What Does It Take To Live With An Open Heart
Gandhi’s famous quote, “Be the change you wish to see” points toward the immense value of each individual’s presence and expression in the world. It suggests that who you are, how you are in the world creates real, tangible change.
Living with an open heart is not only our true purpose in life, but also the way to cultivate change, the change we wish to see.
Definition of an Open Heart
Living with an open heart acknowledges that who you are is more than what you’ve been taught. An open heart, in a familiar and busy world, cultivates awareness, clarity and courage. There is no single definition of an open heart - it’s a sense, a feeling that you are standing on a foundation from which you cannot fall.
When just one person walks into a room engaged with their heart, they communicate without words that the absence of judgment is an option. They are an invitation for everyone to step into a new way of being.
Understanding the Closed Heart
A closed heart, in essence, is a defended heart, a heart that is defending itself from experiences that we labeled as 'uncomfortable'. It is one way we try to control which emotions we want and don't want to experience.
The Impact of Emotional Barriers
Emotional barriers, whether they were created consciously or unconsciously, are a way for the psyche to take some sort of control over one’s experience. A decision is made that we don’t want to repeat this experience, or we want to feel more of that experience. With that decision comes a lot of work to maintain that choice internally.
The barrier that says “I don’t want that again, I just want this” creates blind spots that may keep us from recognizing where the heart is offering us a gentle and loving resolution.
A lifetime of repetitive emotional barriers, judgments and identifications can create physical and non-physical ailments, as well as relationship disharmonies.
Common Reasons for Closing the Heart (chakra)
The barriers arise when a person is feeling overwhelmed by an emotional experience or assigns judgment to their experience. Without the awareness to recognize the emotion for what it is, or the tools to address it without judgment, survival kicks in as if the movement of this “emotional weather” is deadly.
The experience of overwhelm and feelings of survival are often unpleasant and activate the three earliest judgments most of us were taught in life: pain is bad, comfort is good, and the point of life is to be in control.
Emotional barriers are built and fortified each time we re-decide that pain is bad and comfort is good. In doing that, we close ourselves to certain experiences, because of the reinforced fear of getting hurt, experiencing uncomfortable and difficult emotions, or feeling out of control.
Benefits of Living with an Open Heart
Improved Emotional Well-being
You were never meant to be a kite flying in the emotional winds of humanity. Living life with an open heart reveals the true nature of emotions. You free yourself from the cycle of judgment-reaction-judgment that leads to feeling helpless in the face of overwhelming emotion.
Beyond simply feeling better in the face of emotions, you begin to recognize the energy of emotion as beneficial information. Rather than feeling victimized by the experience, you begin to recognize that the magnetic charge of emotional energy is something finite, something much, much smaller than You.
2. Enhanced Relationships
Some people say they want a truly emotional connection with their partner, and then they wonder why there is so much turbulence in their relationship. If instead we connect first with our own heart and then welcome a relationship between two open hearts, we set ourselves up to offer the best version of ourselves to a relationship where we’re also willing to see the best of our partner.
Even in the seemingly insignificant relationships in our lives - saying hello to the grocery clerk, talking to coworkers, helping our neighbor get the cat out of the tree, sitting through a boring zoom call, driving in traffic with dozens of other people who would rather be somewhere else - when we show up with an open heart, we become an opportunity for others to join us in that space.
Whether or not other people change recognizably in response to what they feel, our experience of them can change in monumental and divine ways. The ripples of openness can touch hearts in ways we may never see.
When I offer connection first, when my first commitment is to my own heart, I am connected with a depth of self, absent of judgment, that so many others are thirsty to feel within themselves. My relationship with my own heart becomes a reminder to others that this kind of love is still, and always, available.
3. Increased Empathy and Compassion
Everybody is empathic. It is our first method of communication with the physical world as infants, before we have cognition, words and the ability to linearize our thoughts. Empathy is largely misunderstood and overcomplicated, but when we simplify it, empathy is simply our capacity to experience multiple dimensions of clarity in our communication with one another.
In the absence of judgment, compassion becomes a “default setting.”
So, what does it take to live with an open heart?
Accepting Imperfections
The idea that “we are all perfect just as we are” can be hard to swallow for a society bombarded with messages that you should always be trying to improve yourself.
Accepting imperfections starts with ourselves being brave enough to recognize how we actually feel, to listen to our own joys, needs, and all aspects of yourself without judgment.. Can you suspend judgment long enough to hear yourself? To see what you truly love, what no longer works for you? Listening to yourself with an open heart begins to build a foundation from which you cannot fall.
Rejected parts of ourselves
Everyone on this journey will be faced with pockets of darkness and density. There are parts of ourselves we have rejected, judged and tried to forget. Until these are acknowledged, heard and addressed, they will continue to run our lives from “behind the curtain” of unconscious reactions.
While judgment might call these dark aspects “imperfect” and say that they are “the worst parts” of who we are, through the eyes of the heart, these dark facets are simply calling out to remember what it is to be loved.
They are asking for the same awareness and compassion that we would show to an hurt animal or a friend who has been through hard times. The heart transcends judgment in favor of listening to the hurt that’s been cloaked in darkness so that it might come into the light and heal.
Practicing Mindfulness and Emotional Awareness
The moment you bring your awareness to a feeling, an emotion, a sense of movement in your body, mind or world, your awareness alone begins to create change. Awareness without judgment moves all of creation toward love.
