If you want to know your heart, first and foremost understand that you are not your heart-you are the experiencer of your heart. You are the consciousness that is aware when emotions are taking place. Singer, page 105
Hmmm! Okay so that is very important to realize. Just like we realize we are not the body, mind or all the mind stuff, we must realize we are not the heart or all the emotions that go with it. We are the observer and the experiencer of it all.
This realization becomes especially important when we are in what ACIM refers to as "Special relationships"...when we say we are in love:
You're floating in the ocean of love, but you're not the love you feel-you are the experiencer of the love you feel. (Singer, page 105)
As the experiencer, as the observer, we can step back a bit and look upon what is unfolding in front of us in our love relationships with a certain healthy detachment. We are not all tangled up in it. It isn't so personal. At the same time, we take accountability and ownership for our love experiences. We know we cannot look at the other person as the cause of our happiness or the lack of .
The actual flow of love has to do with you and your heart. It has nothing to do with anybody else... Singer, page 105
Our "lovers" or special others don't give us love...love is already inside us and we will experience it only if we keep our hearts open. The other person cannot open our hearts. Only we can do that.
That is a hard one for many of us to understand: that we, and we alone, are responsible for the opening and closing of our hearts, for our emotions. We are constantly seeking to fulfill ourselves,to keep our samskaras down, to fill in those empty holes of loneliness with someone else who we assume makes us feel good inside...as if they have the power to do that, We give them the responsibility for our happiness and when they don't come through we erroneously believe we have a healthy right to blame them...to have that positive love feeling turn into its opposite. No one ...absolutely no one "out there" can make us happy...can keep our hearts open so love can continuously pour through. Love is an inside job!
Undoubtedly, certain people or circumstances can cause your heart to open and close. But the action of opening and closing is something your heart is doing, not the other person. Singer, page 105.
Our emotions are ours and are constantly flowing within us whether we like it or not. We don't get our emotions from the outside therefore no one can make us happy, no one can make us sad or angry or afraid. Our hearts are open when we fall in love and they are closed when we are feeling a lack of love. The opening and closing are our doing. If our new lover or friend says and does all the right things and stays clear form triggering our samskaras, we acclaim, how happy they make us and that we are so in love with them , when in actuality we are simply feeling the free flow of love already within us because our heart is open. As soon as they say or do something that triggers those old knots and impressions stored within us...our heart closes. We stop feeling that natural flow. This "shakti" cannot get up through the samskaras and the closed heart.
I remember, shortly before my divorce, I was so self righteous claiming to be a victim of an unhealthy marriage. I could list over 100 things every time I spoke about it, that proved how unloving my ex was and how he was the source of all my unhappiness. I later realized that the problem was seldom him, no matter how he may have triggered all my old wounds. The problem was I closed my heart. I blocked the flow of love in me.
Don't get me wrong, the divorce proved to be a healthy decision for all, but regardless of what he may have done or didn't do, my ex was not the cause of my unhappiness. I was...I got all tangled up in this "special relationship". I had expectations and assumptions about how he and the relationship should be to make me comfortable inside. When he met those expectations and was able to soothe my samskaras I was "in love"....when he didn't meet them and my samskaras got triggered...I closed down. But I paid little attention to my closing down part. All I paid attention to was what he was or wasn't doing to me or for me. I believed that I was in an unhealthy relationship where I was the victim. I wasn't dealing with my own emotions but I was blaming him for triggering them
If you want to continue feeling love, you have to deal with the emotions that open and close the heart. page 107
Of course the mind, and all its thinking. steps in when we are feeling this flow of love and when we suddenly aren't. When the heart is open and we are feeling love, our thoughts too seem so positive. When the heart is closed and we stop the flow of love, the mind becomes negative and depressed. Fear takes over. I was negative and depressed and blaming my ex for that.
We have to realize then that we are not the mind, or the thinking either...we are simply experiencers or observers of it. By keeping that distance, that healthy detachment from what is going on in our minds and hearts, we can simply observe and experience without judgement.
The heart, like all our human tendencies, will fluctuate...it will open and close...it will vibrate with enthusiasm...it will simmer down with grief. Just notice! The less personal we take this fluctuation...the less lost we get in it...the more the heart will stay open and the more love energy will flow through us.
Besides observing, our job here, is to let the samskaras...those impressions that are blocking our hearts release. The less energy we waste trying to hold them down and blaming others for triggering them, the more energy we will have to love. Without or fear tendency...there is love.
To believe that special relationships, with special love, can offer you salvation is the belief that separation is salvation...Because of guilt, all special relationships have elements of fear in them. This is why they shift and change so frequently. They are not based on changeless love alone. And love, where fear has entered, cannot be depended on because it is not perfect.
ACIM: Chapter 15: V: 3:3 & 4: 1-4
All is well
A Couse in Miracles: Combined Volume (2007) Foundation For Inner Peace
Michael A. singer (2022) living untthered,Chapter 22: Why the Heart Opens and Closes. New Harbinger/ Sounds True
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