An open heart is, for many, more of a concept or idea than a conscious experience:
Unconsciously, it seems we have quite a few conditions for when our hearts can be open and with whom. We wonder why we are always so tired or experience little energy. Adjusting our diet, exercising, and getting more sleep can indeed be a significant step in the right direction, but that emptiness, racing thoughts, restlessness, and fatigue seem not to disappear. Even if you have meticulously planned the life you were born for (there are, by the way, beautiful methods for this), with a closed heart, you won’t feel or experience it. With a closed heart, it is impossible to feel inspired, pleasant, or happy, or even to know what currently suits you. Closing the heart once served as a protective mechanism to shield us from the intensity that our nervous system couldn’t handle, but now it hinders truly experiencing life.
Our heart is highly intelligent and has many more neurons than the brain. Our minds are filled with doubt, but our hearts “KNOW.” When we open our hearts, oxytocin is released. This neuropeptide plays a crucial role in forming social connections, being able to connect, and deriving pleasure from it. It plays a central role in connection with parents, friendships, romantic, and sexual interactions.
An open heart, unconditional love, is, as I see it: THE solution to many problems in our inner and outer worlds. It is a state of Being, a vibration, or frequency available to everyone. Beyond personality and self-images, beyond confusion, judgments, assumptions, beliefs, and survival mechanisms with their accompanying distortion of reality. Beyond polarization and fear. It comes with a shift in consciousness.
On Earth, there is no shortage of food, and there is no shortage of fellow human beings, yet hunger and loneliness are prevalent. There is a lack of love and awareness; the heart must open so that unconditional love can flow. With an open heart, we can reconnect with ourselves and others, and we dare to reach out to each other. On this level, division gives way to equality, and fear and greed dissolve. Greed is not experienced with an open heart. But also shame and loneliness dissolve in love; people who need help will then dare to reach out. Words spoken from our hearts touch and open the other heart. The personality gives and takes, but an open heart shares and overflows.
Until then, we live in internal conflict and confusion. Different thoughts with their accompanying emotions create chaos with no overview. One moment everything is clear, and the next moment doubt sets in. In the morning, you are sure how you will improve your life, but in the evening, someone else seems to be behind the wheel, and the good intentions seem to have vanished. One moment you feel powerful, and the next moment you are overwhelmed with uncertainty. Feelings and thoughts do not align, and you are out of balance. Or we endure for a long time on willpower but eventually burn out because there was no balance between effort and relaxation. In this case, burnout is your savior, not your enemy. The masculine part in ourselves behaves like the instigator and pusher, tells you what you should and shouldn’t do, and overwhelms you with shame and guilt when you don’t comply with all the “shoulds.” It wants control but doesn’t think about pleasure, connection, feeling, and relaxation. For this, we have the feminine in us; she disguises herself as a seductress in this imbalance and seems to lead us off the path. But underlying both strive for balance and wholeness. Until we become aware of this, they behave like little children, wanting attention, and if that doesn’t work willingly, then unwillingly. They behave like enemies until there is a merging. We often continue to fight on the level of this behavior, which is only a symptom of inner division and a closed heart. You are in a battle with parts of yourself, and at this level, there is no permanent winner, only losers who alternate. Only in an open heart can this merging take place so that the fighting against yourself and with yourself stops. This fighting with yourself is also a distraction from the deeper stored and unprocessed impressions in our system.
Over the years, we have gained many impressions, both positive and negative. These impressions are stored in our hearts and nervous system. In Sanskrit, we call this “samkara’s,” in Jungian psychology “complexes,” colloquially “old wounds,” and in psychology “unprocessed emotions” or “traumas.” They are mental, emotional, and psychological impressions that could not be processed or felt in that moment. We have negative and positive “samkara’s.” The energy of it can be triggered and flare up at any moment, and it seems as if the reaction that ensues is only about this moment, but it comes from a short or distant past. It overwhelms you with feelings and emotions that blind you to reality. They become not only reactive when you are negatively triggered but also, for example, in infatuation; think of the enchanting feeling of love that can often blind us. The stored impressions create this enchanting feeling. The feeling of completeness and fulfillment is not about the person you are in love with. Although you experience it that way, this is how “samkara’s,” child pieces, old stored impressions cloud our reality. The open heart gives you a feeling of coming home, of being complete, but we now think that the other person makes us complete. This is why we can become addicted to “love” and hop from one person to another. The other person can certainly be the trigger for you to open your heart again, but the impressions stored there belong more to you than to the other person. As long as we do not descend into our hearts, we will continue to live on the personal level. The personality has knowledge and conditions, but our heart has wisdom and unconditional love. The personality is about having and wanting to hold on and grasp; you recognize this by the feeling of contraction, while the layer of the heart is about letting go, love, and expansion.
When we make an open heart a priority, the battle in our inner and outer worlds dissolves. You will then see that nothing is worth losing your inner peace over.
How do you detach an open heart from conditions?
Go back to a memory where you experienced a lot of love, perhaps an experience with your children, or a beloved animal, or a loved one, it doesn’t matter what it is. It is about entering the frequency of love and an open heart so that you can experience this. Young animals or babies often work very well! Work with images, memories, or possibly fantasy. Imagine hugging your loved one or beloved animal; just imagine it and notice what it does to you inside. Do you feel it getting softer? And that your mind becomes calmer? Keep your attention focused around your heart area and feel how it moves or flows there; does it become more expansive? Calmer? More peaceful? Fuller? And can you stay in the heartwarming feeling? Let this feeling be the starting point of your day, the basis from which you live. Ensure that you enter this feeling before interacting with the outside world, before having that difficult conversation, before delivering the bad news, or before even taking a step into the world. Let this be the basis from which you live!
You can practice this by choosing fixed moments to let this feeling arise, for example, in the morning when you wake up, first bathing in love before getting out of bed, then before eating your breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then again before going to sleep.
The feeling around the heart area will become more powerful through repetition, similar to training muscles. An electromagnetic field with an enormous reach is created, influencing and softening your own life and the world around you, or at least positively influencing it.
When you do this for a week, you will notice that living with a closed heart is actually no longer an option because it is simply too painful.
THE WORLD DOESN’T WANT TO BE SAVED; IT WANTS TO BE LOVED. THAT’S HOW WE SAVE IT.