Our Opening Hearts
As the minute hand passed midnight on New Year’s Eve, I was participating in a group meditation and I realized, “It’s all so simple!”
Our world has many complex problems which require comprehensive outward solutions, but the answer to the underlying cause of the problems is simple: opening up our hearts, individually and collectively.
Closed hearts feel conflict and division. Open hearts feel love and unity. Open hearts know that Humanity is One and that in meeting another person, we are meeting ourselves. If you think about a hand, a closed heart sees five separate fingers while an open heart sees the hand that connects them, creating one unified hand that can take unified action.
It’s important to find ways to open up our hearts. It could be a memory, the face of a loved one, a song, dancing, even cat and dog videos! For me, the key to an open heart is my posture. When I lift my chin and pull my shoulders back, my physical heart area becomes open and my emotional heart begins to flow.
I really experienced this when I visited Egypt in 2019. I was so surprised because I expected Egypt to be majestic and serious but instead I felt bathed in love. Just being there caused my heart to open and flow with love and joy. I loved everyone and everything for the entire two weeks I was there!
Now that I know what my open heart feels like, I try to re-create that experience every day. And when I experience a closed heart, which for me can take the form of mental snark, I send love to the person I was snarky about and also love to the person I was when I created that pattern of snark. I replace that negativity with open-hearted love.
Each one of us through our daily habits and actions opens one heart, which collectively opens Humanity’s heart. And open hearts unite to find solutions that include everyone.
On New Year’s Eve, fireworks began going off and I watched them through my window. As they burst open in the night sky and all of the brilliant sparks exploded from the confined space of their casings, I felt like I was seeing Humanity’s heart bursting open in love and joy, never to be closed again.
