Rediscover the Magic
Have you lost your feeling of connection with yourself, your familial relationships or your friendships? If that is happening, what is the underlying cause?
Yes, there could be many surface reasons. You could be disappointed, fatigued or bored. Maybe there is too much friction, sarcasm or criticism coming from you or to you. Maybe you are feeling weakened or have become disinterested or too passive. Your life might be held hostage by craziness, confusion or difficult challenges.
When we have a breakdown in our relationship with others or ourselves, it often comes down to the fact that we have lost touch with our ability to perceive imaginatively. We have lost the magic. We become hopelessly enmeshed in psychological labeling. Our heart closes its door and our intellect is left running the show by categorizing and name-calling.
Everything and everyone is labeled, as though naming is the same as experiencing. Our significant interactions are reduced down to a dead transference of data. We overload each other with meaningless trivia and judgments that are unusable for any creative purpose.
When our heart participates, it sees receptively. We seek out friends and loves so that we can see and be seen through imaginative perception. By being imaginatively perceived, we are blessed.
The intellect questions, probes, and looks for the once and for all answer to the problem. Intellect wants the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The heart responds in a softer way. It delights in nuances. It works in tandem with imagination. The heart and imagination walk hand in hand on the softer, slower, sunnier side of the street. Heart and imagination care less about what a person is and more about how they are. Heart smarts have nothing to do with figuring out, categorizing, fixing, rearranging, influencing or making something happen. The heart wonders instead about the preferences, dreams, tastes, longings and unique ways of this person.
Here is the dilemma.
How can we perceive others through our heart’s affections when we are shut down to our own preferences, tastes, longings, wishes, hopes and dreams? If we continuously probe, push, interrogate, invalidate and second-guess ourselves, how can we ever hope to be truly receptive to another? Why would anyone make himself or herself visible to us when it is obvious that we manage ourselves with a heavy hand?
When we are hard-hearted, closed off and uncompromising, the life-stream of small pleasures dries up. We become lost in a desert of sameness and disillusionment with no oasis in sight. How do we turn on our heart’s intelligence so that we can be open and receptive once again?
Rekindle your quest for wholeness with self. How whole are you? Where is your tenderness, your patience, your kindness, gentleness and wonder residing? What is your heart deeply longing for? When was the last time you gave yourself a break, let yourself off the hook and lightened up on your excessive self-criticism and harsh evaluations? Imagine turning off your judging and categorizing and turning on your sensing and perceiving.
Forget about making something happen ‘out there’ for a moment. Instead, turn your attention inward. If you listen closely, you may hear your heart whisper: “Here I am. Right here. Can you, will you, listen?” And as you do, little by little, notice the subtle stirrings within.
Slowly, gently and patiently begin the process of letting down, letting go, listening, softly opening to and tenderly receiving the light of love so that the holiness of your heart’s affections are rekindled and renewed and the magic can return once again.
Susan is a local author, facilitator and executive consultant. Reach her at beyondintellect.com or susanvelasquez.com
