Keep Your Heart Open

[majestyjo]

Journey To The Heart

Keep Your Heart Open

Keep your heart open, even when you can’t have what you want.

It’s easy to keep our heart open to life’s magic and all its possibilities when we have what we want. It’s more of a challenge, and more necessary than ever, to keep our hearts open when we can’t have what we want.

Even on the best journey, things happen. Plans change. Things shift and move around. This shifting and moving causes doors to close, relationships to end, blocks and frustrations to appear on our path. For now, that is what we see. For now, what we know is disappointment. We can’t have what we want, and it hurts. When that happens, our tendency may be to shut down, close our hearts, forget all we’ve learned.

Keep your heart open anyway. Consciously choose to do that. Yes, you can go away, you can leave, you can shut down, but you don’t need to. Now is a turning point. If you choose to open your heart, even when you can’t have what you want, miracles will unfold.

One of the most difficult things for me to to in recovery, was allowing myself to become vulnerable.  When I close myself off, I block myself from my Higher Power.  Yet my disease is ssttill their, with no defense from the world as we see it.  It is a disease of perception, so what we seem is best confirmed with someone else.  Is this what you see?  Is this what you meant?  We can save a lot of hurt by communicating and having an open mind and heart.

[majestyjo]

More Language Of Letting Go

Get to know yourself

I opened the curtains in the King David Hotel overlooking the walled city in Jerusalem. This entire trip had been an adventure, but not the exciting kind. Nothing had gone as I planned. Usually on my excursions, I met people, connected with them, learned lessons, broke bread, and had fun. This trip had been different. I had barely spoken to anyone.

One night in the hotel restaurant, a woman motioned for me to join her for dinner. She spoke Hebrew. I spoke English. We sat and ate in silence. I had been to Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula. Now here. And that’s the closest I came to human contact on the entire trip.

The past week, I had traveled through Safad, a town in the Holy Land. It was the home of the kabbalah, the mystical sect of Judiasm, and one of the places where the purest, most intense form of meditation had been born. Although I had just wandered lightly through that land, something peculiar had happened to me, ever since I’d been there. I could hear my every thought. I was acutely aware of each emotion I felt.

It was as though my life had become a walking meditation.

But I was feeling lonely, and feeling bored.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Why haven’t I connected with anyone on this trip?”

“Yes, you have,” was the gentle answer I heard. “You’ve connected with yourself.”

Rays of light were streaming in through the window, in those first few colorful moments when the sun fills the sky. Music from a flute floated up from the courtyard below. Maybe even when we’re bored and lonely, all is well in the world.

Take some time on a regular basis to write in a journal, to meditate, or to do both. You’ll meet an interesting, exciting person. You’ll get to know yourself.

God, help me welcome those quiet spaces in my life as opportunities to connect with myself.