By Julie Redstone
The path of the heart is not a spiritual technique or way, it is life itself leading each of us to a greater understanding and experience of what love is and what it is not. It is the passage of time and the movement through space that weaves itself into a deepening of wisdom, not just for the learned or the spiritually inclined, but for the many – for those who are just 'living their lives' as well as for those who are on a conscious spiritual path. In every way, all of the time, we are learning about love, sometimes through its presence in our lives and sometimes through its absence.
Life's teachings about love come in many packages. They come in the laughter of children, in the devotion to friends, in the commitment to something that the heart cares about passionately, in the desire for goodness, in the wish to help others, in the longing to have one's heart be set free from the pain it carries, in the gentleness of a loved one's arms, in the quiet embrace of family, in the reassurance of being at home. These are the ordinary experiences of life that are pivotal in our learning about love and that are profound in their teachings. When they are present, we often take them for granted. Yet, when they are absent, they cause a pain and an emptiness in the heart that travels with us wherever we go.
It is possible to ignore the messages that life would have us learn about the path of the heart, for we are free to choose what we wish to pay attention to and what we wish to ignore. Yet, inevitably, if we turn away from love's presence too often, the pain in our heart will begin to convey a message of its own and will either become a physical pain in the body, requiring a turning toward it in order to heal ourselves, or it will become an emptiness in our soul that will increasingly communicate a loneliness and longing for a deepening of what we have previously rejected.
There is no one in the world who is less in need of love, only those who seem to be. There is no one whose inner being can truly be satisfied by the outer trappings of a life of great power, success, wealth, and influence. For inside such a person there are perceptions that come only in moments of aloneness - perceptions that convey to the inner understanding what has been lost in order to gain what may have ultimately been less valuable.
The same is true for those who are angry, disillusioned or bitter - for those who seem to have given up on intimacy and who remain either aloof, or critical, or embattled with others, especially those that are close to them. There is no angry person who deep within themselves does not have a heart that beats to the same rhythm as all others – a rhythm implanted by the Creator of hearts that has both a physical component and an emotional and spiritual component – one that leads part of the self to continue searching for the experience of love, even if another part rejects it. That is why those who are criminals of the worst kind can still love in their own way. It is because their hearts are divided and in a certain, sometimes large portion have become separated from their humanity, while in another part, they cling to the small expression of love they remain capable of.
If we are open to life's teachings, we will travel the path of the heart without difficulty and without confusion, for it will lead us from love to greater love both in terms of our understanding and in terms of our experience. In the end, this same path will lead us to understand and to experience the nature of God's love, and to see it everywhere within its multiple forms and expressions upon the earth. In this way, we will learn to live a sacred life, one that is built on love and that celebrates love within the totality of life.
About the Author: For other writings by Julie Redstone see Pathways of Light – http://lightomega.org/PathwaysofLight.html, a part of http://lightomega.org. To learn more of the path of the heart, see the "Calendar of 100 Days" – http://calendar100.org - and "Stepping Stones to Awareness" within Pathways of Light.
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