The Heart of the Matter

How have you answered that most perplexing and essential question in our lives, “Who am I?”

I found my answer by thinking of my heart as my essence. My heart is love and the feelings and behaviors associated with it are warm and peaceful. Being connected to my heart I feel a oneness and connection to everything and everyone around me. Living in integrity with my true self feels great. When I stay connected to my heart in the face of difficulties, I feel like my own hero.

In contrast, when I’m disconnected from my heart my feelings are cold and I’m tight and tense. I get angry, judgmental, argumentative, self-righteous or just shut down and emotionally withdrawn. I don’t feel good about myself because that’s not who I am.

The thought that personal fulfillment comes from being heart-connected may seem obvious, but almost all of what I was taught led me to distrust my heart. Instead, I slavishly pursued things that I believed would create happiness and success, such as money, other people’s approval, and material possessions.
The fear that I could not create my own sense of well-being left me dependent on things outside of myself. To protect myself from losing what I believed I needed left me needing to control others, myself, and life itself. My controlling behavior pushed away the meaningful connections for which I so deeply yearned.

When I realized that connection to my heart creates the conditions that every wise person knows will bring contentment a new road opened and the vistas are magnificent.

There are many feelings and behaviors associated with my heart. The simplest way to remember if I’m heart-connected is to know if compassion and curiosity, two basic elements of my nature, are present. The red flag that tells me that my heart is closed is when I’m not feeling compassion and I’m not open to learning both about others and, most importantly, about myself.

There’s much more about heart connection and disconnection in my blog “Reflections From My Heart.”