Heart Freedom Feels Everything
The essence of heart is emotion. Heart Freedom enables you to experience a bountiful variety and complexity of feelings. The supreme emotion is love, which by its very nature implies relationship—the lover and the beloved. In modern western culture couple relationship has become virtually synonymous with heart—think valentine. If you want to make your relationship work you have to pay attention to its heart—to the emotional, energetic and spiritual connection between you. For relationship happiness, you must welcome such deep connection, nourish and cherish it.
The responsibility of Heart Freedom is to allow yourself to feel everything, both positive and negative, and in addition, to act despite your emotional discomfort. If we try to turn our hearts off in order to be protected from feeling the pain of loss, abandonment, deceit or betrayal eventually we feel nothing at all and life becomes flat, dull and boring. There is little pleasure, joy or happiness because you can’t be fully human and only feel the good things.
Thought cannot heal a broken heart, and thinking will never open a heart that is closed, only feeling can accomplish such miracles. As Blaise Pascal said long ago, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” The keys to healing and opening your heart can’t be found in rationality, but in the realms of emotion, energy and spirit. You can enter these mysterious domains through a relationship when you surrender fully to the joys and sorrows of giving and receiving love. In a truly committed relationship you dare to start breaking open locks and knocking down walls.
Keys to Heart Freedom
Here are the keys necessary and sufficient to open every lock upon your heart, to realize heart freedom.
Intimacy: Real strength includes emotional vulnerability and the transparency of desire—allowing another in to know all of you, your perceived weaknesses as well as your strengths.
Commitment: Commitment is the determination to stand together through life’s joys and sorrows, to maintain your vows of union, to grow old together in love.
Selflessness: Selflessness means that you consistently act to be respectful of your partner and to be of service to the larger world community.
Kindness: Kindness is another word for love. It is always unconditional, never given with any expectation of return.
Daring: To be emotionally vulnerable, to make your fears, longings and desires transparent is to risk being judged, abandoned, hurt again. There is uncommon courage in daring to take such risks.
Trust: Trust is a form of faith. In spite of past experiences of deceit or betrayal, you act to support your present relationship in love, kindness and selflessness.
Self-love: Without self-love there can be no love for another; there is too much fear, too much insecurity. Loving yourself is the secure foundation for all enduring relationships.
Truth: Revealing your hearts desires to the one you love is essential to clearing away all of the excess baggage that loads you down in self pity, doubt and fear.
Unconditional Love: Unconditional love means you act without expectation of gaining a result you want. You give just to give, not with any return in mind.
Forgiveness: Forgiveness is for yourself as much as for the one who is forgiven. It doesn’t mean you forget past transgressions, but with forgiveness you gain the freedom to act as if they never happened.
Pleasure: In a relationship, the giving of pleasure brings the most exquisite pleasure to the giver. Few things feel as good as completely pleasing your partner. Giving and receiving pleasure is a spiritual act.
Romance: Romance is not incredibly complex, it simply involves showing how important your lover is to you—over and over and over again.
There can be no opening of your heart, no heart freedom, without the willingness to become emotionally transparent and vulnerable. Daring to have faith in the one you love and who loves you, is where freedom and healing reside. While there is no guarantee that your relationship will last forever in happiness, this is your best chance to create the relationship happiness you seek.
