What I Believe, Part 2
In my last post I stated that I believe there is nothing in the universe more important than love, and I made a case for it through the work of a few different researchers of consciousness. I likened love to the fuel that is always available to us and influences the state we are in at any given time, and how it may be the essence of consciousness itself.
I truly believe love is the key. It creates connection, trust, vulnerability and peace. When our hearts are tuned in this way, a state of coherence develops which is a relatively new understanding of the role of the heart in the human body. Heart coherence is defined as “a state of cooperative alignment between the heart, mind, emotions and physical systems” (Heart Math Institute – www.heartmath.org). Stunning new scientific understanding of the implications of this effect changes everything about that we know of the heart’s role in our physical, emotional, and spiritual lives. Mainstream science is slow to promote this understanding, however it’s only a matter of time.
Nonetheless, we can easily embrace these concepts and see it change us. Love is freely available to us whenever we chose to tap into it, although most of us would raise our eyebrows reading this. We are so used to waiting for someone to give it to us, that when the other isn’t there to give it, or there is no other, we feel the vacancy. Has it not occurred to us that we can fill ourselves from the trough of love, anytime we wish? Why would we wait for it to come from another if we can give it freely to ourselves? If we could do this, and we felt the benefit of it, would we not want to continually feed ourselves love?
Whatever the source we can all sense the difference it makes in life when we feel that love is available to us. I believe if we understood the importance of feeling love in our lives, we would work harder to obtain it and keep it present.
What are the benefits more explicitly on raising consciousness? Love is the fuel that expands our consciousness. We access that fuel when we open our hearts. When our hearts are open, our consciousness expands, and when our consciousness expands, we have access to a level of awareness that opens up our understanding of ourselves and the universe we live in. Having love in our lives will undoubtably raise the quality and effectiveness of our existence in major ways, if only to give us peace and connection.
We can easily bring more love into our lives – feed ourselves this essence of the universe that is so readily available to us – with simple practices. The most important component of these exercises is focus.
Focus, in this context, is on the heart center. Whether you are a visual, tactile, auditory or an experiential learner, finding a method that works best for you might mean putting yourself into an environment that supports your focus. For example, if you are experiential (learn from doing), take a walk in nature while you focus. If you are visual find something to look at that stirs your heart. If you are auditory, play music with string instruments that stir the heart. The point is to create an experience that allows your focus to have impact. Whatever the experience is that you create, imagine, feel, or hear your heart center. Use color, pictures, sound – whatever it takes – to provoke the image of your heart and set the intention that you will receive love. Imagine in whatever way you can, your heart receiving that love. Fill yourself up with it and send it flowing throughout your body. Use it to bring peace and calm, or to heal pain or suffering. It is available, like the air we breathe.
If you practice this regularly you will train the heart to be a receiver. The more you tune in to this, the more you may notice it, sometimes in subtle ways, and sometimes in major ways. Like any good practice, the more we do it, the greater the chance that it anchors as a habit within us.
I will share with you a very simple technique that I used early on, to help me do this more readily. In my life mental chatter and an over active mind always got in the way of feeling my heart. I needed a method that helped remind me of my intention to stay focused on my heart center so I was given the simple reminder once that I still use. I visualize a bright light in the center of my head, in the form of a light bulb (symbolic of the thinking mind), and I see myself pull a chain that shuts it off, and then I see a light bulb in my heart center (symbolic of love) and I pull a chain that turns it on. This simple exercise was a reminder that when I am in my head more than my heart, I am less than present and therefore unable to be in the flow that is love all around me. The thinking mind takes a back seat to the experience. It becomes the servant rather than the master.
When we open our hearts, we are more consciously in the flow of all that awakens and heals us. There is a deep resonance that connects us when the heart is involved.
If love is the engine that moves us through states of consciousness, then it would suggest that people who wish to expand their consciousness need only to become more focused on the love that is always available to us when we shift our focus towards it.