Awakening to the Challenge of the Heart

At a very young age, I learned that what exists in the spiritual world manifests in our physical world for the two are intimately tied together. I was taught basic cause and effect principles and actually put them into practice. To (almost) grossly over simply the situation, Thoughts are Things. But, as you already know, that is a bit of a play on words for if you look up the classic definition of a thing you’ll find something like (thanks to reference.com):

a material object without life or consciousness; an inanimate object.

This definition pretty much limits a thing into the physical realm. But thoughts are innately not things, but rather an action. When you look up ‘thought’ via Wikipedia we find:

“Thought” generally refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual’s subjective consciousness. It can refer either to the act of thinking or the resulting ideas or arrangements of ideas. Similar concepts include cognition, sentience, consciousness, and imagination.^[1]

As you’ve seen in my previous posts, thoughts are energetic representations of things that we’ve experienced (or created). When thinking, Your Being moves energy that vibrates with the resonance of something that we’ve experienced. When you think of an apple, Your Being understands that energy. It can toy with that energy in many different ways. Put simply, you can re-experience the taste, smell or texture as physical sensations. Or, you can visualize what an apple looks like based on what you’ve seen and it can appear as if you’re looking at it. That energy appears real – because it is real.

So, when we experience Thoughts are Things, we see that at the root of the act of thinking, there is energy that Your Being uses to recreate the experience which is, pretty much, a thing but it’s manipulated on a conscious way. In other words –

Your consciousness manipulates energy that affects physical matter

Looking at this slightly differently, one example that I like to use that demonstrates this concept that thoughts affect matter – cause and effect – can be seen when thinking about the thoughts of sex. If your current state of mind is one of simply reading this blog post, sex is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Yet, if you where to take a few seconds to think of/visualize erotic sexual images, sounds and actions, you’ll probably notice that your body responds within seconds of the thoughts! The energy of the root chakra is quick to respond to your thoughts. Standing up, moving, and other physical activities fall into a similar category, but they are almost unconscious actions so people don’t pay much attention. The thing to note is that thoughts directly react on the body.

Now, why is this important to me today?

Well, for some time now, I’ve known that a spinal condition that I have where a disc is slightly out of alignment directly between my shoulder blades is related to my experiences of love. When I was younger, I went to a chiropractor for quite a while getting adjustments but it never seemed to really make a difference. A couple years ago, I thought about going to a chiropractor again, but I have reservations and I started yoga instead. The Yoga has been wonderful and I added massage therapy (which I really love). I can say that the area between my shoulder blades is stronger and more flexible. But it’s still not healed. To me, love is still mostly an intellectual thing – it doesn’t flow freely.

So, what triggered this writing today was the thought (intuitive knowing) that I received while investigating a relatively famous internet yoga instructor. I somehow ended up reading through the schedule of yoga workshops for the Whistler Yoga Conference and found the following posted by Dashama.

In this magical exploration of life’s greatest gift: LOVE. The “back” of the heart is where we store many of our earlier emotional tension from childhood, relationships and unmet expectations from life. Explore how working with asanas, breath, visualization, and mantras we learn to release that which is not serving you to become more free to love and be loved, to share compassion, forgiveness, empathy and joy.

When reading this, it was like a light bulb lit up bringing lots of different memories together all at the same time.

I immediately brought the thought home thinking about my out-of-alignment spine. But this time, the point of view for viewing it was not between my shoulder blades but rather behind my heart! This is the first time that I’ve ever thought about this physical condition from this point of view. I believe it opened my eyes to new healing energies.

The follow up thoughts flowed through like a flood of rushing memories. I remembered a number of comments that I’ve heard people tell me like – “you’re the most discipline man I’ve ever met”, or “you need to relax and go with the flow” or “you’re so hard on yourself” or “you’re so hard on yourself (emotionally).

But more importantly, my own thoughts about how I view myself over time. When I was younger, for some reason, I never gained the ability to love myself. With the help of TV, I learned to idolize an emotionless character (Mr. Spock from Star Trek) which I did my best to imitate. These actions helped to take me further away from the joy of emotions and more particularly – away from the actions that go along with the emotions of love. When I would greet someone, it would be a hand shake rather than a hug. Rather than feeling how the other people felt, I would logically analyze the situation exploring the cause and effect and offer guidance, but I would keep my distance regarding feeling the other person.

