I watched a woman being interviewed. She sat in a wheelchair because she was elderly and feeble. She said that she was dead for she had lost her heart. The psychiatrist asked her to place her hand over her breast to feel her heart beating: it must be there if she could feel its beat. “That,” she said, “ is not my real heart.”
James Hillman
This quote moves me deeply not only because of its imagery – a frail, old woman who knows there is something much more alive and full of passion and vitality within her that, sadly, she cannot feel – but also because of the straightforward yet tender way in which James Hillman tells this story. (James Hillman happens to be one of my favourite writers).
I wonder whether you too sometimes sense that vague though persistent undercurrent of a fullness, a passion, an excitement, an overflowing, a magnificence, a deliciousness, a stretch of tenderness that is almost unbearable…You sense it but it eludes you, refusing to yield to your longing for it much less your scrutiny.
Where is the real heart of your being, of the endless Love that you are? Of the infinite goodness and greatness and power that you are? Of the wondrous possibilities that you are? And how do you reach it? Or let it reach you?
Perhaps you’ve felt fleeting moments of it but they’ve been too brief to take seriously. Too overwhelming to feel safe in its presence. Too good to trust. Too powerful to not shield yourself from it. Too whole and encompassing to not feel afraid of losing your ‘self’ in it.
‘She was dead for she had lost her heart’.
Not physically dead but dead in the way she most wanted to be alive – in her being. In being the full expression of the undercurrent that’s called Life. That’s called Love. That’s called God.
Like an empty house.
You can tell it’s a house but where is its a-life-ness? Where is the expression of Love in that house? Where are the nurtured gardens and house plants that ooze Love’s perfumes and colours? Where are the painted walls and carefully chosen hanging pictures and photographs that confide Life’s tantalizing tales?
Where are the well-used couches and cushions that breathe Love’s comfort and acceptance? Where are the generations of people that take their roles in Life’s unending theatre? Where are the voices and sounds and movement that are choreographed by Love’s rhythms?
Where is the real heart? Where is our real heart? Where isyourreal heart? No, it’s not the four-chambered, blood pumping organ inside your chest.
Where is the real heart of your being, of the endless Love that you are? Of the infinite goodness and greatness and power that you are? Of the wondrous possibilities that you are? And how do you reach it? Or let it reach you?
It’s possible. It’s always present. That’s right. It is always and only present. Not past. Not future. Present. Be present and you are it. That’s the only way you will ‘reach’ it. And the only way it can ‘reach’ you.
Join me today and/or Thursday and every Tuesday and Thursday to be present. To find your lost, real heart and become alive again and again and again.
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