Listen to your Heart

Great 80s song yet amongst the big hair and powder blue power suits were we listening to our hearts?

I learned to control mine - how about you? When emotion drowning out logic threatens to drown plans in total betrayal, many of us typically suppress our hearts and tell it to be quiet. Shut up, don't talk to me, behave, sit still - get this shit under control for god sakes!!! :-)

How many times have you heard someone berate their heart for betraying them?
Can we say for certain - this heart is betraying me?
"Who" is it really betraying?
Which me?
Which story of me?
Which character?
Do we equate our hearts with the magical mystery gateway that lets pain inside?

What happens when we control our hearts for a while and then someone gets access to it and starts to open the door?

whoaaa - It's like being on a diet of carrot sticks and bean sprouts for 12 months and then being handed the key to a chocolate factory where you could eat anything you wanted. The relief of the tension in this instance is overwhelming and freeing yet daunting. Knowing that if you eat one morsel of chocolate, you will get a sugar rush, then the migraine and then the physical symptoms - you take your time savoring the sights and smells carefully assessing the diverse options in front of you in order to make a small selection. OR you can simply open yourself to be swept away to the sights and smells allowing the tension to resolve itself in its own fashion and ravenously pig out at everything in sight!

Many of us put our hearts on a diet, close the door and lock it tight. Then we allow ourselves to ever so slightly open the door. Like a closet overstuffed with clothes that have been packed tightly and stored "just in case", this door springs from its hinges pushing out all the contents with a gigantic force that clears the closet and empties its contents in one big mess all around you.

Old clothes thrown all around you - costumes, uniforms - all that old "stuff" that I used to wear. :-)

Sure the tension was released however now there is 'stuff' everywhere filling you with nausea, terror and confusion. Until your "space" is structured, aligned, neat and tidy, labelled, sorted, arranged and managed, many people simply cannot function.

I am a self confessed control freak - my life's work in fact. So when the cupboard door springs open and explodes all my old "stuff" onto the floor around me what do I do? ha! I pull myself back in line - pull my head in - collect up all the mess, pack it neatly in boxes and store back inside the closet - replace the lock with a sturdier steel, change the key and lock and bolt the door.

God there is a wonderful relief experienced once that door is freshly closed again. I am safe and back in control. No one can hurt me. No one will mess with my stuff again.

For all you new agers or pseudo psycho analysts criticising these actions, how do you know that I have lost anything by closing the door? If I feel more empowered with the illusion of well constructured well ordered well controlled closet what do I lose? What do I gain? Is this a trick question? :-)

Am I still listening to my heart? Have I really closed the door? Am I really in control?

Like child birth - the contractions, dilation and delivery, deep ripping pain is a very effective technique that we, each of us, use just when we choose to move in a new direction. Nerves and muscles shift structural pattern polarities - and the subsequent agonising spasms make headlines and grab guaranteed attention. The contractions, through their tightening and narrowing work in symbiosis with the dilation – opening and expanding, pushing us out of our comfort zones and delivering us into a whole new world.

whichever way we frame the pain, the illusion, the game, the story - it will work for us.

It is impossible to close the door on your heart.
There is no door.
There is no pain.
Can I ask this question - is there a heart?