Today starts a 6-part series that’s all about Sacred Conversation – not with me, but with your heart. Each post will offer another aspect of the topic, the practice, and its significance – along with reflection questions and prompts to invite you into the most important (and ongoing) conversation you’ll ever have.
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We are surrounded by conversation all day, every day – at the very least, words and talk and verbal noise. At home and work, in the car and on the bus, in stores and on streets, on the web – on TV – in music – on blogs – in books, in neighborhoods and across the globe. Sometimes we engage. Sometimes we listen. Other times it’s just din.
And then there are the conversations that take place endlessly, continuously within. In my experience they can be far harder to engage and sometimes seemingly impossible to hear. And – they long for both: your hearing, your engagement, your response. These are conversations with your heart.
Did you know? Your heart speaks. It listens. It asks. It tells. It knows. It feels. It advises. It desires. It hurts. It hopes. It loves.
Your heart invites you to ongoing, articulate, and beautiful sacred conversations with your deepest, truest self.
And these are conversations worth having.
So…let’s begin at the beginning.
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PART ONE – INTRODUCTIONS
Every conversation between two people begins with some kind of introduction, a greeting, a hello. For it to move past this point and take on meaning and value, we must want to hear more, want to know more; we have to determine how the other wants to be known, how much they are willing to share, how they speak, even what they don’t say. If either party is reluctant to listen, to hear, to understand, to learn, the conversation ends before it’s even begun.
Conversation with your heart is no different.
Do you want to hear what your heart has to say? Do you want to know it well? Do you want to learn the unique ways in which it expresses itself?
I’m speaking only for myself when I say that sometimes my answer is “no.”
Sometimes it can be far easier to turn up the volume on other aspects of life than to listen to the heart’s quiet whisper, deep desires, and patient but persistent beating as it waits (and waits and waits) to be heard, acknowledged, trusted, and followed.
Because here’s the thing: When you really listen and engage in conversation with your heart you find yourself face-to-face with powerful truth: words, sentences, and emotions that graciously ask for response and ongoing dialogue; powerful truth that compels honesty, risk, and change, that will not leave you unchanged.
Knowing this, tell me true: Do you want to hear what your heart has to say – directly to you? I hope the answer is “yes.”
REFLECT:
- Imagine listening to your heart’s introduction of itself when you say, “hello.” How does it respond? Is it outgoing? Shy? Reticent? Enthusiastic? What can you learn of it already… even in these first few words?
- If, even for a moment, you could silence all the voices, pressures, demands, disappointments, and expectations that swirl within, what do you imagine you might hear – even in this introductory stage? Single words? Fragments of sentences? Any images that come to mind?
- Listen. What does your heart want you to know, to hear, to consider? Write any and everything that comes…