The Art of Healing Your Heart
“One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.”
- Old Chinese Proverb
The Art of Healing Your Heart is based on overcoming the following:
Attachments
Grief / Loss
Depression
Heartbreak
Loneliness
and to discover what it means to understand the true nature of Self Love. There are times when one may get caught up in the mirage of our thoughts. The elusive mystery of how to maintain a relationship with another knowing that what is shared is not good for our well-being. Only adding to the hallowed space in the mind and spirit that can at times be indescribable.
As Vaidya Manohar, a professor of Ayurveda at MIU (Maharishi International University), describes it, it is the individual stating,
"I know what is right and I know what is wrong. Many know they are choosing mistakes and say, it's my inability to refrain from the wrongdoings. You know you are doing wrong, yet you continue. Keep continue indulging in wrongdoing things is the collective consciousness of the individual and 'his' own awareness."
Attachments, grief, loss, depression, heartbreak, loneliness, are how the human being gets caught up in the emotional constructs. It is an addiction to a vicious cycle it seems. As though one is playing out all these different scenarios after the relationship has ended to keep that connection open. Possibly because one feels closer to them within that space. Letting go of the relationship is like getting attached to that pain.
How does this translate for you?
“Blame is hollow and pointless. Grudges are bitterness and pointless,” said my friend Drew. If you get caught up in the wrongdoings, then you are losing yourSelf to the ego. It is time to start planting the seeds of eternal growth. It will be the first step in the Art of Healing Your Heart. Blaming consciously is the key to the awakening. Blaming the wrong-doer for the good as much as the bad.
What happens when you get more of what you want?
You are never satisfied. You can have 100 cars, but you still may want that 101. You may have the perfect relationship and still consider “what would it be like with someone else?” At times it seems, one is struggling to find something. Not even knowing what you are looking for… or better yet, it may not be what you are seeking, but what you seek is seeking you.
I’d like to begin with, never underestimating the power of mindset. We have all been going through a very challenging time over the last few years and even months or days. Remember that you are not alone on this journey and we are a collective that seems to be joined as when one hurts, we all hurt. There are moments of self-doubt, depression, stagnation, and the like. One should never suffer in silence and yet, we do. This mindset, in Ayurveda, is known as Pragya Aparadh, the mistake of the intellect.
I remember getting to a breaking point, and instead of being heard and understood, I was called a “mental case,” that I am “psycho,” “cold,” “insensitive” and the icing on the cake, “The abused became the abuser.”
It took me a long time to realize that these were projections of a hurt individual that refused to see their own way of being.
Many times, I stayed in relationships because of my empathy of not wanting to hurt another individual, and in turn, was only hurting myself. It’s the merry-go-round of toxic relationships. Most of the time, forgiveness gets misunderstood as weakness and the cycle begins again and gets worse.
Some might say, “for the life of me, I can’t understand why you are breaking down,” and it’s because one can only take so much torment. Yet, we remain in these cycles based on a few reasons, and from my own experience and upbringing, we stay in them because:
We hope for improvement or change in the person we love
Taking advantage of our empathy and kindness
Sacrificing your joy for someone else’s out of your unconditional love for them
Paradigm blindness - the way your parents or church taught you to be
Aka: not believing in divorce
Working through the problems
Counseling
Attached to the individual
Afraid to see life without the other
“They make you happy”
“They become your addiction”
You can’t afford to leave, etc
And the list goes on.
I remember asking a friend one day, “Why do you say such mean things to me? Why do you enjoy poking at me and seeing me upset?”
And his response was:
“Because It’s easy”
At that moment, I never felt so disrespected and belittled than the stab to my heart with those words. Not even when my husband of 10yrs who left me, hurt as much as those words did.
It was the light to the path of my awakening that those words ignited, and the quantum shift where I started to value my self-worth.
I lost the care of wanting anything more with that person in that instant and retreated into myself to find solace and comfort. I counted the days when the trip would be over to go home to restart the healing process of another broken heart again.
And as Ram Dass also said, “when you get back from that trip…I will still be here.”
Spirit moves at its own pace, not yours. It is a blessing to enter into this when we discover our wholeness. This is the story of my rebuilding process. It’s a humbling journey but one we share as a whole.
3 yrs ago-ish, who I thought was the love of my life left me because he knew something that I didn’t. We were outgrowing each other.
I was evolving on a highly rapid spiritual path and he was on a different one. Ram Dass always said, “the more conscious person, will give the other room to grow.”
I wanted to believe these words, but instead, I kept saying, “I don’t want to hurt him,” because I too started to feel the disconnect.
One afternoon after a perfectly wonderful yoga class, a week before we were to move into our new home, he sat me at the table and said, “I’m no longer in love with you and you are not coming to the new house.”
I was overwhelmed with emotion that one is unable to conceptualize. At that moment, my entire world was ripped out from underneath me.
I hate to admit it, but, I lost my family, my home, everything I thought was my future, my car, my smile, my heart, my light, and myself.
As Illi said, “we use external values to qualify,” and that’s exactly what I had done. I poured myself into everything and everyone else and lost myself along the way. I had no reverence for myself, but instead as Illi also said to me, “I was taking control of my (small) self and holding mySelf back from my fullest potential.”
