A heart centered life

One of the many beauties of traveling solo is it gives me so much time to be inside my own head, one of my favorite things to do. But this year has also taught me to not only wander around and explore within my head but to fall into my heart and explore there as well. My head is filled with a lot of words that I have gathered, knowledge that I have absorbed and sensory experiences of every day life. But in my heart lives a space where all the above sink a little deeper and meet my own wise self.

My heart is a place filled with magic. Where the bits and pieces of life that my brain loves to spin and chew on, soften. There is less urgency and immediacy about life when I sink into this space. It is gentle yet firm. A feeling of knowing emanates from every beat. This wisdom is ancient and powerful and beyond my understanding at times. This quiet knowing, a place of profoundly wise intelligence, lives within each of us.

My capacity to slip into this space has widened, especially when I do three specific actions. Slow down, do less and quiet the noise. Three actions that often feel impossible in our current world. Especially now, when everything is incredibly loud and we are all being asked to speed up and do more. Our world wants us to spin around in our head forever. But I am here to shout from the rooftops about how important it is to drop into our hearts.

Traveling in a new country and spending time in a city does not exactly encourage me to slow down, do less or quiet my environment. It is not always easy to find a quiet space with minimal distractions to drop into my heart. I believe this is part of the challenge of life. It will not make these things easy for us, because it wants us to be forced to make the effort.

There were moments this past year where I considered dropping off the face of this earth and finding a quiet ashram or a writers retreat to tuck myself into. And funny enough, I will be ending this year spending a month on an off grid yoga farm in Guatemala doing just that. And as excited as I am for that time, I know it is not a long term reality meant for me.

I have learned a lot over this past year, mostly from meeting this heart centered place within myself. Many of the truths I have come to understand have come with heartache. This heartache has made me often wonder if it is even possible to lead a heart centered life in this current world of ours. It feels too vulnerable and soft. As if everything around me will break me in half.

But then I will stumble into an experience that alters how I see the world. I cannot tell you how many times this ache in my heart has alchemized into hope. I wanted to spend a year diving into understanding pain, and that is definitely what I got. Time after time, I still am in absolute awe that pain always has the potential for love tucked neatly within its edges. This transformation from pain to love and ache to hope cannot happen in our head, it requires the wisdom of the heart.

If I hid from the world to achieve the slowing down, doing less and quieting my space, I am not sure if I would be where I am today. It is only when effort has been asked of me to move in this direction, has my internal world shifted. I read a line this morning that said, “Routines and habits make breakthroughs impossible.” This shook me a bit but also made me feel even more certain about the path this past year has led me down.

I love a good routine and have found certain habits in my life to be incredibly necessary. Both of these things have helped me to create the quiet and slow space where my heart can be heard best. But that sentence landed squarely in my chest. Very little growth comes from staying in the same place. When we get too comfortable with our world, external and internal, it is far too easy to avoid intentional action. Even if those habits and routines are healthy and helpful, they still may limit our ability to move forward.

It comes down to what we choose to make conscious in our lives. This sweet little heart space, where our inner wisdom lives, is always there. It doesn’t disappear when I don’t think about it or life gets too fast. It just slips into the subconscious. Habit and routine has the potential to allow our entire life to fall from the conscious realm. As soothing as this can be to our being, it can also create stagnation. It is finding the balance between awareness, effort and rest that allows our bodies to operate optimally.

For me, this has meant I needed to create a hell of a lot of instability in my life to figure out how to find stability within. I needed to stretch my ability to listen to my heart even in the noisiest environments. I also needed an insane amount of rest between these bouts of effort to recover. I am still learning how to give myself what I need while also allowing life to lead me forward in the direction designed for me.

The effort I have put forth, to quiet, slow down and do less has welcomed so much into my life. So much that I never imagined I would need. But here I am, beyond grateful for it all. Life is different when it comes from heart centered action. From bringing the subconscious wisdom within out to play with the current reality.

I don’t even know what my ending thoughts on this are because my heart is still stirring this all together. Perhaps in time I will find more clarity but for now it is all a bit blurry. All I know is that when I slow down, do less and keep my mind quiet, my heart speaks up. Moments of magic always arise when I allow this to happen.

I know for certain that each of us contains this type of magic. And our world desperately needs each of us to find a way closer to it. So don’t be afraid to slow down, do less and quiet your world for a bit. You may be surprised by the wisdom you hold within.