Healing The Heart
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke
The heart chakra is our sacred center of love. It is the bridge between our lower and higher chakras, and in this position, the heart chakra has the potential to hold all of the chakras in perfect balance. As we have explored, the heart chakra shields itself when we have painful experiences which we do not move through back into the restored state of acceptance, forgiveness, and love. To heal the heart means to accept our pasts, allowing for all of these painful experiences to clear from our hearts.
We can become out of touch with our heart chakras, however, when we are taught to focus almost entirely on the growth of our minds. If this has been the case for you or others that you know, connecting the mind with the heart can allow for an integration of these two powerful centers. Exploring the heart center can be challenging at first because of all of the armor that we have surrounded it with. However, as we move beyond this armor, perhaps by coming to understand why we put it up in the first place and why those who we felt hurt us acted in the ways that they did, we can move to a place that is beyond all of the pain and armor. This is the true center of love that was always there, only energetically cut off by our blockages.
The path of journeying into the heart allows us to see just how much our hearts can expand in compassion and love. Margot Anand shares with us her interpretation of the voice of the heart chakra in The Art Of Everyday Ecstasy (1998), “I am golden, I am love. I have seen many forms, many storms, heartaches, heartbreaks, laughter and joy. And I still don’t know how deep I can be.” (205) Balance is an essential part of the heart chakra. It includes a balance between our minds and bodies and between us and the rest of the world. Part of the journey in balancing the heart chakra involves coming into relationship with ourselves. Spending time reflecting on our patterns in life and beholding ourselves helps this relationship to become strong. We can come into balance between our feminine and masculine sides of our personalities as well. Similarly, healing the heart chakra includes coming into balance in our relationships with others. There is always a pull toward and away from others. When in balance, these pulls allow us to have enough time to ourselves and in relationships. Judith states, “A healthy relationship needs to honor both the upward and downward movements of energy and create a balance between spirit and soul, expansion and constriction, freedom and commitment.” (246)
If we feel overwhelmed by the pain in our hearts during our processes of healing, we can focus on beings that embody unconditional compassion and love. Even though we may not be able to meet ourselves with unconditional love at certain points on our journeys, we may be able to imagine a being that could hold us in love regardless of anything we may feel or do. In the Buddhist tradition, bodhisattvas offer their awakened hearts and commitment to the awakening of all beings to each one of us. The bodhisattva of compassion is known as Tara in Tibet and Kwan Yin in China. From the Christian tradition, we have Jesus as the embodiment of forgiveness for each of us. Focusing on these beings can allow us to feel what it can be like to be unconditionally loved and held by the Divine. We can then learn to feel this for ourselves, and open our hearts to all of the divine qualities that we long for so dearly, such as joy, growth, and acceptance. An open heart can give and receive love with greater ease. This will affect each relationship that we have: with ourselves, partners, families, co-workers, and anyone that we meet. Each of these relationships then becomes a sacred gateway to allow ourselves to move even deeper into love.