The body is the aspect of you that is always in the present moment and always simply telling the truth about the feelings it communicates. Whether the body is telling you the wind is cold, or that you have a hat on your head, or that sadness is moving through you in subtle ways, the body is your ally, doing its best to help you navigate your world.
When you have a more clear understanding that emotions are moving through, and the feelings they create are the body’s attempt to alert you to what IS, your mind can begin to recognize that it is no longer alone.
As you bring your awareness to the body, without judging the experience, you begin to partner with the pure consciousness of your being, your true self.
Emotional awareness is about bringing your unique presence into all that you are, your whole spirit, with curiosity for where your heart might lead you next.
Letting Go of Self-Criticism and Judgments
I wonder what would happen if we stop judging judgment. What if we had no opinion about whether or not I or someone else passes a judgment? This is a game you can try for 10 seconds at a time - whatever you feel judgey about, simply take a break from that opinion for 10 seconds. Promise yourself that you get to have your judgment back after that 10 seconds, if you want it back.
What happened in that 10 seconds? How did your body feel? How did your relationship with your body feel - was it the same or different? How did you feel about picking the judgment back up again?
As compelling as the feelings are when we are in an atmosphere of judgment, the truth is that we have the power to take a break from the feeling and experience our heart, even if for just 10 seconds at a time. It may be too much to ask someone to just drop all of their opinions and judgments, self-criticism and self-denial in one fell swoop.
Love would never ask us to force a change like that. Taking a break from time to time though, is always an option. In those small breaks, we begin to experience our body in the absence of an old and familiar conflict.
We create space to experience our heart where no judgment has ever existed. We give our mind a new taste of how to relate to ourselves without denying our familiar way of being.
Those short breaks from judgment and opinion add up, not in a linear way like 1 + 1 = 2, but in an exponential way like 1 + 1 = 11. Living with an open heart invites a kind of grace into your life where big changes can be made with profound gentleness.
Overcoming Fear of Being Vulnerable
Brene Brown’s work has crafted a foundation of understanding the power of vulnerability. There are so many ways to point to it, to talk about it, but in its simplest form, I’d say vulnerability is living without defense or offense. It is an expression of living with an open heart that knows it is unharmable.
When you adopt a dog or a cat or a horse out of a bad situation, you generally have a profound compassion for their fears and insecurities. They’ve been through some experiences that were not their fault, that they could not control, where their requests for safety and softness went unheard. You modify your approach, soften your voice and shift your energy to offer space for the Dear One to test the waters and see if they can expand into trust again.
Living with an open heart offers our own fears the same grace as we would offer an animal. The fears and the resulting thought patterns they create are, in essence, just trying their best to survive a life that has proved itself to be overwhelming, shocking, painful or confusing beyond measure. Why would I continue to punish someone who is still brave enough to ask for help after such overwhelming experiences?
I’ve found that the most gentle, and often most effective long-term approach to overcoming fear is to simply become aware of it without judging it. For 10 seconds at a time, when the fear arises, I can turn my heart toward the fear and float, “Thank you.”
After all, it is only doing its best, in the way it knows, to keep me safe. When fear evolves beyond being helpful and starts hindering a life of free expression in an abundant life, it’s safe to say that we may have outgrown what that fear knows about safety.
Your spirit expands where true vulnerability begins - with the courage to recognize how you actually feel. Can you suspend judgment long enough to hear yourself? To see what you truly love, what no longer works for you?
Listening to yourself with an open heart begins to build a foundation from which you cannot fall. Feeling heard, feeling like someone “gets” you contributes to a whole dimension of feeling safe. Imagine if you could offer yourself that safe space!
Transforming Pain into Growth and Wisdom
Your own heart is the ultimate healer, and it has an energy and frequency that is unique in all the universe. You can become more acquainted with that energy and call it into play each time you address a pain, conflict or judgment. The more often you engage your own heart, the more often the heart shows up when you most need it.
The "right" tools for you are the ones that:
Give your mind the information it needs to move forward
Put you in touch with your heart
Empower you to invoke your innate ability to self-heal
Everything, from the physical to the etheric, responds to the movement of energy. By taking command of your awareness and bringing it to your heart, you create an inner environment where pain on any level can begin to move, to transform, to reveal the wisdom that may guide you beyond the state that produced the pain.
Conclusion
Humanity is evolving in consciousness. The evidence is in the millions of us who are embracing meditation, mindfulness and communication regardless of culture, nation or background. So many are more curious than afraid of a new way of being on our shared planet. With this expansion of consciousness we have an opportunity to move into a new way of being with gentleness - you don’t have to scare yourself into enlightenment!
From an old paradigm, opening the heart can seem like the scariest thing ever - it is the least controllable aspect of our being. But when you look through the eyes of the heart, you begin to see a new kind of clarity. The importance of control and comfort give way to connection and movement, to harmony and love.
You open yourself to a world where you can learn who you are without judging who you are. You can learn how to have conversations with the mind, the body and your own higher consciousness. You discover how it feels to be the creator of your world, and you discover the confidence to know that whatever you are faced with has been presented to honor you rather than bother you.
'To live with an open heart' is a journey that is unique for everyone, and yet it is somehow also the same. The moment you acknowledge your commitment to your heart, when you exhale and say, “yes, show me who I am beyond all of this conflict,” you have taken the most important step toward living with an open heart. You have said yes to your journey.
