Category: Growth

This is what I believe: the heart yearns for connection. I believe that throughout the Cosmos a billion billion hearts beat so that they may connect with other hearts.

What the heart wants from us is connection, not perfection. And yet we plod on in the hopeless struggle to be perfect. If we can only get it right, we believe, then everything will be all right; if we can somehow overcome our obstinate flaws, our self-destructive treachery, we can be all right. If we can learn something new, some skill, some trick, some magic words, we can be all right. And if we can be all right, then, maybe, just maybe, we will be worthy of love; maybe we will then feel the gentle kiss of grace on our cheeks. Maybe then we can put down our swords and our armor; maybe then we can rest in peace.

The heart gives us a choice between perfection and miracles. Perfection is the enemy of miracles. Perfection says that our ideal is greater than anything life can bring us as a surprise. It seduces us into contaminating not only the space between our beating hearts, but the space between the beats of our hearts. We junk up that luminous space with the baggage of a billion billion years.

The heart says, don’t do that. The heart says “choose miracles.”

So let’s clear the space and let our hearts resonate. Let’s clear the space from the chatter, prejudices, judgements, indignations, and incessant demands of the false ego. Let’s set our hearts loose to resonate one with the other in this luminous space between us that is and always has been the very ground of our being.

The heart says, “I am calling to you into the luminous space of your being: answer me and miracles will happen.” I believe it. I believe it is telling us the irrepressible truth. I believe we were born to be the connection, to answer the call, to make the connection. This is what I believe: if you answer the call, if you give life the chance, it will amaze you with its miracles.

To open to wonder in this world is to receive God in a way that is uniquely your own.   Wonder lies in that gap between what your wounding tells you is to be feared and what your heart knows is true:  Life can be trusted.

You may find yourself suffering, embittered.  You may look around and declare that nothing makes sense, and that you are powerless in the face of an existence that is mostly pain and eventually wears you away into nothing.  And in that moment you may wonder how any rational person could believe in a higher power.

You might pause to note that, despite being overly impressed by your own miserable circumstances, some part of you remains free to wonder. A part of you is anchored in something deeper than the maps you draw on napkins.  There is a part of you affirming that Life can be trusted because it is happening everywhere: inside you, outside you, and between you and everything else that you think is not you.  In that moment, a part of you knows that Life Itself is aching to flow through your body like a mighty river so that it can be known in you, by you, and as you.

Let it flow.  If you are not sure how, then let yourself wonder.  Acknowledge the river that you feel is distant and then listen: you will hear it from within, calling your name.

Answer gently; this is not the time for shouting.  Express gratitude for this moment of liberation from frozen habit.  Gratitude opens you to your own feelings, which in their present state are blocked.  As you continue to wonder in a state of gratitude, you will become aware that within yourself something is moving.  You are becoming unstuck.

There is work to be done here, sacred work.  You are enlivening your soul, your unique channel for the one Self.  You stand at the very edge of all that is precious and good and true in the world: it’s all right there, patiently calling your name, inviting you to serve creation simply by allowing Life to flow through you.  You are about to awaken from the dream of reality.

Let it flow.