You never truly know what lies behind the masks we wear out in the world. To love unconditionally means that alone. Yet, there is so much more beneath the surface. The EGO (edging God out), got in the way because I got so caught up in the hurt of the loss of everything I put all my value in, but I didn’t value myself. I let grief take over and shortly after, depression. I struggled with insecurities, anxiety, and making decisions that I know are wrong for me.
I lost my smile that day. The light within. I faked a smile for the world to see, but inside I had died.
I Kept teaching yoga and put myself on autopilot. I struggled with what it meant to be alone. At one point, lost, with no home, but just a car, and a room at friends’ place for a short time, I fell for the trap of kind words from another man, and even moved to Georgia thinking that it was “real love”, but it was really huge mistake. Being there for 2 weeks, I nearly lost my entire business, and financially, a huge decline. Only to recognize that he was merely “playing a role of a representative” and took advantage of my hurt. With the help of a truly dear friend, he sent me enough money to get in my car and get back home to NOLA.
Illi has said, “Re-evaluate your values. How rooted are you in the depth of your values? Ignorance is bliss to the ego.”
As many of you have probably done similar things. Seeking outside yourself for validation, love, acceptance….Probably made some dumb choices, like I did, just to remain stuck in a cycle of hurt, while presenting to the world a different face. “Smiles staged in photographs,” as Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria sings.
The beauty of social media is the veil we are able to hide behind. Reverence is having respect for yourself and everything around you as we learned in a podcast before and one of the 4 pillars of my new awakening. “Respect is the ultimate form of love,” as my dear friend Param Joytish aka Sam has told me.
It took me a long time to accept that. To not work so hard at finding anything. To sit and be still and let the answers find you. When you stop trying is when you arrive. What I have come to learn, is that, being alone, is a fear of coming face to face with your true Self.
Maybe, you are addicted to self-sabotage, and manipulation, because it’s what you do to yourself the best. We make decisions based on loneliness instead of wholeness. Like Vaidya said in the beginning, one can not veil insecurities when self-aware. You either know the veil and choose to cover it with the ego or in turn, manipulating yourself into thinking it is self-awareness. Self-awareness, is consciousness that gives you the freedom to make a choice. To give yourSelf the room to grow.
Where do you put your happiness?
What patterns will you continue in hopes of a different outcome?
Are you addicted to filling a void you know you need to free yourself from or continue ending up in the same place?
What difference is a man from a child, if the child is in the body of a man?
COVID came shortly after, and nearly took the only thing I had left…. My business. It basically tanked and the only reason it stayed afloat, was because I was keeping it alive through unemployment, pouring every dollar into it, and pouring my entire soul in it because it was all I had left, and didn’t want to lose that too. JBYF is my passion to share this story and others for a community that feels they have no voice and needed the same support that I was seeking.
Depression is an understatement, for what I have been through, and I am certain, many of you feel or have felt the same.
Many times I found the burden too heavy to bear. That the company I kept around me were not ready for this energy, and some were and still are not. There are also those much stronger on their spiritual walk than I of whom, I didn’t want to burden with my problems so I remained silent. Illi, Lynell, and Maria Coleen are the only ones I could open up to and have their genuine unconditional loving support.
Support is one of the 4 pillars to invite into your life, so you are able to “Surrender to the present” and be held in the space of love without judgment.
It wasn’t therapy I needed, I just needed a space to be heard, to release, and to surrender my pains. To cry it out, and have the embrace of genuine loving beings that didn’t call me “psycho, miserable, crazy,” and the like. They saw the brokenness inside, accepted me for who I was, and saw what I was becoming. I was leveling up in a way I didn’t know I had to, allowing God to use me and remove everything and everyone that no longer served my highest good.
Although I Silently suffered, enduring the merry-go-round of hurt. Attracting hurt people only to hurt me more because…. “It’s easy,” I began to understand what yoga really meant.
Yoga assesses the internal value so that we can enliven the inner intelligence and illuminate the external values as we evolve into the eternal value. This is the reason I teach the yoga I teach. So I may be there to align with those that have gone through and are still going through the rebuilding process.
If you are still reading this, then you are more powerful than you realize and stronger than you think. You are the only one that is capable of ruining your life. You are the only one able to make the changes to evolve. And, you are the only one to make excuses to not awaken into your wholeness.
How many of you continue to live through your hurts, to be told that “you are miserable,” when you are doing everything you can to break the cycle and enter into your wholeness?
A proverb I heard says, “A wise person changes his mind, a fool never will.”
This is the reason I wanted to share my story with you all, because the key to overcoming heartbreak, grief, depression, and the like, is to begin to slowly make conscious changes to our mindset. I know we are all going through a VERY difficult time, I haven’t even mentioned the calamity of the loss of my mom just 11 months ago.
However, amidst all the turmoil, I want you to know, that I am with you. That your peace is priceless.
Sean Johnson and the WIid Lotus band wrote a song called “I will rise again.” The part where he sings, “life’s too short, to close my heart, oh I will love again.” It was painful to listen to this song, because of how much truth was in it. During a time of great turmoil, loss, and grief, I am slowly now realizing that I will rise again, and will love again. I am slowly finding my smile again.
The poem that I wish to share is by Rumi, “The Guesthouse”
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
https://www.thepoetryexchange.co.uk/the-guest-house-by-rumi
I will leave you with these words, so you can meditate on your growth and know that no matter what you are growing through, it is a process of healing. You are creating your life. The most important relationship you need to have is the relationship with yourself and GOD.
Thank you for reading this. I will connect with you all next week.
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