CHAPTER 1

How to Use This Book

Tell me, can you love life and let love find you when you are lost?

—Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Of all the organs that make up the human body, the heart and the heart alone isconsidered to be the guardian of the complex emotion we call love. Love, ourheart-felt attraction to another and our heartfelt acceptance of ourself, hasdeep and tangled roots. It begins in utero with a unique blood bond when thislife-giving fluid is exchanged between the heart of the fetus and the heart ofthe mother. From conception on, this bond is complex. The mother's blood is thefoundation for the uterine lining to which the fetus must anchor itself. Thehealth of the mother's lifeblood determines the health of that first fetalenvironment. Even as the fetus's liver begins to manufacture its own bloodsupply, the mother's steady heartbeat orients this new life to the rush and roarof the maternal heart's functions. This bond not only keeps the fetus alive, butit allows the fetal heart to record the biochemical messages that will prepareit for other kinds of bonds—emotional, physical, spiiritaul, and psychological—afterbirth. The prenate's heart is being prepared for a capacity for love,compassion, and empathy. After birth this original heart-to-heart relationshiphas to widen and develop sensitivity to others if the infant is to relate to therich and varied complexity we perceive as life.

As children, we are taught logic and reason as the primary tools for discerningthe accuracy of our perceptions. But few of us are encouraged to listen to ourhearts, whose nonverbal responses may at first be less clear but are far moreunbiased than those of our brains. There is no surer way to find out whom youare truly meant to become—your life's purpose—than by learning to listen to yourheart. Across the years, as your life grows increasingly more complex, yourheart can guide you as you seek to identify your true self. To ignore yourheart-centered input would be a major loss.

Over and over our heart gives us nudges and clues about our unlived or ignoredlife possibilities. What we learn too late in life is that the very qualitiesand talents that we so want to support or that we admire in others are the verytalents and qualities that we know in our heart are right for us. Any time Ifind myself admiring a particular quality in another person, I always turn tothe intelligence of my heart and ask myself, "Where is this quality or talenthidden away and yet to be claimed in me?" And equally, any time I find myselfstrongly disliking someone or something about another I turn to my heart andask, "Where is this attitude or trait or fear in me?" I have never found thisquestion not to yield a meaningful, and often life-changing, response. The wayof heart-centered living is unabashedly honest—it is not for the timid or theindifferent pilgrim.

Reducing Heart Stress by Reclaiming the Wisdom That Is Yours

We live in a very stressful world. The everyday necessities of living, likecommuting, jobs, and children, require more flexibility and attention tointrapersonal resources like fortitude, faith, courage, and confidence than everbefore in our history, as we are drawn ever deeper into a global community.Daily we are faced with decisions and choices unique to these times—many ofwhich we feel ill equipped to manage. Most of us intensify our search foranswers when we are under stress—feeling caught up in the complications andpressures that surround us. During this period of time the rhythms of our brainand our heart become out of synch with one another, we feel this as a lack offocus, an imbalance of mind and body.

Your body radiates energy called an electromagnetic field. You know when it isworking well and in balance because you feel centered and filled with energy.Your heart's electromagnetic energy is 5,000 times stronger than that of yourbrain. In fact, research shows that your heart has its own capacity forintelligence that is controlled neither by the brain nor by the autonomicnervous system. No one can yet explain exactly why the heart is able to beatindependently of control by the brain or the influence of the nervous system,but it does. Energy cardiologists tell us that the heart has its own "littlebrain" that enables it to act independently of the big brain and to producefeelings, directions, and solutions all on its own.

As you learn to access and trust the wisdom of your heart's intuitiveintelligence, you will find that your brain and heart rhythms will becomesmoother, more synchronized, just as they do with a feeling of deep love, ormeditation, or beauty. Even if you are in distress, accessing this capacity forheart guidance will immediately begin to reduce your stress level, especially ifyou are able to combine it with the genuine intimacy of relating to another,heart to heart. When you feel related, you also feel renewed, reassured that youare more in tune with the depths of your own humanity. No matter how frightenedor ill you may be, you will feel empowered by the inner sense of unity that yoursharing brings.

A clear example on a national scale of this immediate heart felt healingresponse under dire circumstances was our instinctual reaching out on September11, 2001—to strangers, to friends, to family—to anyone who was willing to meetus heart to heart. Our intellects could not grasp the enormity of our loss. Ourhearts could.

Simply turning and listening to the heart that loves you is one of the mostprotective things you can do for yourself and for humankind. The entire worldseeks healing—healing begins with love and love begins with bone-honestrelating—from the heart.

