Are you feeling a sense of urgency? Do you have a deep desire to fulfill all that you came here to be and do?
This urgency simmers with an unquestionable inner knowing that we are being called to action. The stakes are high, and there is no time to spare. For we have the opportunity to create a new paradigm on a new Earth anchored in love and compassion, peace and prosperity, connection and community.
Mystics and sages have long taught that the way forward is through the heart. Many of the core teachings of the world’s wisdom traditions—the Tibetan, shamanic, Mayan, Egyptian, and mystical Christian, for example—often lead back to the heart, to embodying the heart’s wisdom and a heart-centered way of being.
These five tips are reminders of the many blissful benefits to living and leading from the heart.
1. Cultivate feeling states of love and acceptance.
When we stay focused and centered in our hearts, we feel more grounded and balanced, peaceful and joyful. We can even feel physically healthier. Research conducted by the HeartMath Institute, based in Boulder Creek, CA, has shown that focusing our attention on our heart, while holding feeling states of love and appreciation, sets off a cascade of physiological benefits, including a decrease in the stress hormone cortisol and an increase in the anti-aging hormone DHEA.
2. Let go of desired outcomes.
We are most present when we let go of past stories and desired future outcomes that keep us endlessly distracted. When we are fully present in each moment we feel lighter. We enter a divine flow of abundance, synchronicity, and wonder. The ancient Egyptians knew that the greatest things are accomplished with a light heart. In their cosmology, when an individual passes away, her physical heart is weighed (figuratively) on a scale opposite a feather, and if her heart is not as light as that feather, she cannot go on to enjoy eternal life in the Happy Fields.
3. Trust that a higher guiding force is always conspiring on your behalf, no matter what the circumstances.
Heart-centering is an ongoing practice that requires constant vigilance in observing ourselves—our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and actions—moment by moment, and then bringing our attention back to the heart. This continual observing of oneself is an ancient practice of the Toltec peoples of Mesoamerica. The goal of all meditative practices is to drop out of our heads and into our hearts, to still the mind, because the mind agitates the heart. When we do this, we connect with a higher guiding force that is always leading us to greater self-mastery despite appearances to the contrary.
4. Forgive what seems impossible to forgive.
We can reverse the perception that we are separate from Source/God and each other by anchoring more deeply in our hearts and embodying the ancient Mayan wisdom expressed in the words In Lak’ech, A Lak’en (I am you, you are me). In this way, we can more easily forgive others, for at the same time we are also forgiving ourselves. In each moment we are choosing between love (unity) and fear (separation), according to A Course in Miracles, which reminds us that “love holds no grievances,” for “nothing Real can be threatened, and nothing Unreal exists.” When we move into heart-centered unity consciousness, we experience life with effortless ease, grace, and a quiet peace.
5. Don’t be afraid of your power.
Releasing thoughts and feelings of unworthiness helps us to step into our true essence and power. As divine creator beings of infinite potential we are worthy to receive all that our heart desires. We must simply remember. Chanting the transcendent words of the Tibetan Heart Sutra (called the Perfection of Wisdom: the Cure to the Illusory Mind), brings us to the still point within our heart where all opposing forces merge in a unified realm of limitless joy and bliss. “There are no limitations to the self except those you believe in,” Jane Roberts wrote in The Nature of Personal Reality.
As we live more fully in and through our heart, we are less affected by our shifting emotions and external circumstances. We are able to expand and accelerate our spiritual growth and be of greater service to others. The pure and open heart is our refuge amid daily distractions. It is the dwelling place of our highest self and the ultimate destination of our ongoing quest for wholeness.
