“Love is the Answer, Now What is the Question?”
– Derek O’Neill
I truly believe that anytime you bring Love to a situation, a miracle will occur. Because of this, I named my practice Miracles of Love and the tagline was “Open Your Heart, Experience a Miracle.” The process of opening our heart can be a challenging one as we have all experienced hurt of some kind which as has caused us to close our heart or at the very least protect it. The irony of this is that when we close our heart to protect it, we are closing ourselves off from Love. So in the effort to protect ourselves from hurt, we are actually closing ourselves off from Love. I believe that is what is meant by the wisdom that “the only protection you need is an open heart.
The process of learning to live from the heart requires effort, courage and strength. It is easy to love when people or situations are loving. It is when people hurt us that challenges arise. We have two choices. We can close our heart and choose anger or unforgiveness or we can choose to keep our heart open, feel the hurt and choose love and forgiveness. We will have experiences in life when we do not feel loving, but we can always choose to act lovingly. That is why I say ‘Love is a Choice.’
Making the choice to have an open heart does mean we will experience all emotions – both what we may label as positive or negative. In the end, all emotions are part of the human experience. I do believe that when we work on healing old woundedness, we develop the courage to open our heart more and we have the strength to be present with whatever emotions we are experiencing as opposed to running from them or trying to smother them with activities or substances. The willingness to experience all emotions will give us a greater depth of spirit and a richer experience of life.
“May Your Heart Open and Blossom like a Rose Sharing its Gifts with the World”
I also believe that when you live from the heart you connect with a wisdom that is greater than any knowledge your mind may possess. Many spiritual traditions believe we have a spiritual heart and that this heart is our connection to our soul and to Source. When we live from the heart and start developing our connection to something greater than ourselves, we discover a feeling of expansiveness and a sense of being connected to al life. This experience can change who we know ourselves to be and can change the very way we exist. Science is now proving what the ancients knew – the heart is the major center of intelligence in human beings. The Heart Math Institute has discovered in its research that “The heart is, in fact, a highly complex, self-organized information processing center with its own functional “brain” that communicates with and influences the cranial brain via the nervous system, hormonal system and other pathways. These influences profoundly affect brain function and most of the body’s major organs, and ultimately the quality of life.”
So life is a journey and mastering Living From the Heart is a journey as well. On this journey, we always have a choice on how we will respond to people and situations. Love is a choice. What choice will you make?