So let's look at how you can use this book to get to know yourself intimatelyfrom the depths of your heart while uncovering your destiny, your unlived life.

The Purpose of This Book

First, I have written this book to help you uncover the unlived truths in yourlife, to find what your heart can tell you about your soul's purpose, about yourdestiny, that you are unaware of or yearning for but afraid to create. Layer bylayer you will carefully brush away the debris of your mistaken beliefs andunearth your deepest self by turning to your heart and its intuitiveintelligence.

This book is simply written, but its message is anything but simple. It isserious, it is sincere, and it is absolutely real. Whether you believe it ornot, your life has a purpose that transcends your ordinary everyday existence.You have a soul that is alive and vitally present within every cell of your bodyand that can be found very readily by turning to your heart. This incarnateenergy is intelligently and eternally connected to Universal Soul, whether youcall this Spirit, Brigid, God, Sophia, Buddha, or pure chance. Your dreams, youryearnings, even your addictions and your symptoms are all ways in which yoursoul is speaking to you about your essence—your core self. I am inviting you todevelop a relationship of love with That Which Loves you through your heart'swisdom and unplumbed energy. I am inviting you to recognize how deeply you areloved so you can look at stranger and friend alike and find a soul connection.

I believe every life has an unlived purpose. It's called destiny. If you arefortunate enough to recognize this purpose and live it consciously,intentionally, your life unfolds in a deeply fulfilling manner Joseph Campbell,author and mythographer, in referring to a person's revitalizing connection tothis inner source of direction coined the phrase "following your bliss." Livingeven a portion of your life's purpose is the closest you ever come to truehappiness—to bliss. Your dreams, your yearnings, even your symptoms can give youinsight that will help you identify your unlived desires—your destiny. Does thisguarantee you'll never have a heart attack? Of course not. What it does do isstrengthen your personal sense of purpose which increases your sense of wellbeingwhich improves your immune system which reduces your stress which is not abad way to live at all.

Second, and maybe of even greater importance, I have written this book out of anongoing concern about the rapid increase in heart disease in our culture. Heartattacks and strokes, once believed to be largely a male health problem, havebecome a significant factor in the quality of everyone's health, especiallyduring our later years. Many factors contribute to this growing concern aboutthe increase in heart disease. For example, as life expectancy increases, it isimportant that we cultivate ways to reduce overtaxing the heart in order toenhance the quality of life in elderhood. Knowing ourselves well at an early agefrom the depths of our heart surely will help. In this book I explore how theunlived life of our dreams and our yearning contributes to the stress thatdamages our heart's healthy functioning.

Another example is the number of heart attacks that occur shortly after theworkday has begun on Monday mornings. Social scientists have strongly suggestedthat when a person feels trapped in a deadening and demoralizing job that shemust keep in order to survive, the psychological and physical results negativelyaffect her heart. In other words, the heart simply breaks.

Heart disease isn't limited to physiological influences alone. What we think,what we feel, whether we perceive ourselves in this world as effective andautonomous beings or ineffective and choiceless victims plays a very large andinfluential role in our heart health. In our technologically advanced society,with its emphasis on cure, the very real statistic that heart disease is thenumber one killer of women is often obscured by the continuing debate abouthormone replacement therapy (HRT) and its contribution to heart health versusits effect on cancer and osteoporosis. This debate in and of itself continues tocreate enough stress among women trying to determine whether to undergo HRT thatit has probably contributed more to poor health than to providing clearinformation that would reduce stress and allow for a confident and informedchoice.

You will find some of the simplest and most healing principles for claiming andmaintaining your heart health in the pages that follow. Even if you have had aheart attack or have heart disease, these principles will decrease your stressand allow you to live a deeper and more fulfilling life. Too many of us repressour grief until we have a broken heart and then, frightened, do all we can tofurther disguise the body wisdom that is teaching us openly and consciously toclaim our grief in order to strengthen, not weaken, the heart. Too many of usdefer our heart's desire for a later time—some day—some-how—and mean while welive lives of quiet desperation or sadness as we watch the magical someday passus by. Meanwhile we learn to ignore the heartache and live with the stress itengenders.

The Organization of This Book

This book is written so that you can take your time with a single chapter, or asingle topic, and then spend a week (or more if you care to) working with theexercises called Heart Notes that appear throughout each chapter. Theseexercises will help you discover how to recognize your Heart Sense and discoveryour unlived life. This format is intentionally designed to inspire a deeplypersonal exploration of your life's purpose from which you can glean deepinsight, draw strength, and take delight. You will want to provide yourself witha journal just for recording your work with the book's exercises.

