Keeping Heart in Challenge
Last weekend we flew to Florida for my husband’s cousin’s wedding. We almost didn’t go because we knew there would be a big crowd and we figured we could visit another time. But my son put up a case for going and we relented. I’m so glad we did.
This was the first wedding I’ve been to since the pandemic started. As I watched the bride and groom exchange rings and vows I was struck by how beautiful and precious it was to witness people coming together in Love. So much of what I’ve been witness to lately has been about loss, grief, and destruction. Watching young people declare their love and set out to make a life together was heartening and reaffirming. It was hopeful. And I needed to see it. Their celebration buoyed me and reminded me there is still love in the world. Thank goodness.
HEARTFUL LIVING
These are the kinds of experiences we need to remember if we’re to keep heart in such challenging days. To live from the heart right now takes more than it ever has before. It is both a fierce and a tender stance to continue to show up to it.
Heartful living is fierce because it is easier to choose distraction, anger, fear or despair. Those emotions have a downward pull. Once they take hold it’s hard to get free from them. It takes fierceness to rise back up out of them. That means recognizing and resisting what would usually pull you down. And choosing to reach back up when you’ve gotten down.
But tenderness is needed too. Not only does it soften the fierceness, it allows the heart to open. In order to Love your heart needs to open. The hard part is that it has to open to everything - not just the things we like. When the heart opens in this way tenderness for the world and tenderness for oneself naturally arises. What we the heartful can do is not resist the tenderness when it shows up, but allow our hearts to open.
Each of us have our natural tendencies in one direction or the other. But if you have too much fierceness you’ll take off heads everywhere you go. But with too much tenderness you may dissolve into your emotions and not be able to take any actions. The challenge is to embody both. It is a challenge we meet with practice, both in life and on your yoga mat and meditation cushion.
FIERCE AND TENDER
Embodying both tenderness and fierceness at the same time allows one to stay open without dissolving into any of the other states. It allows you to stay soft and yet strong. It helps you both to feel and to act if there is an action to take.
It is this kind of openness of heart - fierce and tender - that allows one to deepen experiences of Love. In that way Love is no longer a surface level emotion that flits in and out. Instead it becomes an anchor of your experience. In the Bhakti Yoga Sutras by Narada this deepest anchored Love is referred to as Paramaprema - the fullest Love that is possible. The love that is the foundation of everything else.
LOOK FOR LOVE
These days, don’t just look for the negative, find things that remind you that while there is pain and challenge, Love still exists. Become fierce with your remembering lest you slide towards anger, division, or despair. And be tender with yourself as you enter your opening heart - it has much to hold. And let this guide you evermore into the deepest Love that holds this universe together.
With Love.