Daily Excerpt: How to Live from Your Heart (Hucknall) - Understanding the Heart
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excerpt from How to Live from Your Heart by Nanette Hucknall -
Understanding the Heart
Imagine yourself in a deeply loving and completely fulfilling relationship, excited by each new day. Imagine you awake to intellectually stimulating work that matters in the world. Picture the deepest longings in your heart blooming into real, tangible manifestations of your creativity. You can have all of this. You already have the road map and the knowledge to create this beautiful life, and all that wisdom resides in your heart.
Your heart knows:
• Right from wrong
• Creativity from procrastination
• Love from lust
• Joy from mania
• Honesty from falsehoods
And more.
And here’s the best news. Tapping into your heart communications
skills will:
• Bring you a deeper perspective on events in your own life
and in the world
• Help you attain and retain emotional balance
• Unleash your creativity and make it easier to tap into
throughout your day
• Bring awareness to your own gifts
• Help you develop deeper, more fulfilling relationships with
others
• Access your innate intuitive guidance
• Connect you to higher wisdom
To understand your heart is to understand how to work with energies. These energies flow through you and affect your personality, as well as the way you relate to others. Understanding heart energy is learning how to make these energies work for you in a positive manner, a manner that will help you to grow morally and spiritually and help you in your relationships with others.
There have been many schools, from the psychological to the religious and philosophical, that speak of the power of love, the power of the spiritual self, and the power of higher inspiration. All of these are energies flowing through the heart center. The heart center is an instrument that literally expresses these qualities.
As with any instrument, it is necessary to practice in order to bring forth its finest sound. It takes time, dedication, and knowledge to make this happen. It is up to you to do the work, to want to use your heart, and to have the need for an open heart full of compassion and understanding. Having an open heart will change your behavior and affect those who are close to you. With the use of your heart, you can develop the means to have lasting relationships and an abundance of energy, and you can even discover your creative self. All of this is part of everyone’s potential, a potential seldom used to its fullest.
First, it is necessary to come to a better understanding of your heart center. Emotions always flow through this center, which is located in the middle of your chest in line with the physical heart. Emotion usually causes a pressure or a knot in this center. If it is a loving feeling, the pressure is often accompanied by warmth and expansion. The saying, “I feel my heart is going to burst” reflects this expansion. The saying, “I feel my heart is going to break” reflects what happens when the energy in this center becomes contracted, causing a real pain.
Neither of the above comes from the physical heart. There are energy centers throughout the body, which are repositories of psychic energy, the life energy flowing through a person’s physical body. This energy vibrates through the organs and the vascular and nervous systems of the body, leav ing only at death. This same energy literally activates physical sensations and causes them to affect the mental and emotional makeup of a person. This energy is also an activating force in the centers. It varies depending on the use of each center. If a person never uses the heart center, then it will not be activated. Such a person would be cold and distant, someone who has a difficult time relating to others. When someone uses his heart center, that person will emit warmth and gentleness. Meeting someone like this may make you say, “This person has a good heart,” meaning an open-heart center.
With the use of your heart, feelings deepen, and they can create a better understanding of others. Look at those people you feel are loving and caring. Their openness and acceptance are usually a quality that is very ap parent. This same openness allows you to be responsive and warm, which causes your heart to expand a little in return.
When this type of exchange takes place, it is truly communication in its best sense. It is easy to use your heart with someone who is like this. It is naturally much harder with a relationship that is more distant. Unfortunately, most people will neglect trying to use their heart with someone who is detached and aloof. Yet sending such a person the warmth of your heart can open him up and help him, in turn, awaken his own heart.
Part of increasing the awareness of using your heart is simply to use it in every situation, whether or not it is comfortable. Such a practice not only will help you to see the truth behind what is happening, but also will provide a means to change your own negative behavior habits. The following story illustrates this:
There was once upon a time a very great Raja in India who owned an enormous kingdom full of abundance and wealth. This Raja spent most of his time in his palace being entertained by his many wives. One day, a very wise sage came to the palace and asked to see the Raja. The Raja invited him to a dinner party he was giving that evening. During the dinner, the Raja asked the sage to talk about his practical teaching. The sage replied, “I teach a very special type of yoga, a yoga that is only for a select few.” Of course, this aroused the curiosity of the Raja, and he asked the sage if he would teach him this special yoga. The sage told the Raja that he would be happy to take him as a student if the Raja would first do him a favor. The Raja agreed, not thinking that it was anything he could not fulfill. The sage then requested, “Please give me a piece of your heart.” The Raja was aghast at such a request. “If I gave you a piece of my heart, I would die!” The sage just laughed and said, “You promised, and I hold you to your word. I will return in a week.” The Raja became very angry that the sage had tricked him. He felt foolish for having agreed without hearing the request first. Since his other guests had heard him agree, his code of honor was now in jeop ardy. What a dilemma! How was he to retain his honor and not give up his life? The Raja called in all the wise men in his kingdom and asked their advice. They all made suggestions, but none fulfilled the original request. A week went by quickly and the sage returned. “Well, are you ready to give me a piece of your heart?” demanded the sage. “How cruel you are! I have heard you are a man full of love and compassion. How can you ask me to kill myself?” replied the Raja. “I asked you for a piece of your heart. I did not ask you to kill yourself. You can do this request without dying. I give you one more week to honor your agreement.” The Raja was now really confused. How could he give him a piece of his heart without dying? Again, he sought the advice of all the learned men in his realm. No one seemed to know the answer. Feeling more and more depressed, the Raja went to his private chapel to pray. While he was praying, a voice said to him, “The answer lies in your heart.” The Raja then asked his heart for help. He felt an answer come from it. His heart said, “Look into the sage’s eyes and ask him to first give you a piece of his heart.” The next week, the sage returned, and the Raja looked deeply into his eyes and asked the question. As he looked, he saw the sage’s eyes deepen and fill with warmth. The Raja felt the warmth of the sage’s eyes fill his own chest with energy so intense his heart vibrated. It was so strong and loving he could barely contain it. “Now that you have received a piece of my heart, can you do the same?” “No, I don’t know how. Please teach me.” The Raja humbly bowed down. The sage smiled, “Now I will accept you as my student.” This story illustrates how the heart is pure energy, energy that can be given to others in a positive way. Really understanding the true meaning of nature and man’s relationship to it is also part of developing the heart. If you are in tune with nature, you will find yourself experiencing a heightened awareness of its hidden mysteries, mysteries inherent in all of life. It will help you begin to realize your own creative self. The freedom of the spirit comes with this deeper understanding.
How to Live from Year Heart has earned the following awards:
Pinnacle Book Achievement Award
Kops-Fetherling Legacy Award
Readers' Favorite Book Award finalist
Book Excellence Award finalist
Book of the Year finalist
For more posts about Nanette and her books, click HERE.
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