Shooting Stars

"Thinking with our brains is like shooting blanks now, whereby thinking with our hearts will be like shooting stars." --Lauren G Gorgo in her energy alert from January 10, 2012 

I love getting the latest scoop on what is going on energetically in the world and I love it even more when it affirms my experience or my own intuition. More and more these days I find myself second-guessing what I am thinking in my head. 

For me this is revolutionary. I have been a "thinker" all of my life. Thoughts spinning and churning all day - and sometimes all night - long. Plotting, planning, figuring, designing....It's exhausting! 

And the great news is - I don't have to do it anymore! 

The time for thinking with our heads is over. It's our hearts that are leading the way now and thinking with my heart is so much less work than thinking with my head. A LOT less exhausting, a lot more clear and a lot more full of LOVE and KINDNESS and BLESSINGS and BLISS and all good things than my head ever was. 

It truly does feel like I'm shooting stars!

May you find Christmas in your heart AND under your tree this year!

"He who has not Christmas in his heart will not find it under a tree." --Roy L Smith from www.goodreads.com

Going out to buy some roses...

"Misery and joy have the same shape in this world: You may call the rose an open heart or a broken heart." --Rumi

Dropping into my Heart

"Either everyone is raised up or no one is."

--The Universe to me in a reading with my friend CF in 2006

At the time I received this reminder from the Universe I didn't really have any idea what it meant. I knew it was somehow pointing out my tendency to judge and exclude, to put myself on a pedestal above others in intelligence, spirituality and common sense, but back then I still thought that was where I deserved to be. 

Everyday since has been a wake-up call in that department and I think I am starting to realize that I really don't know much. No one does. At the same time, we know it all. We have inside of us the potential for everything in the Universe if we can just allow ourselves to access it. Sometimes we can; more often we cannot. Such is the life of a human being. 

But sometimes, if we are lucky, we do get glimpses of the all-encompassing Oneness of the Universe. I got one such glimpse last week on the day of my "ah-ha" moment about heart vs. head. 

Once I understood that the answers I am looking for are in my heart and not my head, I started to work on dropping into my heart to see what I could find there. For some reason that day it was pretty easy to get there. 

I took three really deep breaths and I focused on my heart. All of a sudden it was like a room opened up in my heart that I could rest in. I sat down and got comfortable there. 

The thing I noticed first was that there was a lot of love in this place. A lot of love. And it wasn't head love; it was the real deal, heart love. 

Head love is the love we normally feel, the love that is talked about in books and in movies. It comes from what we have been taught about who is worthy and who is not, what is attractive and what is not, what is to be desired and what is not. True love, real love, pure love comes from the heart and it is universal, eternal, unstoppable and does not discriminate

I put this love to the test. First I thought about those I say I love in the world outside the heart - my husband, my kids, my family, my friends. Yep, I loved them in my heart too, but it was different. It was a purer kind of love, a love that did not depend on what they did or how they treated me or what kind of a mood I was in that day. It just was. 

I decided to go one step further. Was there love in there for people I did not like, had bad feelings about or was still holding grudges against from the past? I thought about a few of these people. People who had hurt me. People who had wronged me. People who had ignored me or made me feel less than. Yep, I loved them too. 

I kept on going. Could I find love in my heart for the most heinous of criminals, the wrong-doers, the evil ones of this world? I thought of kidnappers, child molesters, Hitler. And, yes, there was even love in there for them! 

When I dropped into my heart I finally understood what the Universe was trying to say, what other spiritual teachers have said, that no one is irredeemable, no one is excluded, no one is outside of the love of the Universe.  

Doing this and feeling love for everyone - those I love, those I hate, Hitler AND Ghandi - felt like a glimpse into the heart of the saints and masters. They LIVE in this place. They are somehow able to find this room and stay there so that when they go out into the world everyone they meet feels this love. 

That, to me, is what it means to be enlightened. 

I have been trying for the past few days to get back there. I have not succeeded. But I am determined to keep trying, to keep dropping into my heart until I find a way to stay.

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.