Shut my heart. How can I re-open it?

[:)14:)]

Hi,

Now I don't feel love, empathy, and it's like as if I were blind in a sense. I am emotionally, because originally love is central in my life and I'm normally empathic to an extent that I have the tendency to even take on others' negative emotions and baggage.

If you happen to know strong/intense heart-openers, could you, please, share with me what they are? Thank you.

[TheGlow]

So what happened did you get hurt? Usually that is what causes it.

I find if I can go back and feel the love I had for someone that hurt me and accept I still love them despite their actions the heart opens again.
Doesn’t mean things stay as they were just means you stay loving.

[FairyCrystal]

Originally Posted by TheGlow

So what happened did you get hurt? Usually that is what causes it.

I find if I can go back and feel the love I had for someone that hurt me and accept I still love them despite their actions the heart opens again.
Doesn’t mean things stay as they were just means you stay loving.

I agree with this.
I also have a problem with opening my heart, have had so since my breakup almost 2 years ago. It's not always shut, it's good to also acknowledge that.
It just doesn't stay as open as it used to.
So in a way what was done to me, what I allowed to be done to me, is still bothering me to some extent. And yes, it sometimes is annoying cos I'm also very sensitive and used to feeling more easily where now things often feel dull. Less colourful.
Like TheGlow says, a matter of working on your pain so you can come to forgiving, mostly forgiving yourself.
Don't know about you of course, but for me, much has to do with me not trusting myself anymore, or being angry with myself for allowing what happened yet again for the umpteenth time in my life. Thinking "will I ever learn?" and not believing in that anymore.
Being afraid that if I open up, the same thing will happen again, cos my middle name apparently is "stupid".

So find out what is behind it so you can then more effectively do something about that. And that finding out is a feeling-thing. You got to 'feel around' until you get to the thing that hurts, angers you, makes you cry and so on. Then you know you hit the mark.

[:)14:)]

Hi,

Yes, TheGlow, I was hurt, a combo of past hurt triggered plus a new one. Although I know I've attracted them with my inner "landscape". Your advice is helpful, thank you!

FairyCrystal, I find your insights enlightening, thank you so much!

[linen53]

Learn to cry again. It will be a very emotional experience. All that hurt you have been harboring and not expressing will come out in one lump sum. But beyond that you will have a open though tender heart again.

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by linen53

Learn to cry again.

I would say 3 BIG tear jerker movies....Schindler's List is just one!

[NoOne]

Well, it's hard. I also struggle with opening up my heart sometimes.

My advice is to start small and simple. Perhaps, with flowers, trees, animals, that kind of thing. Feel the connection and feel the love flowing through you. It is an energy and vibration, it will flow like an electric current, if you let it. Animals are the easiest to love, because they do so unconditionally. Then you can move on to children, if you have any in your life, or perhaps you can "borrow" some from friends and family. I dote on my niece and nephew.

Then you can move on to adults you actually like and extend your love towards them, do and say loving and kind things to them every day. The hardest part is loving people you hate or that have hurt you in the past. That is what is most likely to close your heart down. If you do it gradually, you might even learn to love and forgive even those that don't deserve it. If you can do that, you become an expression of divine love, which is unconditional and infinite.

[Uma]

Originally Posted by NoOne

Well, it's hard. I also struggle with opening up my heart sometimes.

My advice is to start small and simple. Perhaps, with flowers, trees, animals, that kind of thing. Feel the connection and feel the love flowing through you. It is an energy and vibration, it will flow like an electric current, if you let it. Animals are the easiest to love, because they do so unconditionally. Then you can move on to children, if you have any in your life, or perhaps you can "borrow" some from friends and family. I dote on my niece and nephew.

Then you can move on to adults you actually like and extend your love towards them, do and say loving and kind things to them every day. The hardest part is loving people you hate or that have hurt you in the past. That is what is most likely to close your heart down. If you do it gradually, you might even learn to love and forgive even those that don't deserve it. If you can do that, you become an expression of divine love, which is unconditional and infinite.

I do this too! Works for me

[:)14:)]

The server was too busy several times I came to respond, sorry for the delay.

Originally Posted by linen53

Learn to cry again. It will be a very emotional experience. All that hurt you have been harboring and not expressing will come out in one lump sum. But beyond that you will have a open though tender heart again.

Linen, I hope you are right. With this disconnection, this emotional "illiteracy" I'm seriously hurting already the feelings of those most important to me. Thanks for the advice!

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

I would say 3 BIG tear jerker movies....Schindler's List is just one!

Great idea, Miss Hepburn, thanks.

Originally Posted by NoOne

Well, it's hard. I also struggle with opening up my heart sometimes.

