Matters of the Heart.
I have built walls around me for as long as I can remember, walls so high they've cast me in a tower, far far away from pain or love. These walls have taken many different forms throughout the years, morphing and evolving with me as I have grown into myself. They used to look like sex-based relationships, engaging in the physical to avoid the emotional. Then they morphed into blocking anyone and anything completely out, “taking a break” from love and dating. Then they shifted to look like “boundaries,” impossibly high standards no mortal could ever meet.
Then quarantine hit and I realized my physical reality had become a manifestation of my spiritual reality, that I had locked myself in a tower, alone and in solitude. After living in isolation for consecutive months, having no physical human contact but the grocery store clerk and the few people passing by at a 6 foot distance every two or so weeks, I realized I no longer had a choice but to break down my walls and descend.
I conducted a self-experiment yesterday, one of living from the heart. For years I have heard about the power of this, of getting out of your head and tuning into your heart. And while I grasped this conceptually, it always felt utterly foreign and never really clicked. I have lived inside of my head my entire life, perhaps as means to avoid really becoming intimate with myself in my heart, or perhaps by default, as if I myself couldn’t even penetrate the walls I had built around it.
So yesterday I only did the things my heart wanted me to do. I spent the day at the pool with one of my closest friends and her husband, relaxing in the sun, happy and laughing. I was asked on a same-night date and accepted, even though it had been one of my “rules” never to accept something seemingly low-effort. I declined the initial proposal at a bar across town and accepted when he accommodated plans to a place that felt good- coming to my neighborhood at my favorite restaurant. I was far too relaxed from earlier to want to move very far.
Living from the heart, in my femininity, out of my head and removed from any fear, was totally transformational. It was arguably the best first date I’ve had just so far as my dates response to me in my fullness. It was fun, relaxed, and open, like it should be. I wasn’t worried about a “connection” or scared he might be a narcissist, or vetting to make sure he wasn’t cheap. I wasn’t shrinking my sexuality, nervous he might get the wrong idea and become too lustful. I didn’t feel guilty for enjoying the attention he was giving me. It was just natural, and felt good.
I’ve been desired by men but never like that. It was as if he was completely enchanted, calling me his “dream girl,” opening up emotionally, and making plans for an international trip together. And we didn’t even share a single kiss the entire night.
When we are living in our fullness, with our walls knocked down, sinking deeply into our own authenticity, magic happens. The universe begins to reflect back to us our own truth. We begin truly connecting with people- not on the mental plane with thoughts and beliefs, not on the physical plane with hormones and sexual chemistry- truly and authentically through the heart.
Love happens on the plane of the heart. I get it now.