Living from the Heart

When someone speaks from the heart, people listen.  People love being in touch with the speaker, who seems to be able to reach everyone because he is speaking as a person to other people.  And these are the two motions of the heart: to know and to communicate.  The heart knows through experience, when it is touched by another person.  It communicates in words and actions.

It is usually a powerful experience when we hear a person speak from the heart.  It hasn’t come cheap for him: access to the heart takes work.  It involves removing the noise and distraction that drown out the words of the heart and make it unable to be touched.

By being silent and listening to himself a person can familiarize himself with his heart.  There are so many different voices swirling around one’s interior.  The key is to let those voices be heard, so that they can quiet down.  Once they quiet down, one begins to hear the words that come from the heart.  These words are like magma bubbles that pop into our consciousness.

One also accesses his heart by accepting his own littleness.  There is no such thing as a great man or woman.  We are all little children in God’s eyes.  Little children act from their hearts, and so should we.  But we get so confused in our own pride and our longing for recognition that we forget who we are.  The true heart is little, and can only be heard by little children.

Finally, one accesses the heart by allowing it to act and speak.  The heart usually moves in warmth.  People fear that if they’re warm with someone else the warmth will turn into heat.  But warmth remains just warmth unless a person decides to heat it up.  Being warm with others helps one to be warm with himself, and then he is more likely to open up to himself.

One must also let go of the tight control over one’s words.  It’s natural to fear what might come out if one stops controlling his words.  Also, controlling words can be good if it means not being nasty to someone else.  But to control one’s words for the sake of one’s own image just won’t fly with the heart.

A person who is in unity with his heart is one with himself.  He is not only able to act more effectively, because what he does he does with passion, but he is able to be more.  He is able to accept himself and be happy with who he is, which has a way of diffusing itself to other people.