes and fears. It is a connection at the core, that makes irrelevant skin color, age, sex, looks or money." 

--Anodea Judith from Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System 

I am reading about the 4th Chakra this week - the Heart Chakra - trying to learn how to open my heart. 

This has been a life-long process for me. Ever since I was a child I have felt like there is something "wrong" with my heart. I had a heart murmur at birth, but it supposedly went away after a few weeks and has not been an issue since. 

As a child I would watch Guiding Light with my mom. There was a character on the show (also a child) who had a heart problem and was in danger of dying at any moment from a heart attack. I convinced myself that I had the same condition and I was always putting my hand on my heart to make sure it was still beating. 

As a teenager, I felt like I had a hole in my heart. I had the feeling of WANTING boys - wanting them to like me, wanting them to want me - but I never really felt like I loved anyone. The one time I had a chance at true love in high school I pushed that boy away out of the sheer terror of it. It is a regret I carry with me to this day.

As I got older this "heart trouble" manifested itself in physical exercise. I have always been afraid to run too fast, to push too hard. I always keep myself just below - or sometimes far below - what I can really do or accomplish just so my heart won't burst. 

If I do run too fast or push too hard physically my mind starts to shut down and I ache and feel terror until I stop. I have never pushed beyond that place of sheer terror to see what lies on the other side, but I have a feeling that someday I am going to have to in order to get to where I want to go. 

A few years ago I had a dream about a past life that I believe explains a lot about my "heart problems" in this lifetime. 

In the dream I saw myself as a young mother - thin, petite and blonde (the very opposite of what I am in this lifetime) - in a hotel room in Las Vegas being murdered by my much older lover and the father of my child. He stabbed me in the back of the heart and neck, cutting off the love and communication centers, separating me from my son. 

When I think about this dream I feel a tingling in the back of my neck and the center of my back.

A few years ago I did an exercise to discover my soul's mission for this lifetime and this is what I got: "Open My Heart." I think I know why. I think I have started the process. Now I just have to see it through. 

As I do yoga and meditation and breath work and chakra work I am starting to feel something in my heart - an aching, an opening - and it is scary, but I am trying to breathe through it and let love in.

Today, just after I read the passage I quoted, I opened up my email and there was a message from The Universe in the form of my Daily Om from Rumi: 

In the sea of love, I melt like salt
Faith, Doubt - they both dissolve.
A star is opening in my heart

A star is opening in my heart. Yes, I think it is.