My advice is to start small and simple. Perhaps, with flowers, trees, animals, that kind of thing. Feel the connection and feel the love flowing through you. It is an energy and vibration, it will flow like an electric current, if you let it. Animals are the easiest to love, because they do so unconditionally. Then you can move on to children, if you have any in your life, or perhaps you can "borrow" some from friends and family. I dote on my niece and nephew.

Then you can move on to adults you actually like and extend your love towards them, do and say loving and kind things to them every day. The hardest part is loving people you hate or that have hurt you in the past. That is what is most likely to close your heart down. If you do it gradually, you might even learn to love and forgive even those that don't deserve it. If you can do that, you become an expression of divine love, which is unconditional and infinite.

NoOne, a current has run through me 2 or 3 times, although for the moment, it evaded the heart chakra. I appreciate your advice. Thank you.

Originally Posted by Uma

I do this too! Works for me

Uma, thanks for sharing!

[7luminaries]

Originally Posted by NoOne

Well, it's hard. I also struggle with opening up my heart sometimes.

My advice is to start small and simple. Perhaps, with flowers, trees, animals, that kind of thing. Feel the connection and feel the love flowing through you. It is an energy and vibration, it will flow like an electric current, if you let it. Animals are the easiest to love, because they do so unconditionally. Then you can move on to children, if you have any in your life, or perhaps you can "borrow" some from friends and family. I dote on my niece and nephew.

Then you can move on to adults you actually like and extend your love towards them, do and say loving and kind things to them every day. The hardest part is loving people you hate or that have hurt you in the past. That is what is most likely to close your heart down. If you do it gradually, you might even learn to love and forgive even those that don't deserve it. If you can do that, you become an expression of divine love, which is unconditional and infinite.

I just wanted to say that I was very moved by your response. YOU become the healing and reconciliation you need to see in the in the world.
Beautiful recommendations.

You hit on a very important aspect of awakening...as well as of heart trauma. Because they are one and the same for a vast majority who awaken, I'd wager. Loving those who loathe you or have been unkind (particularly when you don't know why, and that's often the case) can not only shut down the heart, it can break it or even shatter it. Just as can happen with any great loss or trauma with regard to folks you love. Awakening opens the heart centre immeasurably and the flip side is that it renders the heart centre uniquely vulnerable to trauma and abuse.

Loss or trauma is ultimately all the same to the heart, even though of course we acknowledge these situations and relationships are different, perhaps very different.
And yet, offering both ourselves and others authentic love in being and doing is what is needed by everyone, by all humanity. So those of us who have experienced deep trauma to the soul which shuts down &/or shatters the heart centre are actually entering the new age, and the coming face of humanity, where we come through this to understand what authentic love is...it is not caustically selfish AND it is not caustically sacrificial.

Authentic love values YOUR highest good equally to all others. It values THEIR highest good equally to yours.
You are not lesser than others, nor are they lesser than you. And no one deserves any less than authentic love (lovingkindness and equanimity), in equal consideration of the highest good of all. Their unkindness or violence, etc., is misaligned...and your continued acceptance of it (if applicable) is also misaligned. And the same would apply to you regarding them.

Having said that...how do we come through this time and place of great and egregious misalignment, this cranky infancy of the human spirit? Where we have (or will) suffered great trauma due to opening the heart as a central part of our spiritual awakening? How do we recover our humanity...i.e., rebuild and re-enter our heart centre?


Crying or releasing emotions will open the heart and these inner responses absolutely must be honoured. But it doesn't always go deeply enough if the damage is too great. For deep trauma, where you can't even hold or feel or recognise your grief or your pain, only the deepest levels of healing and reconciliation will yield much regular progress.

The above response -- about doing and being authentic love toward yourself and others -- is ultimately the only reliable path to healing the deepest levels of trauma. Because it builds a bridge back to your heart centre, which one day you may find you are able to cross and enter. And although we don't speak of this as much, it also builds a bridge back to the heart centre of God and of others. Not just in naïve openness after awakening, but in a wise, discerning authentic love -- lovingkindness fortified with equanimity, where we realise our own heart centre is as valuable as any others. That our highest good is as worthy of our support and love as the highest good of any others. Authentic love is both our guide and our light, as well as our strength and our fortitude

Continuing in the being and doing of authentic love, then after crossing back into your heart centre and finding at some point that it will hold you once more & you can stay awhile , then you may eventually also find you are able to navigate your broken places which had been shut down, and open them up ever so gently once more to the flow of What Is.

Easy does it... And I am speaking from my own ongoing experience, BTW...


Peace & blessings
7L