Any time we rely solely on our heads to guide us, it usually ends in tears.
No matter how many times we are gifted this lesson in various forms from the universe, most of the time we end up siding with reason and rationale instead of aligning with what our hearts are (constantly) saying, which is be love and just trust.
So why is it so hard for us to get out of our heads and into our hearts?
We humans are funny creatures. We are predominantly and instinctively creatures of habit, but we also have brought with us when we incarnated, this conscious ability to choose and therefore manipulate our own fate; and that’s where we often go awry.
I see people meet this challenge on the mat all the time. They’re stuck in their heads and unable to surrender to whatever is showing up in the moment. The mere thought of dropping out of their mind and into their heart is too scary a concept. I’ve held hands with people physically shuddering as they struggle to allow themselves this intention and I wholeheartedly understand this because I too have critiqued myself many times throughout my own journeying and struggled regularly with surrendering my head stuff in favour of trusting my heart to make the decisions. In the past it was my inner academic, my perpetual analytical student, that would always question that which wasn’t overtly obvious or visibly tangible, suspecting that there must be a secret formula hiding somewhere that was just beyond my reach, waiting to be discovered! It just couldn’t be that simple! – letting something that was already inside me – my heart – lead the way.
And no wonder. As a species we are genetically I-need-proof-programmed beings and we are taught to follow blindly, not to follow our instincts. That primal connection severed when our ancestors decided they were superior to all other creatures as well as Mother Nature and imposed the beginnings of social structure across all tribes. It’s when WE became ME: The world according to Adam. It’s actually designed to be WE, not ME btw.
This moment in time marked a division between the head and the heart without anyone fully realising it at the time, not just because consciousness wasn’t fully developed, but because the need to be included, acknowledged and revered by their peers (out of fear, shame, guilt and grief) – and luckily for those wielding the control switches – over rode the individuals’ desire to stand out from the crowd, speak up and risk being different. The head said that wasn’t a safe place to be, and mass vibration reiterated it. So heart energy shrank – collectively as well as in the chests of every man, woman and child – and She has held that wounding ever since.
For me, it wasn’t till major adrenal fatigue rocked up and forced me to surrender to doing-nothing-ness that I got the chance to listen to my own heart uninterrupted. Time out from work and associated pressures will do that to (and for) you. All the repetitive justifications that occupied the surface and therefore subconscious layers of my mind, reared their heads to haunt me 24/7. My conscience came knocking basically. It’s what happens to all of us when we have too much time on our hands; we start to enquire, investigate and ‘face’ our true selves.
The self ownership process is a very interesting and confronting experience as many of you know, but mine was perfectly timed and welcomed because thankfully I was awake enough to realise that I couldn’t go on living as I was, nor working in the industry I was in. I was stagnant and I knew it. I wasn’t honouring my purpose – heck, I didn’t even know I had one – and I certainly wasn’t paying any service to it. Sure I was a yogini, I practiced loving kindness, I didn’t cause or intend any harm to others, animals or the earth, and I always tried to do my best, but something was missing. I felt lack on some level but as much as I juiced and contemplated my navel chakra, I couldn’t put my finger on it.
My over active Gemini mind kept me fatigued and agitated a lot of the time but ironically it also provided me with great insights and opportunities to see myself without the rose coloured glasses on and to see the bravado defences that I had in place to keep me feeling safe and worthy. I saw my patterns of avoid, push-through, soldier-on and deflect, as clear as day. I was shown the depth of my fears and the armoury I had meticulously constructed over the years as a way of coping with not coping. I cried. Howled actually. A lot. The small me, the unconscious me, felt secure with all these invisible constructs in place, but the bigger me, the spirit me, knew better. She saw straight through all my bullshit.
Something needed to shift. My mind, my ego, needed to make friends with my heart again.
Sounding familiar?
I’m sure many of you have had cathartic conversations with yourself before – we are all human after all, same shit, different story – so I trust you’ll get what I mean when I say that learning to cultivate a neutral mind, an open heart and negotiate a positive outcome where both sides of yourself feel heard and held equally, is no mean feat. I’m talking about the light and the shadow here if you hadn’t picked up on that already. In fact, it’s probably one of the hardest things you can undertake during your spiritual journey. Learning to listen to the committee inside your own head without reacting to every single opinion and just allowing all dialogue to flow as it comes, through the heart, and regardless of what spectrum colour it is.
I think it’s called self mastery; although some may call it teetering on the edge of self delusion lol.
The heart knows all about the head and its wily ways which is why it sits calmly below in our chest, watching the drama unfold and breathing it all through the higher channels of patience, compassion, love and universal understanding – plus (thankfully) a damn good sense of humour! Did I mention patience? Yes, She, luckily for us, has limitless patience. She’s known the time would come when we would wake up and want to reclaim who we are. She knew, and trusted in, her twin Maya. (The cycle of life).
The heart understands the human condition. She gets us and why we do the silly, stupid, arse about things that we do. Her sacred vibration threads all of us together like a giant spider web around the earth and when she senses we need a gentle wake up call, she’ll just pluck on one of those cords, reminding us through either dreamscape, meditation or via a series of mystical, magical and unfortunate (yet totally fortunate on the soul level) events, that we are still all connected. One small tweak and she can bring us all back to LOVE. One loving tug and she reminds us of Universal Truth – the truth that yes, our mind is a useful tool but it is our spirit wisdom that ultimately overrides all other systems we’ve got going; the systems that ‘the powers that be’ have been reliant upon to keep us communally in check for so long. The man-made systems that, unlike anything created naturally, have a use by date. Nature never expires – she regenerates, rebirths and re-calibrates Herself. The matrix of Mother Earth supersedes anything man can think up in his head or build with his hands. She created us after all.
Try an experiment tomorrow if you like if this all sounds too hypothetical or impossible. When you wake up make a promise to yourself to get out of your head and back into your heart as much as you can and just see what manifests. Sit in whatever comes, whatever goes, whoever says what or not, and breathe into your heart with complete trust. Allow Her to take the reins, if only for one day, so you get a good taste of those primordial memories we all share. Give yourself a chance to experience yourself as plugged into something so much bigger than what the mind says you are and wants you to believe you are.
When you stop THINKING and start BEING, you realise it’s your natural state of play.
AUM
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