Opening Your Heart to Love

At our core, we are beings of love. Due to the illusion of separation, it may be difficult to remember this at times, but love is our highest expression and above all else, we yearn for our return to love and oneness.

We open to love by keeping your hearts wide open, even though to do so is intensely frightening because it’s a kind of death- the death of our security, solitude and protection. It also represents a dissolution of the masks we wear to hide all of the aspects of ourselves that we judge as flawed, weak, inferior, worthless, grasping, hideous and undesirable- those parts of us that are crying out for love, relationship and affection.

We may (falsely) believe that all the armor and walls that we build up to safeguard ourselves will protect us, that they will make us strong and independent. After all, being needy and dependent the way we were as children is probably associated with some kind of wounding or trauma that brings up deeply unsettling feelings. But love knows no boundaries, and we must break down those walls and freely reveal our longing for intimacy, support, encouragement and attention.

When we open ourselves to love, we open ourselves to all of life and the sensual, spectacular abundance of the Universe. Our neediness is simply a signal, pointing us towards our longing for love, which has yet to be satiated. Our needs are the portal beckoning us back to oneness. Along the way, we may experience feelings of fragility, helplessness and even total surrender to the gaping maw of chaos and uncertainty. Once we are entirely enfolded and absorbed in love however, our needs are fulfilled and our sense of scarcity disappears.

When we first experience separation from divine union as children- from where we came- we learn to dissociate and self-soothe to avoid the pain of disconnection, perceived abandonment and negative emotions that threaten to capsize us. But emotional avoidance and dissociation is the root of all addictions.

Staying on the path of the lone wolf indefinitely, and not admitting to ourselves that we need other people is a coping mechanism that allows us to feed into the fallacy that we’re safe and in control. It’s a way to avoid facing our most severe and entrenched wounds.

The more vulnerable and open we are to letting love in, to merging with the Other and releasing the illusion of separation, the more we are transformed by the alchemical flames of sacred union consciousness. Consequently, we are able to return to love and wholeness. To open, even when we want to close, to continue to choose love- even in the face of grief or rejection, to meet the messy emotions at the seat of our soul and keep our heart energy radiating wide open anyways is the gift of the Christ principle, which is love.

“Every day pray and ask Christ to enter your heart with no expectation or judgment of how it’s going or how it’s not. Typically, you will start feeling love enter your body and your mind… Christ consciousness is the literal power or mechanism of our expansion. It gives us everything in life, everything progressive, everything evolutionary, including the regaining of our gifts. So we have to prioritize that first and say to ourselves, the most amazing thing I can do today is sit with Christ consciousness in my heart. And that, actually, is what creates the holy state… You will be drawn to certain activities, certain changes, new inspiration in your life that will put you on the track of your development (Young).”

I used to believe that understanding trauma on an intellectual level was the way out. That if I just did enough shadow work I would finally feel whole. And while doing the inner work is helpful for uncovering past conditioning, trauma is not healed in the mind. I now realize that opening your heart is the key to all healing… love is the great transmuter. The challenge of our time is healing the heart chakra.