Heart and Mind

I feel utterly rearranged. The profound insights that were given to me this weekend are still sinking in, and my body and mind are reeling. In this moment, I feel something inside of me trying to resist allowing this change to settle in, as if it's all too much, and will require too much. I have seen the depth of the madness of mind gone out of control, and I have seen the profound height of love when fully surrendered to the heart. And now, as I sit here in my ordinary life, I know that change must come - conscious change, rooted in courage and truth.

Partly, it feels like a dream - like the weekend was an intense, wild, powerful dream that penetrated the depths of my being, and offered me insight and wisdom into the very ways that I function in this world. Mind, and its tendencies, and how they affect the way I see the world, the emotions that move through me, and how my reality is created within that. Heart, and the ways that mind tries to convince the heart that its way is filled with madness and unreality - and how the heart's truth is the only thing that makes life worth living. I experienced intense struggle and misery, judgment, fear, collapse, resistance, then sorrow, then tenderness, understanding, and the most intensely piercing love I have ever known. And I see now that I have resisted love with great intensity. I have feared it. I have pushed it away. I have lived an existence that was content to feel small love, to accept that as enough, because it is safe. But it will not transform me. And that is the most profound beauty of love - that when I truly surrender to it, it will utterly transform me.

What a blessing that this insight does not merely come in a theoretical, metaphoric, intellectual way. It offers me understanding on this level, for sure, but then dives deep into the ways that I live. I have seen the chaos of my mind, undisciplined and out of control. I have seen the way that my emotional state becomes chaotic as a result, following here and there, reactive and unstable. And I see how this whole process creates misery. The mind is a tool, I am not my mind. But until I rein it in, breaking it like a horse, I will be bound by its wildness, and I will suffer. But beyond mind is the heart. The heart lives beyond logic and practical, rational choices. It lives beyond justification and the stories I tell myself to validate what I think and feel and choose. The heart is pure, it is true. It knows, and it tells me what it knows. And I see how I have disregarded that as impulsive and impossible for my whole life. No wonder I have been through this intense time of breakdown, and have felt that my life was meaningless. As long as I am not following my heart, I am not living my truth. I am living halfheartedly, falsely, and life shows up in that same way. I accept things that are "just fine" and "quite good" - and when things that are "amazing" and "incredible" and "too good to be true" come my way, I disregard them as exactly that - "too good to be true." I push them away, unconsciously, because I have not believed they were actually possible.

There have been a few times in my life when I have been touched by profound intuition, and have made crazy decisions that seemed impossible. I have followed my heart in these choices, and my life has been profoundly blessed. Walking the Camino de Santiago is one such thing. Going to Peru to do Medicine work is another. But much of the time, I have simply decided to leave things alone, to make choices that are convenient and comfortable. And now I see that I can't keep doing that. If I do, I will die while I am still alive. I will move toward living an existence that is gray, that is half-alive, that is not entirely true, that is filled with soul-level boredom, and I will continue to feel like my life is meaningless, slipping by into the void.

Life is really fucking short! I have known the truth of how I want to live. I have spoken it. I have been moving toward it. But in some way, I see that it hadn't penetrated me yet. Fear has held me back. Fear of making a wrong decision. Fear of failure. Fear of causing trouble for others. Fear of looking like a fool. Fear of causing harm. Fear of all of these imagined things. Truly, fear of being who I am. Fear of authenticity. Fear of living my truth and following my heart, no matter what. But now I see that anything other than that - living my truth and following my heart - is an absolute waste of this precious life.

I have some major things to bring into alignment here. I have some letting go to do in my life. It is scary - now I am back in the light of day, sitting in the life that I've created by the decisions I've made. I have to walk with courage and let go of any reliance on outcome - I have to choose what truth comes from my heart, and then trust that life will carry it into the winds of manifestation to become what it will. I have to let go of things and people who don't uplift me into the highest, finest version of myself. I have to let go of relationships not based in authenticity and courage and truth. And I have to make things right with someone I have hurt in my unconsciousness - if it's not too late, that it...

I now understand the emotional chaos I have been experiencing - it is the result of my choosing to live in compromise with my truth and integrity. Of not listening to my heart, disregarding its knowing as impossible and irrational. Of not living fully in accordance with the highest truth I seek. And of not being willing to trust love, to allow it to truly touch me and pierce my heart, opening it to the light that is within it. My heart has been telling me its truth anyway, but I have not been listening, and there has been deep conflict within me as a result. I know now that if I follow my heart in everything that I do in this life, I will be able to sleep at night without any fear, and I will be able to die to this life without any regrets. I pray from the depths of my soul that I move toward living that authentically from this day forth.