Learning to Anchor and Trust in Our Heartfelt Self

We live in a time when life seems to happen at the speed of light.  We are bombarded with so much information, so many demands, increasing expectations, tighter deadlines, more physical resources to choose from, yet much less social and emotional support.  We experience a sense of living in isolation, feeling alone with all we must bear; even when we may be married, have a family, friends, a workplace with colleagues and live in cities surrounded by many thousands of people. 

It is a great irony of our times that we should feel so alone and so tired, without energy, when, in our hemisphere, we are surrounded by more people and more resources than at any other times in the history of mankind.  I have often stopped to reflect on this situation and felt a deep sadness.  What has happened to us?  What have we come to create in the illusion that we could make life better and easier for ourselves? 

My quest for some answers has been a long process.  I have been blessed by a life enriched by many experiences, but also the benefit of the experiences of thousands of wonderful people I have been privileged to assist with a wide range of life problems.  I have felt humbled by the simplicity of the very basic nature of our ills and pains.  We have lost touch with our most inner-self.  Stuck in our head space, we have lost touch with our “heart and soul”, and with each other’s “heart and soul”.  The solution always lies within each of ourselves, one moment of attention away. 

We seem to “feel” proud and most productive - on top of the world - when we engage more and more activities, our heads spinning in a whirlwind of thoughts, ideas, choices and plans.  We put so much energy trying to take control of our lives and the world around us.  The more we can do and gain, the bigger we “feel”. 

Unfortunately, it is at my door that I welcome many of the human casualties of choosing to live at the speed of light and become bigger and bigger.  When the wheels of the mind spin too fast, disconnected from heart and soul, the body can’t keep up and starts to show signs of fatigue and dis-ease.  Anxiety, depression, anger, pain, fear are all signs that we need to slow down and start to pay attention.  Yet, we are socially encouraged to swallow back our ills, take a pill and go on.  We fear that if we stop to care for a moment, some tragic happening may destroy our life and all that we build within that life.  In truth, if we don’t stop to listen and care, this is when we really put ourselves in danger.  A failure to stop may mean our pre-mature death or a serious illness that will dramatically alter life for us and those with love and assume responsibility for. 

This doesn’t mean that we can’t find energy to do a lot with our lives, but we need to learn to anchor ourselves more effectively in our inner-truth and source of energy, make the loving choices as I like to call them.  We need to align our life choices with what is in our heart and soul, rather than be so concerned with the external expectations and benefits. 

When we have been socially conditioned to go on and on, meeting external expectations and focusing on the material rewards and benefits of our choices, it is very difficult to slow down, or know to do any different.  We are often not even aware that life can be experienced differently.   A reduction in what we do and produce, earn and build, is often experienced as a great threat to ego.  Change is a very scary experience for our ego self, so we may choose to believe in and stay with what we know.  We get stuck in our fears:  “What will happen to our standards of living, our security and our status in life?  What will other people think?  How will we be judged for slowing down or making a change with our life?”  We fear loosing the stuff we have come to value because we have so little else in our lives.  We fear loosing approval and love from those we have become emotionally dependent upon.  We fear that the world can’t go on if we are not contributing all that we do… or maybe fear to face how the world would actually go on without us.   All those fears, and many more, become a major block that slows us down and impedes our ability to truly produce and perform at our best.  All those fears prevent us from listening to our deeper self, the place in our heart that seems to know how to best care for ourselves and for the world we live in.  It is not easy to quiet down all of the noise made by our ego self to focus on the more subtle voices of our heartfelt self.  In fact, many of us have never learned how to connect and make sense of the world of feelings that lies deep in our heart and soul.  We know we have feelings, but we often learned to stuff them, ignore them, or vent them out like garbage we dump on other people we believe the source of our ills.  Most of us have learned to fear our emotions and can’t make any sense of such experiences; much less know how to manage such precious gift in a manner that helps guide and energize our lives in the direction of our fulfilled and happy selves. 

Take a moment to consider where you are at and how good you are at listening and learning from your inner-self, your heart and soul. 

Slow down, simplify, keep your life in alignment with your inner truth and learn to create a full and satisfying life and career for yourself.

This article was published in People & Possibilities, Winter 2006