Memories of relationships came up. Knowing the principle of what you give out you get back I look at relationships that I’ve developed over the years and they have been mostly based on intellectual qualities like – trust, honesty, respect and loyalty. The characteristic that’s missing is love.

Then the classic why doesn’t anyone love me statement ran through my thoughts not in a pity me type of way, but rather as a – you get back what you give out – type way. This fed into the realization that my friendships are strong, but built upon characteristics that are less venerable than love – because I don’t project that emotion as I believe I should be.

This then linked into the unmet expectations from life written in that same yoga class statement above where I feel that I’ve undermined myself. I’ve always known that I’m here on Earth to learn love, but I have a very strong fear of failure.

Armed with this ‘new light’ and a few extra minutes to surf the web, I Googled up information about the Heart Chakra and found the following from HowToOpenChakras.com:

The 4th Chakra

The Heart Chakra is the 4th Chakra, located near a person’s heart in the center of their body. It rules the heart, circulatory and respiratory systems, plus a person’s arms, shoulders, hands, diaphragm, ribs/breasts and thymus gland.

It’s where the emotion of love comes from and is also related to some of the other positive emotions such as joy, happiness, integrity, respect, compassion, understanding and generosity. Through the Heart Chakra a person is able to connect with other humans and show love or affection. It is also the symbol of spiritual security and healing.

Symptoms of Blocked Heart Chakra

There are many bad occurrences if someone’s heart chakra is blocked. … It is also where emotions such as guilt, rejection, and not being able to love oneself occur. You will also feel symptoms of guilt, hatred, self-pity and paranoia and your emotions will rule your every move. You will be a cold and unfeeling individual unable to love anyone, not even yourself.

In extreme cases a blocked Heart Chakra can lead to diseases such as heart problems, asthma, lung and breast cancers, pneumonia, and upper back and shoulder issues.

Symptoms of a Balanced Heart Chakra

If your Heart Chakra is balanced you will be a compassionate and generous human being. You will honor feelings such as respect, honesty and happiness and will be considerate to the needs of others. You will also be able to feel love for the people around you. You will be able to have good relationships and will have self respect for yourself and others.

In the last section, the How To Open Chakras site states that if the heart chakra is balanced, you have a bunch of positive traits. Well, when I think about my way of life, I mostly honor these characteristics. Which makes me believe that I’m generally balanced, but not up to my full potential.

The bold italics above in the second paragraph really caught my eye. I think that I can connect to other humans, but the memories that passed through my head when I read the Yoga Class description led me to believe that I really might not be connecting to others with love and affection – but rather with the other listed characteristics!

Putting this all together, it appears to me that my fear of failure has manifested itself physically – behind my heart, in my body. The thoughts that I have created manifested as a miss-aligned disc in my spine. The defenses that I’ve built around myself intellectually has ‘hardened’ the center of my chest.

Ultimately, the reason why I have this condition is because I created it! Through my thoughts and actions, I created the energy patterns that manifested themselves as this physical condition. The reason why I’ve never seen any progress towards resolving this particular issue is because I continue to maintain the same thought patterns and resulting actions.

That’s now going to change!

A long time ago I blogged that I realized that “I’d been doing it all wrong”. Because I understand the truth of cause and effect, the fact that I was physically and emotionally exhausted, I understood that my actions had led me into that state of being. Well, this epiphany is similar to that previous one.  The difference is that with the previous situation there were so many physical and emotional issues that a general overall change was needed. In this case, it’s a specific physical manifestation. There is a specific thought pattern (or action) that needs to be replaced.

I am excited for this change in my life! I’m still unsure how it’s going to unfold, but I have a feeling that it will involve breaking down resistive barriers and allowing myself to be venerable. I know that I have the strength to accomplish this personal challenge. I know I have the understanding. I can picture myself behaving different than today – which is a huge change!

It’s now time to act.

Next time you give someone a hug, think of the words that I’ve written here. Allow yourself to be venerable and know that you’ll be safe.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll perform another back bend – my least favorite and most venerable yoga move…. Now I believe I understand the reason why.