It All Begins with the Heart

"Life begins with the heart. It's the first organ to be created when new life is forming within the womb of the mother. All else that defines us as humans is built around this most vital of center points, and it is from here we go on to create our lives upon deliverance into the physical world."

The heart is the beginning point of all our creations. What is in our hearts is what we both manifest into the world, and draw to us from what is already here. It took me a long time to understand this. I always felt like I just had bad luck, or didn't get what I wanted because I didn't deserve it.

Having come from a background of childhood lovelessness, violence, neglect, and sexual abuse, it was easy to believe. In fact, I was conditioned to believe it, not only within my family of origin but also in the religion I was raised with.

By the time I unraveled all that conditioning and discovered the Truth, half my life was gone.

I started out all coiled up inside. I was afraid of life and equally afraid of people. My process of uncoiling hasn't been easy, but it's been a priceless adventure, one I would never change because of what I have learned along the way. For this, I am immensely grateful. Truly, I have grown from a stunted seed of life’s possibility, into a rising and expanding force of nature.

My education, mostly a process of two steps forward, and one step back, came through studying with the University of Life, and I’ve not been one of her best students. You could say, as a student of Life, I went through more than a few rounds in the ring with my teacher. But, as is true for all of Mother Earth's children, 'Life' never wavered in her unconditional commitment to my growth and healing, even while I was kicking and screaming against her.

One of the most important things I discovered during my progressive evolution and reshaping, is that I am a dynamic energy system, a spiritual being having a human experience. Further to that, I am beloved by God/Life/Source/The Universe, whichever name you choose to call it.

Nothing I was taught about myself, life, or the larger nature of 'Life,' was ever true. What a joy that was to discover. Living inside smallness was a wretched existence.

As a spiritual being, I inhabit my body. My body is a vehicle. It is not who I am. I am a creator and that is what I am here to do. I can't help but create, it’s inherent in my design, as inescapable a fact as the sky is blue.

What I create is always a free choice. There is no manual that mandates I should only create according to some ironclad law, or that what I create can only be done a certain way, though that has been attempted to make me believe so.

Just as a painter or sculptor has an array of tools from which to paint or sculpt a piece of art, so as human beings we have an inbuilt array of tools at our disposal with which to design and create our lives. What shows up for me will have everything to do with what I have inside me, how aware I am of my tools, or whether I am using them consciously or unconsciously. With or without knowledge.

What refines my creating skills and grows me as a creator, is the consequences of my creations themselves. If I don't like what I end up with, then I need to go back and assess myself, and what my steps were that led me to my end result. The buck always stops here.

The most revealing and important question I have needed to ask myself when things haven't worked out for me in life is, “What was in my heart, in the very foundation of my being as I set about my doing?" This is the point of creative power; therefore, this is where the answer lies. I get to discover it, heal an unhelpful belief or an old wound that perhaps centered on self-worth or a limited view of what I am capable of. I can adjust, and rearrange myself and my tools before moving forward again, wiser and more connected to the truth of who I am. I get to fashion my life according to an evolving self-understanding, rather than on conditioning, stagnant lies, and misconceptions.

It’s a humbling practice.

No one ever told me these things when I was growing up. They couldn't because they didn't know it for themselves. For the most part, the people around me lived their lives by their own traumas, wounds, and inherited beliefs, trapped in lives they didn’t think or didn't know they could change.

Life and the practice of living it is a circular experience. We come in a wide-eyed child, tender, open, and incredibly vulnerable. So porous in our openness are we that everything we experience goes right in. There is no discernment between what is good and what is bad. What is helpful and what is not helpful to take on.

Layer upon layer we are written on until the Star within gets buried beneath expectations, rules, performance requirements, and the need to fit in or perish. The heart becomes armored and no longer creates for the joy of experiencing itself, but only as others demand.

Until, one day, when the heart can no longer labor beneath all that weighs it down, it begins to crack, and for some, break.

Thus begins the journey if you are willing to take the invitation, to shed the layers your true became buried beneath in order to please, to adapt and belong.

The more you shed, the more you shine.

The Star rises and the Child is reborn.