Listen.
Listen now.
The Heart
inside your heart
is telling you
Everything
you already know.
Listen, Dear.
It helps to hear-
all that striving
and searching,
fearing and pretending
is not who you are.
Listen close;
closer still.
Your Heart is telling you
who you Really are.
I told you before.
You already know.
Elena Schreiber
3/16/17
Every now and then something strangely wonderful happens to me…in between everyday tasks and destinations, usually when I’m driving by myself, scooting around town between the grocery store and the gas station, safe and secure in the comfort of my car (although occasionally it occurs when I close my eyes to meditate). I think it has to do with getting really quiet and just being with my Self for a few uninterrupted moments, free from distractions. There’s nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. It’s one of those things that therapists, and other like-hearted people get to experience if we’re lucky, and willing, and open.
All of the sudden, the profoundly deep emotions I’ve been sitting with (but not consciously aware of) for the past few days or weeks or months, wells up in my heart and comes over me. For a few minutes, my heart becomes flooded with empathy for the suffering I’ve seen or heard about in my office; sitting across from the incredibly brave, resilient people who share their stories of trauma and triumph with me in therapy. It is large and powerful and unstoppable, like a tidal wave of compassion.
It sounds awful to be hijacked by emotions like this, but it really isn’t. I don’t mind crying, even when I’m sitting at a red light and someone in the next car can see me. I’ve actually come to feel so grateful for these moments and the fact that I am still able to feel my feelings to this extent…that I haven’t become so hard-hearted, desensitized, or cynical about life. Instead, I feel incredibly blessed that I haven’t built a wall around my heart.
Many of us build walls to avoid the intensity of our feelings, for fear of being swallowed up by them. To shield and protect ourselves, we use sarcasm, apathy, stoicism. At times, I too have fought back tears in an effort to remain composed, in control. And sometimes that’s necessary, important and even wise, depending on the situation. But eventually those feelings must be released and dealt with, or they become embedded, patterned in the cells of our mind-body.
In reality, when someone builds an actual sea wall, not only is the beach spoiled by the wall itself, but over time sand is lost in front of the wall until the beach eventually caves and sinks. It is the same with an emotional tidal wave. Ironically, our anxiety about being engulfed causes us to bottle everything up, which inevitably leads to drowning anyway.
It is a risk and a leap of faith to trust in the process of allowing and expressing our painful feelings, especially if we weren’t given permission to do so by our families, communities, or society, for various legitimate reasons. And it may be that we need to do it with someone secure like a therapist, mentor, wise teacher or spiritual leader… someone who can help create a safe container for those feelings and show us healthy ways to cope with them.
Our feelings hold sacred messages for us, and it is a gift we give ourselves to let emotions like these rise to surface to be released, explored and soothed. Afterwards, it is often healing and refreshing. In fact, much like how real tidal waves actually clean beaches and restore animal and plant life that has long been absent to the affected region, these emotional tsunamis have the capacity to cleanse and restore the soul.
The ocean within all of us is vast and mysterious. As life circumstances change, our internal tectonic plates shift from time to time, causing all of us to quake. Tides of emotion will ebb and flow, too. Eventually there will be another tidal wave. It is inevitable, and that’s okay. Let it come.
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Sometimes I have the most extremely lucid, spiritually-awakening dreams. I have always been a vivid dreamer, ever since I was a very young child (for better or worse). Perhaps that is why I find dreams, especially spiritual ones, so magical and fascinating.
Recently, I dreamed I was able to experience my True Self as a Being of Light. I saw and felt myself as I really am (as all of us are)- a presence and an awareness of pure, golden, radiant light. It was such an intense feeling of powerful energy coursing through me, as me…the most blissful state of pure energy/electricity, vibrating at an incredibly high frequency, like I was exploding, but with love/bliss, not pain.
I could see and feel all around me that everything else was made up of this exact same light energy, too. Trees, people, objects, the ground, even the air/space between everything. All of it was this exact same field of light energy, but it was brighter in some places and beings than others. For example, light trees were brighter than the light space or light objects around them. But people were illuminated much brighter than anything else.
At one point, I was watching a woman who was standing and talking, and all I could see was her light in the shape of her body, and I could feel her light too because it was the same as mine, and all of the light was interconnected. There was no separation, but it pulsed and glowed brighter within the light field depending on who or what the light encompassed.
I was just bursting with this overwhelming sensation of light energy, completely at one with it, when all of the sudden I became aware that I was feeling it. Once I became conscious of the feeling and the intensity of it, I immediately woke up. I could still feel the energy coursing through my body but I quickly became afraid of the overwhelming power of it.
As soon as my mind had noticed it, that amazing sensation of love turned into adrenaline/panic racing through my bloodstream, as though I had just woken up from a nightmare instead of a magnificent spiritual experience. But I gently reminded myself it had been a beautiful dream, and there was nothing to be afraid of. As the fear subsided, I had an inner knowing that this was not truly just a dream. It was a glimpse of Reality, of who and what we really are…spirit, light, love.
Luckily, the dream has stayed with me, and whenever I remember it I am still able to feel that glorious energy, but only a fraction of it. I can’t quite evoke it fully, but I know it exists.
