I was recently doing yoga with my friend Ira Israel. At the end of the last pose of Savasana (the corpse pose of total relaxation), he turned to me and said, "This is such a good feeling. I feel like I just rebooted my heart drive." It's that surge of good energy that takes over your body, your mind and heart after you've exerted such physical energy in the practice. And you feel a wave of happiness. A little bell went off in my head, and I had a real "A-HA!" moment, that summoned up everything I had been experiencing the last four months as I have been on the road speaking about the message of Unbinding The Heart. As I have been interacting and speaking, I have been feeling that so many people in the world are operating with crashed heart drives, and that essential parts of ourselves remain unexpressed and unattended. And we suffer heartache. Our hearts ache for connection, for authenticity and heartfelt expression. So this awareness inspired me to ask the question -- why does our heart drive crash, and how can we recharge it?
The truth is that a heart drive is not really a drive, it is a server. And it recharges by activating the service button. When we make ourselves available to serve (our lives or another's), it is miraculous how our hearts will automatically charge up. When we let go of our own agendas and let our hearts be open and free to connect, express and experience the moment for the sake of the moment, then our hearts thrive. Our heart sever doesn't necessarily come with a manual; each one of us has to write and live our own manual. Here are some of my thoughts about how to activate our heart server.
We live in a world that is success-driven, goal-oriented, multi-tasking focused, and with high expectations of quick results. Competitiveness, appearances and measuring up take their toll. The concept of "less is more" is just a concept. Such a world does not nurture, support or encourage the expression of our hearts. We want to fit in, we want to be accepted, and we do everything we can to hide who we are, because if -- God forbid -- we were seen as who we are, we fear we'd be left alone. So we shut down, we hibernate, and we put our hearts to sleep, and then start operating from our mental, physical, ego, and adrenaline drive -- hoping that this will compensate for our crashed heart drive. As I have become more aware of this pattern now and what we do to ourselves, I have noticed some common emotional patterns that we all run in ourselves that cause our hearts to crash. Here are some of the patterns that I see causing our hearts to crash:
- Inner pressure to achieve, accomplish and perform. Do more, be more.
Fear that if we press the pause button, we won't be in the race. Recycling the past. Somehow we forget to bring closure to old hurts, relationships that have ended, things that no longer work in our lives. So we walk around with an old operating system, forgetting to upgrade ourselves. Taking ourselves and those around us for granted -- not making time to appreciate, cherish, and value the extraordinary gifts of our lives. We end up being human-doings, rather than human beings. Missing the heartfelt moments that nudge us, because we are always preoccupied with getting to the next thing. Judgments and criticisms of ourselves about where we should be rather than where we are, and this makes us withdraw self-loving from ourselves and causes our hearts to shut down.Often people come up to me after I speak at an event, and they have many of the same issues, they say things like: "I have a very successful career but I don't really know who I am." Or they say, "I have a busy life, and I do a lot of things both socially and professionally, but I still fee an emptiness." Or they say, "There is so much that I have to say and write -- so many ideas -- but I don't think anyone will care." Or, "I feel as though part of me is on automatic pilot, and I have forgotten who I am." So, if we don't address this issues of our hearts, pains, dissatisfactions, lost dreams, separation, wishes and desires, and we pretend that these things don't matter, then we turn on our mental, ego, and physical drives, and, as a result, our hearts collapse. So, it is imperative that we take time out to listen to our hearts, and find out what is really going on inside, speak our thoughts, voice our emotions and express buried parts that we might have judged that they don't matter So here are my six essentials keys that I see can assist us to reboot our heart drive.
- Press the delete button for the old negative thoughts and patterns that undermine you and are no longer contributing to a positive flow of your life.
Press the shift button, to shift to feelings of worthiness, joy, creativity, and a sense of belonging. Press the space bar and make room to restore, listen to yourself and give yourself your full attention to what is going on in your heart. Give yourself permission to express whatever is in there. Press pause, and back away from the inner and outer environments that cause you stress. Fill yourself with the stillness of your presence, which can be extremely effective and nurturing. Release the control button, and leave your heart open and free. Plug into your server. Remember that your server is your source --whether you call it God, the divine, the universe or nature -- and is much bigger than you and your life, and that your source has the ability to reboot you, provided you plug in.It is through listening, attention and willingness to engage in the most vital energy of our lives, our hearts, that that we reboot our heart drives. Vulnerable? Yes. Rewarding? Immensely.
Please share with us how you reboot your heart drive.
If you'd like to join me, on Monday, June 25th, I will be speaking at the Bliss Spa about the subject. There is more information here.
To learn more about my book and other upcoming events, please visit my web site: www.unbindingtheheart.com
For more by Agapi Stassinopoulos, click here.
For more on GPS for the Soul, click here.
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