Connecting to your heart is the greatest gift you can give yourself and the greatest challenge, for to feel the joy of the heart you first have to feel all its pain and burden buried from the past. Peeling these layers off leads you back to joy, happiness, peace and love – eternal love, feelings of aliveness and contentment – the ability to just BE.
Accessing the heart is easy when we feel courageous enough to go there. Just tune in to it, set your focus, your intention on your heart, close your eyes and imagine entering inside your heart space. Here you will be met by whatever you most need to feel and release. It may be sadness, grief, anger or rage. It may be a feeling of numbness, loneliness and isolation. It may be fear or terror. Breathe through it all.
Your heart space may appear dark – turn on a light, open the curtains, strike a match – whatever feels right to you and see what you can see. Set about cleaning the space, removing clutter, dust and cobwebs and decorating it into a cosy, warm, inviting space. This is how you start to re-enliven your heart space. It tells your heart you are willing to listen, to see and feel what needs to be felt. You are willing to connect and come home to your true self.
Often when I do this exercise, I find younger versions of myself hidden away in caves or corners, in the dark, cold and wet. These parts split off when I was younger due to their being too much emotional pain, fear or loss. When I find these parts I automatically start crying tears of relief. I scoop the younger me up and bring them into my heart space. I hug them, tell them they are loved and safe now, that they never have to be alone again. I become the loving parent to that part of myself. After they have been bathed, fed and clothed we sit in my heart space and talk and play, then they rest knowing they are finally home. It is a beautiful feeling.
While this appears symbolic to the mind, it is real to the body. The body stored the pain, the terror and loss. It is locked away in our cells as cellular memory and it needs to be released for us to be fully healthy and vital. So each time you do this process and you free another part of your self you truly are healing and coming back to a state of fullness, innocence and peace. Well worth the effort!
Let your imagination guide you and take you where you need to go. You may see bats fly out of a hidden space or ice melting symbolically showing frozen emotions are thawing. It all has meaning! If you are strongly mind-oriented you may find this difficult to do. Keep doing it and you will open up more and more. Even if all you see / feel is darkness and silence sit with it, breathe and see what happens, what you feel. If your mind comes in saying this is pointless or stupid, just thank it for trying to protect you. Your mind has helped you avoid the pain for many years, it becomes automatic and so it will feel uncomfortable changing that pattern and choosing to feel. Persevere and one day you may find rainbows and treasure in your heart space, joy and celebration as you settle in to your true home.
Blessed BE, Jodi-Anne