Heartbreak, and Remedy Thereto
Story: monkey mind makes up a story, like, say: “You disappointed me.” Or, “You abandoned me.”
Reality is you got hurt, sometime, somewhere. Heartbreak comes with the territory: you, being human (among other animals), that is. I have had heartbreak, you have had heartbreak, we all have had heartbreak. Some of us have had more than others. Some heartbreak goes deeper than others. Some of us get past it easier than others.
We all need help. Suffering does not have to be forever. Humans (among other animals) have miraculous capacity to reach out and to help one another. Especially when disasters strike. In this world of positive and negative, I have sometimes felt overwhelmed, and disempowered. And for many years I tried to hide that sense of overwhelm and disempowerment from you and hide that from myself. I lived a pretense of a life for those many years. I was miserable, but pretended to be content. I was hurting, and I hurt other people along the way, but pretended and underneath it all, wanted to be good and act in a good way. I managed, but barely, really. All the while, there was this capacity to show up, and do the best I could with what I had. My inner world was not at all consistent with my outer projection to the world. I was conflicted, and that’s what I created: a life filled with inconsistent results. Until, one day in 1987, I could not manage the pretense any more.
I asked for help. I had my pride, but it was gone: I had fallen. My life was a total mess. I was aimless, hopeless, lost, and afraid. At least it felt that way to me. Actually, when my pretenses fell apart, and I asked for help, help came. And, even though I felt pretty powerless, when I was at my weakest, that was a moment of great power. I just did not know it at the time. There was the existential power of the human heart to overcome, and to heal. I did not know that at the time, either. And there is the power of the human soul to evolve: to move the mind and the heart from a sense of powerlessness to a moment of hope which can become a movement of infinite love and power which can then transform a person.
That transformation took time to become manifest in my world. Years actually. Still the negative and the positive played out, every day. Something was different, though. You could call it Grace, or Luck, or Destiny, or karma. Or all of the above. What was different was the direction of the choices I was making, choices I was now beginning to make from a deep sense of what I like to call “the gift of desperation” [that phrase, of course, is certainly not mine]. I wanted my life back. I did not even know when I had lost it, but lost it I had. Seemingly shipwrecked of my own accord, climbing up the salty rocks of the promontory, out of the lashing of the waves of the storm, there was not just the
lighthouse, but my rescuers reaching down to me as I made the choice to keep going, even if I was afraid that I did not deserve another chance to keep going, and even if I had no real idea where I would end up.
Deep underneath everybody’s heartbreak is the remedy. Very deep. Something deep inside every human wants to heal that heartbreak. There is a spark of the soul which knows that there is something more than the misery and the suffering. That cognition is what drives every one of us to our greatness. Your greatness has nothing to do with what you see with your eyes, hear with your ears or touch with your hands. It has everything to do with what it is that you know in your heart and in your soul. Way, way beyond the knowings of the mind. You don’t even have to believe in your soul, in the concept of soul, to know what I’m talking about. Your soul already knows. Your soul is prior to your mind. Something inside your heart knows that to be true. Your greatness is in your capacity to do what you came here to do in this lifetime. It is not about anything on the outside. It totally is an inside job. That is, inside your heart. Your monkey mind will do what it wants to do with that. It does not matter to your soul what stories your monkey mind may want to make up along the way.
What matters is what you choose for in the face of your heartbreak. You may choose to pretend that you are secure against your heartbreak. I did, for way too many years. You may have chosen to do whatever it takes to heal that heartbreak. Or your choices may fall somewhere in between those ends of the spectrum. Such begins the path of healing. That healing requires the divine unconditional love that flows through your heart. And there is the pull of your soul on your heart to remember that flow of unconditional love that wants to move through you out into the rest of your world. It has to start with you remembering to be unconditionally loving with yourself first.
My healing really began when I finally got honest and deep enough to recognize the hurt I was causing myself, not to mention the hurt I had projected out onto others. On that healing journey I had good help. That help came from professional therapists, from the fellowship of others committed to their own path of healing, from old friends, new friends, family, and from teachers. And, the most powerful movements on my path of healing came in the evolution of my recognition of the reality of the connection between my mind and my body and my heart and my soul. Not as a belief system, but as a direct experience. That too took years to become manifest.
Baby steps, that is what I was given by a Universe that is made up of compassion, wisdom and love. My monkey mind rebuked, resisted and rebelled against such notions as a Universe made of Compassion, for a long time. How can there be such immense suffering in the world today if the Universe is made of Compassion? I cannot even begin to answer that question in this context. But I know it to be true, despite the “evidence” to the contrary. That is a discussion for another time.
Those baby steps gave me a direct experience of that which is beyond what my mind is designed to be able to understand. Direct cognition of your soul, and of Source, or Brahma Consciousness, or God, or whatever you want to call it, you too can have that direct experience, in this lifetime, before you “pass.” The “knowers” of the past and of the present, called “rishis,” knew millenia ago and know today, from direct experience, the love and the power of the Universe. And the immense potential for each and every human on the earth today. You already are creating miracles. It is just that your monkey mind discounts, dismisses and denies them. They are still there. You may even already acknowledge them, some. Why not more?
I can help you to move more into that flow of the miracle that you already are. And to help you to recognize what that flow is: that which is already right here and right now. That may not make sense to your monkey mind, but your heart may be curious. Notice the difference between what your mind would have you believe and what your heart just simply knows. Your heart knows how to listen to your soul. Your heart knows how to love you just the way you are. Your heart knows that when anyone else is suffering, we all are affected. And most importantly, the heart knows the perfection of it all, even when it does not look or feel perfect, especially when it does not look or feel perfect.
The knowing of that perfection can lift you up. The direct experience of the knowing of that perfection will change your world. The direct experience of that perfection will free you of the self imposed limitations of your mind. Your heart and your soul will begin to move in new ways. Your life will reflect that knowing of that perfection both to you from the outside in and to your world from the inside out.
There are simple tools that can help you to open more to that as a direct experience. It is my mission to make those available in the world today. And to work with other teachers who help me and who can help you to continue to deepen and develop those knowings.
If you are curious about how to make this real in your world, check out my website and make contact with me. Today would be a very good day for you to do that.
