I am asked the question
frequently of how to open my heart. People want
to know what I mean when I urge them to "Open
their hearts," and "Love everything." Most
of us spend a good part of our days being closed
down, and being open can feel pretty
threatening. Some people have never really
opened their hearts, and they honestly do not
know what it feels like.
Having an open heart is our natural state (if
you doubt this, spend a few minutes with a small
child). Closing down is a learned response. We
have all been hurt. So opening back up requires
us to "unlearn" what our life experience has
fostered in us. When people ask me about opening
their hearts, what they are really saying is,
"How can I allow myself to be vulnerable in a
world that has been hurtful and cruel?"
These feelings are so prevalent that many of our
social conventions exist to create the
appearance of openness while actually providing
protection for our sensitive egos. Someone says,
"How are you?" And we reply, "I'm fine,"
regardless of how we really feel. We all do it.
Our culture is built upon secrets. We do not
disclose our innermost truths. I grew up in the
1950's and my parent's culture was a mass of
secrets. It was shameful to go into therapy. You
didn't ask for help. Gays, minorities and
spinsters were looked down upon. The society was
full of closet drunks, neighborhood gossip and
family secrets. Putting on a good face was very
important, no matter what was going on inside.
If you went out, you dressed up. The only time
you saw jeans in public were on a workman. Every
neighborhood had its resident gossip who kept
tabs on the smallest of social infractions. If
you slipped up, the whole community would know
about it.
Males were not to show pain or emotion. Women
were refused anger and power. There was a higher
value placed on personal integrity (or at least
its appearance), but too often it became a false
front. I remember a childhood friend of mine who
used to complain that on steamy August
afternoons his parents would make them roll the
car windows up so that everyone would think that
they had an air conditioned car.
We have come a long way since my parent's time,
but secretive behavior has been
institutionalized in society for centuries. What
we call "power" in is built upon having secrets,
i.e., the manipulation of information. This is
inevitable whenever power is concentrated in a
few hands.
We expect that politicians and business people
will lie to us. We know that athletes use
performance-enhancing drugs, and that a new
toothpaste really won't change our sex life, but
we tolerate the social dishonesty. We would be
bowled over if Bill Gates came out publicly and
acknowledged that Microsoft was a monopoly that
crushed small competitors and overcharged its
customers. Military contractors have recently
made billions through the modern equivalent of
war profiteering, but it won't be on the agenda
for political discussion anytime soon.
I lived with native people in the jungle for a
while and was introduced to a very different way
of living. My tribal friends simply did not have
secrets. In their community everything was out
in the open. Even though I considered myself
pretty open, I was struck by how much even I had
to change. I felt rather naked at first, but
once I got the hang of it, it's a pretty
remarkable way to live. When the truth is out in
the open for everyone to see, there isn't a lot
of "wiggle room" for a person to manipulate or
deceive. It is much harder to do something
selfish or dishonest when you know the whole
community will know about it. If "X" and "Y"
aren't getting along, the community can bring
its insight and a multiplicity of resources to
the problem and it gets resolved! And when done
in a loving way, this process focuses the group
(not just the individual) on what needs to
change. My native friends taught me just how
powerful the truth can be. It is a remarkably
freeing way to live. I have often wondered if
the designation "primitive" that anthropologists
give these people was because they hadn't
learned to lie yet?
As I said, many of our cultural values derive
from the fact that we've all been hurt. At some
point, every relationship has bitten us.
Parents, friends, relatives, siblings, lovers,
fellow workers and even the 7-11 clerk at some
point will all be having a bad day and will want
to dump their stuff on you. At any moment the
phone could ring and the relationship monster
could bite.
Our natural response to these situations is to
either shut down and withdraw or attack as a
defense. We are reluctant to become any more
vulnerable than is absolutely necessary. We
don't want anything to be used against us. For
example, to admit that you are hurting or
depressed is to invite comment or worse,
criticism. It feels like you will appear weak;
and you do not want to be the weak one in the
shark tank. If however, you are amongst loving
friends, it is wonderful to "let your hair down"
and be yourself and be vulnerable.
We learn to close off early in life. Most
parents have a difficult time with their own
emotions, much less those of an exuberant child.
Intentionally or not, they shut us down. Take
your clothes off in front of company or ask aunt
Martha why she's fat and you will receive the
meaning of "social convention" very quickly. We
call social dishonesty "being polite." But as
Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name . .
. " There is never a justification to hurt
another person, but when it reaches the point of
outright dishonesty and manipulation, we leave
the arena of manners and enter a realm of what
could be considered a social felony. We call it
politics.
The feelings driving our need to hide the truth
did not originate in this lifetime. In the past
we have felt abandoned, punished, neglected and
judged by God. We have stood waiting for
redemption while everything around us fell
apart, and He never came. Never mind that our
egos were running rampant and that we had
effectively closed ourselves off to the
God-space. We felt abandoned! The seventeenth
time that a life fell apart, you decided that
this openness business was a load of manure. The
silent painful residue of a hundred difficult
past life experiences permeates the present when
you attempt to open your heart.
So, when I say to an audience, "Open your
hearts!" there is an inner rumbling, an echo
from the past, that you can almost hear. "He
doesn't know what he's talking about! If I do
that, I'm going to get screwed!" And, that is a
reasonable conclusion, considering that your
pain has been very real. It's not a very
positive context for growth and development, is
it?