I had another dream a few days later where I was standing in a room with a group of people, and although we were all wearing name tags, we were asked to go around in a circle and say our names. My grandmother who died 9 years ago was there, and I noticed she had written her Americanized name Helen on her name tag, instead of her given Italian name, Helena. When it was my turn to speak I said, “My name is Elena, and I’m named after her (pointing to my grandmother, who smiled sweetly).” Then I said, “Her real name is Helena.” I woke up from that dream, and instantly remembered that our shared name actually means Bright One, Shining Light. I recalled my dream from a few nights earlier, and felt flooded with gratitude upon making the connection.
I am always in awe when synchronicity brings things full circle, in waking life as in dreams. We are loved and supported here, so much more than we know. So I look for the signs and pay attention to the messages of my dreams. Over and over again, I keep waking up to the awareness of who I really am (and who we all are). The more I able to do this, the more I allow the full brightness of my True Self to shine.
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If you enjoyed this essay, you might be interested in this link I found about Light Bodies (which I discovered while researching art for this article!):
But Who Am I?“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
~Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love
These mystical words have been gestating inside my heart ever since I first read them over fifteen years ago. I was in graduate school at the time, simultaneously working at a sexual assault crisis center in the heart of downtown New Britain, CT. I was always looking online for quotes that would inspire my clients and, let’s be honest, myself since I was constantly exhausted and overwhelmed (and trying not to look like it) by the endless meetings, late night volunteer trainings, budget crises, middle-of-the-night emergencies, tests and papers, not to mention the vicarious trauma that sensitive souls within the helping profession always seem to find themselves struggling with.
These words floated to me from cyberspace, instantly resonating somewhere True in my Soul, pulling me in towards my Higher Self. I printed them in bold Lucida Calligraphy on the loveliest flower-bordered stationary the agency could afford and made dozens of copies; handing them out to clients, staff, volunteers, interns, and anyone I thought could use some encouragement. I hung them up in my office and looked at them every day. I knew they were special, and I knew they meant something deeply important, even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on what that was. And I knew they were meant for me (as you probably knew they were meant for you the first time you read them).
Throughout the years, after getting married, graduating with my master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, getting divorced (yes, I’m aware of the irony), traveling across the country, getting remarried, beginning my therapy career, and becoming a new mother (twice), these words have come back to me over and over again. I still see them floating in cyberspace, occasionally posted by like-minded friends in artistic little square pictures on Facebook. I also see them on lovely greeting cards, and bumper stickers, and find them in other inspirational books and blogs by authors who are either quoting Marianne Williamson, or misattributing them to Nelson Mandela’s 1994 inaugural address. Over and over again, these words come back to me (like they do to you, I suspect) beckoning me to embody my true Self; giving me permission to shine.
And for a fleeting moment my whole being says, “Yes, that’s me! That’s what I’m about!” I begin to crave Creativity itself, and the energy that swells and flows freely when I’m truly inspired. I start dreaming of writing poetry, blogging, and drawing in my old sketch books. I have fantasies about singing in public! But the moment is usually short-lived of course, because then I go back to shrinking (like you do, I suspect) and feeling constricted by intangible things like time, and fatigue, and fear and, let’s not forget, that nagging sense of inferiority. Inevitably, I think that paralyzing thought just like Marianne predicts I will; But who am I? What do I have to say or offer that thousands of people haven’t already said or offered throughout history, much better than I ever could? Why should I write poetry when Rumi and Maya Angelou have already written it to perfection? Why should I start a blog when there are countless other bloggers who are a hundred times wittier and much more talented than I? And so it goes for drawing, and singing…But who am I?
Well, Marianne Williamson tells me I am a Child of God. And children don’t worry about these things, they just are. In fact, very young children don’t ever think about not doing something creative like drawing or singing or dancing because they’re “not good enough” at it, or because they perceive other people to be better at it. That is, not until someone else puts that poisonous idea into their mind first. Very young children just express their true feelings and creativity in the moment whenever they feel like it, however they feel compelled, because it’s in their heart and needs to break free. There’s no internal judgment. It isn’t good or bad, better or worse. It just is.
I am reminded of this every time my two year old son starts dancing wildly, jumping, flailing, and spinning until he falls down laughing, out of the blue, often when there’s not even music playing. Or when my five year old daughter makes up epic ballads that go on and on and sings them, sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly to herself (and anyone lucky enough to be within earshot). They are just being their creative little selves. No filter. No impulse control. No self-deprecating comments to make anyone around them feel better about themselves. They are pure and raw and in the moment, whether you like it or not…painting, coloring, getting play doh everywhere.
Most recently, our little family of four was visiting the local state park, throwing rocks into the lake and enjoying a picnic when my husband and I noticed our daughter was sitting off in the grass away from the rest of us. When she finally rejoined us after ten minutes or so, we asked her what she had been doing. She replied, “I was singing to God and the earth that I could have a puppy.” There you have it. Off in the grass, singing to God and the earth as though that’s the most perfectly normal thing to be doing on a Saturday. And why was she singing? Because she felt like it. And because it made her happy. And because she could sense the magic in it. Was she worried she might not hit the right note or another kid at the park might have a better voice? Of course not!
I’d like to be more like that (as you do, I suspect); more authentic and creatively expressive, for no other reason than that it just feels so good! I’ll be sharing my thoughts with all of you as I do, so that together we can all shine more brightly, as children do. And as Marianne says, we can manifest the glory of God that is within us. Not just some of us, but all of us.
Please share a comment or question below this article. I’d love to hear from you!!