We’re moving toward the end of this 6-part series. I am hopeful it has done your heart good – especially given that it’s all about your good and to-be-trusted heart! If you’ve not read the earlier entries, they all build upon each other. I hope you’ll take the time to catch up.
Today, drum roll please…
PART FIVE – LOVING THE DIALOGUE
Once we have become familiar with the language of our heart, the ways in which it speaks to us, the ways in which we learn to listen, AND the ways in which we learn to speak, dialogue is a daily gift.
Think about the experience of having friends with whom you can pick up conversation and relationship exactly where you left off. No matter the miles or even years between; it’s as though no time or distance has passed. There is an intimacy, a knowing, a familiarity and trust – like synchronized heartbeats.
The same can be / is true about conversation with your heart: ongoing, meaningful, spontaneous, eortless, and continuous.
I know a woman who has created a daily ritual of letting her heart speak to her. She carves out time each morning to sit and listen – expecting to hear. She writes down all that her heart chooses to say, trusting its wisdom, its deeper truth, its insight, its value. In so doing, she hears what her heart wants her to speak and do. And then she responds! She articulates (to her heart) all of her fears, her hopes, her desires. Back and forth this dialogue goes. She has learned to trust this process, to be sure; more to love it! Her heart readily responds.
You can do the same, of course – creating ways to allow and encourage these conversations with your heart, learning to love the dialogue between you – and you!
And when natural lulls occur, when you struggle to hear – or feel heard, just like in any relationship, you can trust the bonds already formed. You return. You stay. You wait. You hope. And throughout, more certain and sure than ever before, your heart keeps beating, speaking, calling.
Loving the dialogue with your heart keeps you centered, grounded, and in touch with your most honest, brave, and true self. That dialogue and that relationship fuels and invites a passionate, full-of-heart life!
May it be so!
REFLECT
- Try the exercise above. Carve out time to listen to your heart – with the full expectation that it will respond. And, as in any good dialogue, respond back.
- Consider using two different color pens (or fonts, if typing). Let your heart speak – freely, candidly, spontaneously. Change colors and write out your response. (Remember: no holding back.) Switch colors again, and let your heart speak to what it hears, in response to your response. This is dialogue at its best. And the more of it you do (just like in any relationship) the stronger your bond, your intimacy, your (self) love.
- I do this often in my own journaling practice – especially when I’m struggling with myself, something, or someone. I write out how I’m feeling – no matter how cranky or negative or despairing. And then I listen/imagine my heart’s voice in response. I write out exactly what it has to say to me, no matter how hard it sometimes is to hear, allow, even believe at times. It always speaks (like any good friend would). And seeing its “voice” on the page in front of me, gives me opportunity to respond more deeply, more honestly, and almost always with far more tenderness, softness, and vulnerability. Oh, what a difference this has made for me over the years…hearing that wiser, truer, sage-of-a-voice within; learning to love the dialogue with my heart…my very self. May it be so for you, as well.