The Door to the Heart

The door to the heart opens when it fears no threat. If we fear what is within the heart, we will not even knock there. We are afraid we might discover just how much damage has been done. We are afraid we might see our own shallowness, impurity, insensitivity and defensiveness. But how can we heal our heart if we do not enter its chambers? We must trust that opening the door to the heart is safe and that whatever we find there will be a teacher, a guide and a loving friend.

When I look at the world through the lens of my humanity, I do not see a lot of love. I see a world that has replaced the genuine stone of love with a cheap imitation like those cubic zirconia engagement rings. But this is also how I see myself at times. At times, I see myself as a fake and a phony. It is in these ingenuous times that I make hurtful judgments about myself rather than knocking at the door of my heart to find out why I felt a need to pretend. Why I felt I needed to be more than who I was. Why I thought happiness would only come when my circumstances improved.

Why do we think we can distance ourselves from our hearts? Do these walls built in fear have a chance of blocking out the light of love forever? I am reminded of a song I used to sing in my youth, "love will make a way where there seems to be no way". I'm not speaking about the chemical love that we feel in our humanity but universal or infinite love. This is the love we can trust to heal the damage that is within our hearts. Divine love.

In our humanity we learned that to give love freely meant we might lose something in return. Not everyone returned our love. We decided to withhold love from those who did not love us back. We decided that we would not give love if it meant we would be rejected. We decided to reject love before it rejected us too.

We hid ourselves from love because we thought we were unworthy in our humanity. But go on a treasure hunt within and you will find that rare jewel of pure love. The love that does not need to fix, improve or change us. It is the love itself that brings about the healing in our hearts--not the circumstances changing before we can allow love to come in.

I wrote recently about having an unhealthy body image. I was afraid to knock on the door of my heart to find out why. I thought I needed the body to change before I could have a healthy body image. Putting the proverbial cart before the horse! We know that anorexic people are not happy with their bodies even when they are rail thin. Loving oneself isn't dependent on the body changing first but on the heart healing the damaged way we perceive ourselves. Love will unlock every room that we hide within. The key to the door of the heart is already ours. Do not let fear keep us out of her chambers of wisdom and love.

"Go to your bosom. Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know". --William Shakespeare