So, what do you do? You want to open your heart,
but the prospect is scary. If you have been
reading these writings you have learned that we
never take these issues at face value because
there is always something deeper driving them
that we can use for our personal growth. The
more powerful the issue, the more profound the
potential growth, and that is certainly true in
this case.
First we have to look at the underlying
assumption that you can be hurt. Now, I know
that it feels that way, but that is your ego
protection in operation. Setting physical
violence aside, another person cannot hurt you,
only you can do that to yourself. Whether you
like the idea or not, emotional hurt is a
self-inflicted wound. It started out with actual
wounding from a parent, but that was 40 years
ago. If what someone else says to you today
causes you pain, it is because you have created
a vulnerability to their criticism. Otherwise,
they are just a person making noise in a corner
of the room. It may not be pleasant to be
around, but you could walk away knowing that
what they are saying is untrue.
Consider this: what if I tell you that your hair
is blue? Unless you have a nose ring and your
tongue is pierced, your hair is probably not
blue and you know it. So it's no big deal. You
know the truth, and what I say, being clearly
wrong, is irrelevant. But, what if I say
something like, "You are not worthy," or what if
I call you inept or insensitive? That's harder
to walk away from isn't it? Why? It's not that
what I say is true; this situation has nothing
to do with the truth. In fact, what is
interesting is that the words I say have really
very little importance. However, the fact that I
am judging you is important, because it
correlates with how you already judge and
condemn yourself. If you already feel
inadequate, then when I call you a name, my
words go in like arrows and IT HURTS!
But, it only hurts because you have previously
concluded that you are not worthy. In doing so,
you create a "sticky place" within you for my
words to attach to. Otherwise my words are just
vibrations in the air. THEY HAVE NO INHERENT
POWER OR MEANING THAT YOU DO NOT GIVE THEM! Now
before you spin off into "Here's another reason
why I'm not good enough," there is something
very important that I want you to consider.
Unless you are Donald Trump, you will accept, I
am sure, that there is too much ego running your
life. You do not spend as much time as you could
in the God-space. You do not love yourself.
Given that this is true, what is the Universe to
do about that? It just cannot sit idly by and
let you run off willy-nilly down the road. It is
obliged to help you to see what you are doing to
yourself and to motivate you to change.
How do we make you aware that you do not love
yourself? We stick you with a pin. That pin is
called a hurtful comment from a friend, a slight
from a lover or partner, an unkind or
insensitive word from a co-worker. Now for the
moment, I am going to ignore what they say,
because for our purposes their words are not
important. You will either accept what they say
and make changes in your life, or disagree with
them. So, I am going to separate content from
process, because what is important is what you
do with the slight that you have received.
I want to encourage you to see that this is the
Universe's way of showing you that there is a
sticky place within you. The Universe has
created a "mirror" - other people - to reflect
back to you (to make you aware of) the places
where you do not love yourself.
So, when someone takes a shot at you and it
sticks, try and step out of the moment and
recognize that an important learning opportunity
is at hand. After you finish nuking your
partner, friend or child for hurting your
feelings, recognize that you are being asked to
look at a place where you do not love yourself.
And here's the key: if you did love yourself,
you wouldn't react! You certainly wouldn't like
what had happened, but like the blue hair
comment, it would roll off you like water off a
duck, because you would know the truth. And,
because you knew the truth, you would be able to
calmly look at what they were saying (instead of
just reacting) and take apart what was really
going on, i.e., to see that they were afraid,
that they were threatened or jealous, etc., etc.
It puts you in an immensely different place!
Instead of being forced to beat them up out of
fear, you have the option of opening your heart
to the pain and fear that is driving them. You
are no longer a victim. That is the essence of
what the Christ and Buddha sought to teach us.
OK, so now that you understand what is going on,
what do you do about the sticky places within
you? First, recognize that the emotional charge
comes because this situation opens an old and
unresolved wound. This event resonates with the
sort of thing that used to happen at home when
you were a powerless child and were subject to
the emotional whims of your parents. And here's
the hook: as a kid, you didn't do anything to
deserve the treatment you received. No kid does.
Kids are just kids. So what you have been
carrying around all these years began with a
very important misunderstanding. And by the way,
this is the same way that the ego makes you feel
in relation to God. (That's a very important
point, but a bit off-topic at the moment.)
The good news is that misunderstandings can be
rectified. In Healing The Shadow, I write about
how to do this at length as a part of the
Shamanic Journey healing process. I also provide
a good bit of information about how to journey
back into your past lives and resolve the issues
that are still hanging around from those
experiences. The purpose of the Shamanic Journey
CD is to guide you through that process.
In brief, what you want to do in a situation
like this is to put yourself in a position to
help your hurt inner child to see the origins
and foundation of the misunderstandings that she
has been carrying. Then work with her so that
she can learn to accept the truth about who she
is. It's not a simple thing to do, but done
well, it changes the sticky places that make you
vulnerable to other people's criticism. It
dramatically changes your life.
When you are unable to open your heart it is
because you are afraid to let other people see
your "flaws." You may be so closed down that you
have trouble finding your heart, but it's there.
It's who and what you are, so it cannot be lost,
only temporarily shut down. Remember that the
Universe got hard-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge to
see the light, and so there is obviously hope
for you. I don't mean to infer that this aspect
of the work is easy. It is not. It is one of the
most difficult things we do on the spiritual
journey. That's why God created lots of other
people, so you could get plenty of practice.
From http://www.rossbishop.com/Articles/Monthly0412_Heart.htm
