The richness of life is directly related to how open your heart is.  Ahhhh. … An open heart…  to live wholeheartedly, to love wholeheartedly – This and This—and This, too!  Love it all.  Because it is all in a life.  An open heart with a “semi-permeable membrane”, as Lauren says!  An open heart does not have to be an unprotected heart! 

People are often in a trance in which they believe that armoring and shutting down protects them from getting hurt. It does kind of work… but only for a moment.  In time, that armor IS the hurt!  Shutting down hurts.  Not wanting to feel hurts.  Burying our grief, disappointments, regrets and resentments builds a wall around the heart so we eventually can’t feel and connect with what is happening within us.  The walls we build become our prisons – and for many of us, it is a life-sentence.

Living with an open heart is the willingness to feel and to find out that feeling all that we authentically feel won’t kill us (but shutting down will!).

 

Learning how to respond to the feelings that arise within us is the key to feeling safe enough within ourselves to live with an acceptance of whatever life brings to us.

Living with an open-heart means that love flows through us freely.  We are easy in our bodies as we embrace ourselves – and all that arises within us – without resistance. Of course most of us have blockages – and living with an open-heart means embracing them as well.  By being gentle in our bodies and tender with ourselves, we are able to be easier – to breathe more deeply and to be more open.  Simultaneously, there is still protection by having that “semi-permeable membrane” that says, “I am open to you—and I also have boundaries!”

 

Living with an open heart is not codependency.  How many times have I heard people say to others, “My heart goes out to you” or “My heart is with you”?  Really?  What is your heart doing over there?!  Your heart needs to stay in your own body.

  

It is an experience of being open and aware of life as it unfolds in all its wonder and mystery.  It is the experience of the breath breathing freely in and out and allowing each interaction with another being to be a gift.

Living with openness and a sense of boundaries is a very empowering experience.  It allows for a fearless and shameless flow of love because you are with yourself.  You are open and you know you will not abandon or betray yourself.