Oct 22, 2021
Heart Reading … Day 97
Allowing the self to expand
This ambitious heart reading was another experience of being woken up with something to hear. Listening to the heart, however the messages push their way through, is an ongoing daily practice.
As I mentioned in Day 95, this was actually yesterday’s heart reading. I am still not feeling it is ready to be posted, but perhaps that is because this topic is so … expansive! May it’s incompleteness gently stir your heart with spaciousness.
How do we block spirit — in the growth, maturation, blossoming of our life — from taking its natural course?
This is a big, very personal question with many unique and personal answers — which I believe are found, compassionately, by allowing the breath to speak to and through us.
It is often easier for me to see what I do to block my growth then just see what I do well in allowing myself to be grown. The ways in which I emotionally say “no” or shut down or close off or tense up, are often easier to notice, for me, because I’ve learned to want to notice them — so I can attend to and listen to whatever emotional “ouch” is generating that tension or “voltage rise” if you will.
Energy is a language too few of us feel well-versed in emotionally and technically.
I wish the subject of electricity (along with civics) was a carefully taught subject in middle school, so that as one’s hormonal energies are pulsing through the body, the connection to electrical energy could be made. And then, just maybe, the connection to the sun — our planet’s infinite renewable energy — can also be made.
Can you imagine this with me?
It is not so hard to imagine the connection between how electricity works in the world to how energy works in the body because even without the technical understanding of electricity, middle schoolers are definitely learning about and exploring they are energetic currents with less resistance from parents and teachers than previous generations.
I remember feeling like I had to hide under my bed to safely read my lifecycle books. Now attentive parents are explaining sex and baby-making well before middle school — which hopefully allows youth to make greater energetic interconnections that are not so terribly charged with taboos and generational shame.
Personally, I know that my energy or spirit “disconnect switches” are my hands and my jaw. If I notice my hands are in fists or my jaw is tensed (my dental hygienist informed me that those who seem most chill on the surface are usually the ones with the worst cases of TMJ) I know there is an emotional trigger I need to attend to and try to reset.
Breathing always helps me find the right “circuit” or experience that made me trip. And I’ll leave the industry jargon there before I get into an awkward line about wires crossing or throwing shade.
What feels fresh to add here is the truth of how hard it can be to make one’s way through life — to want to be unique, different in the expression of self — to individuate by pushing against the rules and restrictions around us, as defined by others.
How hard it can be to resist the pressures of conformity! There are many of us in jobs which box us in with little space to be creative and expressive in our contributions. Such jobs can be toxic, extractive wastelands, devoid of color, vibrancy, vitality… Life.
There is a lot of heart energy on this topic — for another day.
Is there a point at which becomes too late in one’s life to let the self be grown? Maybe. Is every new generation blessed with vibrant potential? Maybe.
My hope is that it is safe for everyone to breathe deeply and feel the full spectrum of color in their life — their body and mind — at home, at work, inside and out.
