Opening a Heart Space

On the last post, I wrote about the heart and the mind and how their perceptions are very different. For most of us, getting out of our minds into our hearts is not easy. We are very used to living in our thoughts and only allow ourselves to feel something occasionally. A feeling may surprise us into tears or laughter. We may even daydream about feeling something strongly but don’t actually let ourselves go there, to feel it.

This was a long road home for me. My Mom was the overly emotional type who was always in tears about something. My Dad, being the practical and logical type, dealt with the world through his head. Being shamed for crying too much, I tried to be like my Dad. It looked easier. Don’t feel, don’t cry, don’t even talk about it. Zip it! Or at least hide until the crying stops.

Yet I was the super sensitive person who felt everything, especially with nature. So I spent alot of time outside, thank goodness, with the flowers, trees and animals. My healing process began when I allowed myself to feel, as scary and overwhelming as that was. There was no trust of what I felt and it was painful and scary to feel I was becoming my Mom. With people I trusted, I cried. I began to feel the dismissed hurts, the minimized needs and unmet wants I’d had as a child. It felt surreal at times and I questioned my sanity. Do I really have to do this? It was a way back, I’m sure not the only way, but because I sat with those who respected my tears and feelings, I began to do the same. I had spent most of my life discounting, minimizing or avoiding how I felt. Sounds familiar?

Culturally, we regard the mind and our thoughts as the supreme answer to eveything. Yet when it comes to some things, it falls so short. I have witnessed this especially in parenting. A 4 year old child asks a question and the parent tells her an answer that is just a mental explanation. Children under seven don’t understand the difference between fantasy and reality and are not cognitively very developed yet. The answer given doesn’t access the feeling level the child lives in so the child continues to ask the question or seek an answer. The parent gives a linear, logical answer to an emotionally based child. You can see the gears spinning in a child’s head as they try to understand what is being shared. You can feel the disappointment in the child’s heart. So a child is taught to process everything mentally (ie safely) as soon as they are able. Children don’t want their parents to feel uncomfortable and learn to suppress, parents want their children to be happy.

This is not an uncommon story, mine or the child’s. Yet nowdays we hear alot about emotional intelligence. How can we raise ourselves and our children to be astute emotionally? We begin by allowing ourselves to listen to what we feel right now.

Let yourself feel whatever you are feeling. This makes sense and sounds so easy, but try it when your mind comes storming in and says if you feel this, you’re going off the deep end, or making a mountain out of a molehill, or you just don’t have time for this right now. The minds’ job is to keep you safe so now it shames you just like your parents did. Intellectuallizing, explaining, shaming, whatever works to keep you safe from feeling that hurt like when you were a child. Now the mind runs riot over you and doesn’t allow you to feel any at all, or just the ‘good’ ones.
If we open our hearts to all of who we are, this is not some fantasy daydream world. This is deep dark soil where the loam of the new you can be born. Born out of the patience and persistence to own all of what’s in you, light and dark, up and down, you begin to piece together the fragmented emotional body. You begin to own a clearer sense of what works for you. You don’t feel everyone elses feelings and not your own. You live in you, not through others. You begin to know how to feed yourself because you know how you feel about what’s in front of you, or know to take the time to feel it out.

Here the mystery is regained; the fullness of trust in self. This is what it takes, step by step, allowing yourself the gift of this next feeling to grow compassion for yourself and thus for others. We all want to be compassionate people yet our minds are often not. Learning to live truthfully and listen to our emotions begins to bridge the way back to the heart. This is a feminine (not female) way. This honors the half of each of us that is now ready to come forward to take a place in the world. This is true intelligence, a clear heart supported by the subservient mind.

Blessings,

Laurel