Each chapter contains contributions from readers who have begun this explorationthemselves. The entire book is written in an easily read conversational manner,with stories that offer something for everyone.

The chapters are divided into different categories of heart sensing, like WhatYour Heart Loves, When Your Heart Is Broken Open, and so on. Chapters 2 and 3(The Seventh Sense and Meeting Your Heart) are especially important because theyprovide an overview about our cultural and scientific symbolism andmisunderstandings concerning the heart and soul. They present two foundationsthat firmly ground this book. The first is that while we moderns are inclined toregard the soul and destiny as mystical or unfounded in truth, these conceptshave deep and enduring historical roots. The second is that your physical bodyis a small personal model of the cosmic universe. Your cellular body reflects amultitude of the "mystical" truths of the ages. Both of these foundations leadto one truth—that your soul is an embodied reality whose presence and purpose isexpressed by your heart's energy. Further, in these two chapters I discuss howscience is showing us evidence of this truth.

After reading these two chapters I am confident you will agree that it is self-diminishingfor anyone today to neglect to know and celebrate the extraordinaryintelligent spiritual complexity that is the body. It is a significant personalloss to scoff at intuitions or be self-deprecating about one's embodied wisdom.One might call me an "embodied feminist" I feel so adamant about resacrilizingthe body and its wisdom.

In the following chapters, I will explain how to access your embodied languageand insights from a number of perspectives, each designed to allow you toresacnlize your relationship with your essential self.

Chapter 2: The Seventh Sense asks you thought-provoking and soul-searchingquestions about your personal relationship to your heart in order to help youbegin to discern the presence of heart-centered messages.

Chapter 3: Meeting Your Heart lays out the relationship between your physicalheart and the emotional bonds that are created by its energy. This chapterexplores the importance of the in utero blood bond between the fetus and itsmother and how this bond develops into a cellular capacity for trust andopenness. Also, we explore how doubts and fears block your ability to accessyour intuition.

Chapter 4: What Your Heart Knows discusses the relationships among dreams,emotions, and the ability to calm yourself. Identifying what your heart knowswill enable you to discriminate between a broader sense of wisdom about yourentire life and the more selective guidance of what your heart wants concerningselective choices from the general range of insights and possibilities.

Chapter 5: What Your Heart Wants introduces you to Sharon and Marianne and theirquestions about the difference between fate and destiny. This chapter teachesyou how to value, honor, and make manifest those signals that are life changing.You will discover that many of the places and activities that you findattractive are actually reflective of your soul's preferences.

Chapter 6: What Your Heart Loves invites you to differentiate between who youlove and what you love. This chapter looks at the complexity of love and itsmany meanings as they affect your life.

Chapter 7: Where Your Heart Lives invites you to soul search and describe thegeography that your soul vibrationally responds to. You will be asked to imaginehow you might literally live in one of the geographical places you love and, ifyou cannot, to imagine how you can create some of that environment where youlive now. We will discuss travel as sacred and place as reflective of your innerterrain.

Chapter 8: When Your Heart Is Broken Open takes you into the realm of deep griefand inexplicable loss. You will learn how to allow your heart consciously tobreak by uncovering the depth of your capacity for feelings, and how to do thiswith meaning in order for you to expand your relationships and take in lifefully. We talk about grief and healing and resiliency and deep sorrowing.

Chapter 9: When Your Heart Celebrates reminds us of the wide variety ofexperiences that the heart's knowing celebrates throughout the entire lifecycle, from birth to death and beyond. This chapter will remind you of all thatyou have uncovered during your ever-deepening relationship with your heart-centeredwisdom, emphasizing the strength and self-awareness that comes withconsciously creating the rituals that celebrate life and death.

Working in a Recovery or a Self-Exploration Group

If you care to use this book in a six- or eight-week, two hours weekly, workshopor group format for members of a heart health or self-discovery group, theparticipants would read the chapter at home on their own and then come to thegroup either to do the exercises or discuss their experiences having done theexercises at home.

Because this book is both a guide to ward a deeper relationship with your heartand contains a great deal of new information about your soulful embodiment, itcan also be used as a text in a discussion format. Reading one chapter at a timeand then discussing it in a group can take from eight to twelve weeks.

When I teach this material I use a heart-centered body prayer, SpontaneousContemplative Movement, with movement, music, and art. You may wish toincorporate similar activities into your group's work. A list of possible musicchoices is included in the Resources at the back of this book.