Follow Your Heart
I’ve been getting messages all week from my heart that I should share the message with you to “follow your heart.” The first message came from a Bible verse that I inadvertently stumbled over a few days ago: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” ~ 2 Corinthians 3:17
Years of Sunday School taught me that the spirit was “down in my heart,” so I read that verse to mean that there is freedom in following the heart (where the spirit of the Lord, or the Creator, or the Source, or the Divine, or whatever you choose to call it, resides).
The second message came from the fact that I’ve been reading Paul Selig’s book entitled “The Book of Freedom,” a channeled text with a hopeful and uplifting message of generosity, love, releasing fear, and service to others. If following the heart leads to freedom, I’m in!
The third message was an Instagram post from Anita Moorjani, a cancer survivor and author who has dedicated her life to helping people love themselves unconditionally and healing their pain. She is a sweet and gentle soul with a powerful message. Her Instagram post was, “Ask yourself this: If I did love myself, what would I do differently from what I’m doing now? And then do it!”
www.anitamoorjani.com
The fourth message was that a friend who runs a non-profit aimed at empowering girls to be strong and independent asked me to write an article about individualism for its online “Good News Digest”. It got me thinking that the best way for each of us to be our authentic selves is to follow our hearts.
It sounds like an easy task - to listen to what our hearts are telling us (as opposed to our minds) and follow that guidance - but in practice it’s not as simple as it sounds.
Part of the reason is that we’ve ignored our hearts for so long that we either don’t slow down to listen to our hearts or we can’t distinguish the heart’s message from all of the chatter that surrounds us. Lots of us have internal dialogue, so how do we decipher which thoughts are truly from the heart?
These messages are from the heart.
What I’ve found is that the heart’s only language is love. Any thoughts we have that are fearful, critical, negative, judgmental, fault-finding, harsh, merciless, greedy, unforgiving, resentful, mean, stingy, or belittling – not only to others, but especially to ourselves – are not from the heart.
One of my favorite recent fiction reads personifies the harsh and unforgiving voice that is NOT the heart in such a funny and entertaining way that I have a much better understanding of my own internal naysayer. In The Good Luck of Right Now, Matthew Quick (author of Silver Linings Playbook) features a main character grieving the death of his mother and seeking to embark on a new life without her. The character, Bartholomew Neil, is kind and funny, yet suffers at the hands of something he calls “the tiny angry man in my stomach,” who rages and screams at him, kicking and punching his insides when he opens his heart to others, saying things like, “Idiot!” “Moron!” “Don’t trust anyone and keep to yourself always!”
Quick’s personification of the voice that tells us not to share, not to open our hearts, and not to trust, made it so clear that the negative voice would prefer us to be locked in a room forever (under the guise of safety) rather than out in the world sharing our gifts. His dramatization of that voice made it so much easier for me to distinguish the thoughts that came from my heart from those that came from my mind in an attempt to keep me closed off.
The heart represents freedom, and those negative thoughts represent imprisonment.
If we refuse to give power to those belittling, limiting, harsh, fear-based, and critical thoughts, and instead follow the heart’s call to love, creativity, expression, and generosity, then we are the light, shining brightly and inspiring others to do the same.
Each of us is unique and magnificent (in millions of different ways) and when we follow our hearts, we are free from others’ expectations for us. The heart leads with joy, trust, and kindness, and gives us no reason to limit ourselves or our dreams.
Where is your heart leading you? Listen to the voice that speaks with love and follow your heart!
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