Our hearts are the core of who we are. Within their deeper essence are to be found all those qualities that make us feel fully alive and connect us to our profounder humanity. Despite this, the life of the inner heart tends to be much neglected in our Western culture.

This negation of the subtler life of the heart is not new, but is connected to the whole rise of our scientific materialism; where only what can be seen, touched, and measured is given value. Things that cannot be explained rationally - the mystical and feminine, loving and sacred - are deemed unimportant. At school, for example, I never learned anything about my heart. Our motto was: 'A healthy mind in a healthy body. Similarly at university, I was taught to know about all sorts of things but never to look into my heart, which is actually the true source of our wisdom and power. We pay an enormous price for this exclusion of the domain of heart. Indeed, I would suggest that many of our major world problems reflect this omission. At one level, I see our planet being out of balance, polluted and riven by conflict, essentially because we, as a species, have not tapped into the laws of harmony We have not touched into the qualities of reverence, kindness, compassion, wisdom, love, conciliation and forgiveness that can only be accessed in the deeper layers of the heart.

Healing
When clients come to see me for psychotherapy, I always look closely at how healthy their hearts are as I believe many problems - especially the inability to feel happy, at ease, enjoy healthy relationships, or find meaning - can be traced back to a dysfunctional, or virtually non-existent, heart life. Quite simply, without a healthy heart life our capacity to handle life's inevitable vicissitudes is diminished, and even if we are wealthy outwardly, we may still tend to experience a sense of inner impoverishment. Our hearts allow us to live meaningful lives and to respond appropriately to different situations. So many people today seek their ecstasies through drugs or alcohol because they are bereft of the experience of natural joy that would come out of a properly lived heart life.

When a person's deeper heart life begins to emerge, it is signaled by the presence of awe and gratitude, a greater ease of being, and an ability to appreciate the beauty and blessedness of life, together with an enhanced capacity to accept life the way it is. As someone in one of my ‘Heart Aerobics' workshops said recently, I can only begin to be me, to feel a full human being and approach the wonderful mystery of God through this awakening of my heart.'

So surely, then, what our world needs if it is to function better - indeed if it is to avoid disaster – is the emergence of more awakened or deeper hearted human beings. My experience of such people is that they are not afraid to take courageous stands on behalf of a healthier world and to confront the darker sides of life.

What is required for this to take place? How may we begin to grow' our heart life? First, we must want to. We must be aware of the price we pay for our small heartedness and the benefits to be gained from becoming larger-hearted. In this context it is helpful to seek out the often inspirational presence of those who already are in that state. 1 always feel valued in their company, never put down or that I have to be anything 1 am not, and this in turn, reminds me to value me. And when I value me, I am reminded of how important it is to make time to love and respect myself which implies that I must take good care of my heart and feed it well.

Feeding the Heart

 I believe that what most feeds our heart is our choosing to live a life where, instead of always letting ourselves be led by externals - doing what society or  ‘others’ think we should do - we choose to 'follow our bliss'. We give up compromising ourselves and instead honour what we discover to be our inner truth at any time. For where our truth lies, so too does our real self. To help us come into this new space, I would recommend the following heart diet.     

First on the menu is Meditation, very important heart food. As the restless mind is gradually quietened, the heart can gently begin to open. Music is also significant, as certain sublime pieces cause the heart to resonate in harmonious patterns and gently begin to blossom, as if it were falling in love: Prayer can be very powerful, as is having someone, some thing or some cause to be passionate about. Our hearts love feeding on the beautiful - sacred art and soulful literature - and can also be protected by avoiding things, images and people that ‘uglify' our lives.

Being in the presence of nature is very important as its pure essence can activate the remembrance of our own pure heart essence. It is similar to sitting with an enlightened spiritual master, because their beautiful open heartedness and purity of being can cause our often blocked and sticky little hearts to vibrate quicker. As this occurs, we can begin releasing some of the dense energies or toxicities that may have accumulated in our hearts over the years.

As our hearts expand more and more and begin revealing their hitherto hidden treasures, we realize that we have a new and inherently sacred world available inside ourselves. We can use this not only to heal ourselves, bringing a greater quality and value into our personal lives, but also to add new dimensions to our relationships. Here, we realize that so long as we are fixated in our small (clenched) – heartedness, we can never see the world through our lover’s eyes, and can never appreciate them properly, love them unconditionally, deal with them wisely, forgive them effectively, or stay open-hearted when the going gets tough.

When deeper heart begins to flower however, it becomes completely natural and easy to accomplish all of these things. Many people also report that they realize that the purpose of their lives is to serve the great divine plan, to work to help create a new ‘culture of love’ (as the late spiritual teacher Peter Deunove saw it) on the planet. In this state, many people come to see that they are not and never have been, separate from their world. Not only are they in the world but they also are the world. While they may have their own personal families to look after, their heart will have become big enough to include the entire human family, regardless of race, religion, class or colour. The bigger our hearts then, the wider the sphere of our responsibilities.

The Evolving Life

Talking about expanded heart spaces and actually living ‘out of’ those places are two very different things. The journey from small heart into deep, compassionate and mystical heart is a gradual one. There are many stages that the heart pilgrim goes through and many obstacles to be circumvented along the way. Essentially what hearts contain is light – spiritual light – and this illumines our darkness for us, showing us where our hearts may also be wounded, numb, cold and clenched. For many of us, our deeper heart journey cannot begin until our wounds are confronted.

Here, we may need to understand that they can come from many different shadowy sources. They may be the result of unresolved and still-haunting memories of traumas spilling over from past lives. We may even be carrying wounds belonging to our ancestors that have never been effectively resolved or could be suffering from traumas relating to a difficult birth.

Similarly, if we have been raised by soul-less and small-hearted parents, or caregivers, who never knew how to enjoy or celebrate us but who, instead pumped us full of their anxieties and resentments, our hearts may still lie small and dormant. Until we take steps to heal ourselves, we may remain insecure, emotionally damaged and deeply fearful and suspicious of life’s joys, for which we nevertheless secretly yearn. This emotional abuse can be just as toxic for the heart as sexual abuse, and many who have suffered in this way may grow up to associate love and intimacy with pain and rejection.

Furthermore, if we have, figuratively speaking, ‘given our heart away’ to someone without knowing how to reclaim it afterwards, we may well be left with half or even a quarter of a heart. Our hearts can become further damaged from working all our lives in a ‘cold bottom line’ corporate culture, which can require us to continually split off from what is m most warm, loving and tender about ourselves.

If we truly wish to live with greater open-heartedness, it has to be a conscious decision on our part to do so. In certain instances, it may require a radical re-alignment of our entire lives. Since our hearts cannot begin opening until they feel more healed and secure, a great deal of work may be involved. For the person who is willing to undertake this eminently sacred challenge, surrendering more and more to the tutelage or guidance of their hearts, there are many blessings to be gained. The higher realms of heart are sublime and peaceful and if we wish for a happier personal life and a healthier world, surely this heart work is one of the most important things that any of us can be involved in at this time.