Like a bud in springtime, the heart longs to be open. Our fundamental nature is one of open, awake, spacious, and loving presence, and the more we open our heart, the more connected, alive, and present we feel. Our spiritual path is learning this process of opening and removing the obstacles that keep us closed and keep us small.
Living with an open heart can be a stumbling block for many people along the path. I think this has a lot to do with a lack of language around describing love and emotional intimacy.
It is a terrible shame that we have two words for mind and brain, but only one for the physical heart and the heart heart. There is the organ that pumps blood and oxygen throughout your body, and then there is the heart that is the eternal flowing energy of compassion. That is the heart we want to get in touch with; that is the heart we want to open.
In learning how to cultivate this open and tender heart, I find it can greatly help to consider three fundamental ways the heart can open: in wonder, in relationship, and in realization.
In Wonder
The first way the heart can open is in wonder. This is a feeling many of us are familiar with. We hike to the top of an arduous mountain and finally get to see one of the most majestic views we have ever seen.
Our mind releases, the body relaxes, and the heart opens to the beauty that is all around us. Staring out into the vast expanse, it seems as if the grace of God is staring back at you.
You do not need a vast expanse either to wonder at the beauty of the world. The poet Wendell Berry wrote that when he feels a sense of despair with the way the world is, he lies where the wood drake rests and the heron feeds, finishing the poem with “For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Many new parents experience their heart opening with the birth of their first child, as the creation of life is such a miracle they stare in wonder at the incredible breathing phenomenon before them.
In this way opening our heart means opening to what is right before us, appreciating this gift of life we have been given.
In Relationship
The second way the heart can open is in being intimate with another human being. One of the most beautiful things about this opening of the heart is that it is not up to us. We cannot force ourselves to fall in love, and there is no magic potion to make someone fall in love with us.
Rather, love requires a deep surrender, a dropping of our shields and a bearing of intimate vulnerability. The parts of us we would rather keep hidden come to the surface, but rather than meet the judgement we feared, it is met with acceptance.
Of course, we can love more people than simply those we are in relationship with. An open heart connects with others. It sees other people as brothers and sisters, not as enemies or our competition.
In Realization
The third, and perhaps most important, way the heart can open is by relating to another person as a thou rather than an it.
This is what the philosopher Iris Murdoch meant when she wrote, “Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” We look into the eyes of our lover and realize, for the first time in our lives, that something else is staring back.
This shift in perspective is fundamental to any relationship. As any couples therapists will tell their clients, there is not one objective reality that both partners need to agree on. Rather, there are two subjective realities, and both are valid. In opening our heart to this realization, we respect the reality of another as just as true and fundamental as our own.
This I-thou relationship can then be extrapolated to the rest of the world. Rather than feel like a lonely subject in a dead and alien universe, we enter into a reverent connection with all that is.
Eventually we meet this world with our whole being. We enter into a relationship with all things and become intimate with what is. Rather than a directed love from one person to another, we rest in the vast, limitless love that is everywhere, including in us.
Hopefully, the contexts that the heart opens are helpful for you to open your heart too. After all, the heart must open. It has to open if we are to be fully human, fully ourselves, and fully experience this life we have been given.
There is no way around it. The Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan wrote, “God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.”
There is no question if the heart will open. The only question is how soon and how much will you allow your heart to open right here, right now?
(For more see Lesson #6 of The Seven Lessons of Love: You can never open up your heart too much.
Cover photo via Joshua Earle on Unsplash)
