Living in Wholeheartedness

What does wholehearted mean to you?

What does a wholehearted life mean to you?

Interesting questions aren't they. The first one seems easier than the second - as though we can imagine ourselves being wholehearted for moments in our life but the thought of living a wholehearted life seems much more challenging.

Understandably too. Wholeheartedness requires an open heart and an open mind.

I discuss living wholeheartedly with fellow A Course of Love facilitator, Lynn Kidd in the below video.

Of course there wasn't time to discuss everything.....here are some of the things I wished I'd had time for!

Wholeheartedness requires an open heart and an open mind. How do you feel about opening your heart?

From the position of the mind alone the world around us doesn't seem worthy of our heart. There is too much violence, too much oppression, too much corruption, too much to worry about and too much that makes us a little scared, too much........ of all the things we don't want. We only feel safe, even sensible, to open our heart to life when it includes things we want, desire and like. The result... we protectively lock our hearts away to hold safe the love held within and we give our mind the job of logically navigating us through life.

Even while we've given the mind authority, the position of the heart is a little different. The heart, when protectively closed, yearns for connection, yearns for expression of all the love it knows is possible and yearns to be seen in relationship.

What we've forgotten is that the mind and heart both want the same things, though they go about creating these things in very different ways. They both want healthy, loving relationships, kindness in day to day life, thoughtfulness, recognition of each other, creativity and authenticity. We've forgotten because we live in a world that only recognises success through status or accumulation of wealth even though we know that status and wealth aren't always synonymous with being an authentic person or a wholehearted person.

Which begs the question why do we strive towards status or wealth. Because we think we will feel more certain of ourselves and our survival with more resources.

Is it true? Perhaps if survival is only measured materially and physically. However, if survival includes matters of the heart such as fulfillment, love, creativity, compassion, hope, resilience, receptivity, presence and joy, then status and wealth don't always, actually, rarely lead to fullness of being.

We know that survival does include matters of the heart, because a person who has hope, love, kindness, and compassion, all the qualities that we'd collectively call faith, is a resilient person. Resilient people are survivors.

Just a glance at the world around us....and it's undeniable that we could do with more heart. More wholeheartedness so that the mind and heart can co-create a new future where freedom, joy, creativity, abundance, love, health, connection, kindness and happiness are experienced in daily life.

But life isn't like that yet.....so how do we open our hearts to a world consisting of all the things we don't want? It takes willingness.

Willingness usually comes one of two ways; either when the pain we feel from our heart yearning for a connection strong enough to liberate us becomes too great or when we've transcended the limits of time and space through an unexpected experience (I talk about these in the More Love Podcast). Lots of people experience one or both of these scenarios and it triggers a desire to understand why we feel as though there is more to life than meets the eye.

Willingness begins the journey to wholeheartedness. Wholeheartedness requires an open heart and an open mind. What does the mind need to be open to.....our heart - it's the internal connection that is required to bring into existence the authentic connections, with others and with life itself, that we so desire.

Opening the mind to the heart begins by introducing an understanding of the contrast between living from the mind compared to living from wholeheartedness - this gives us the opportunity to choose to bring the heart back into relationship with the mind to create that internal connection. Wholeheartedness comes when the mind and heart are in relationship and as you begin to understand what this relationship means you come to see how the mind without the heart relies on control, comparison, judgement and how fear influences everything.

After opening the mind to the heart and bringing the heart back into relationship with the mind you start to see the world around you from a position of wholeheartedness. It takes practise but it does come because it's your natural state of being. The only reason it's not familiar to you is because we live in a world that shuns our sensitivity to emotions, feelings and energy and instead measures success based on status and wealth.

If you're looking for a guide to wholeheartedness I can help you. If you're looking for a book to support your journey to wholeheartedness I can highly recommend A Course Of Love, first received by Mari Perron. You might also like my my interview with Mari Perron on the More Love Podcast and if you like that you might want the link to the first 24 chapters of A Course Of Love for free.

Living wholeheartedly is more a set of life skills for an extraordinary life than it is a destination. As I said in the interview, life can sweep us away and break our internal connection and therefore our authentic connection to life itself. However, the discipline required or life skills required quickly become a habit we love to have. The reward of wholeheartedness is an extraordinary life, where synchronicities surprise and delight us, where miracles become possible and where comfort, certainty, creativity and confidence become part of daily life.

If only living wholeheartedly was taught at school, the world would be a different place! Creative habits would be considered normal. Transcendent experiences would be considered normal. Our health would improve, we'd become resilient people, we'd see more common qualities within one another than we would see irreconcilable differences, we'd enjoy quality relationships and the list could go on and on..... an extraordinary life doesn't fit into a single sentence or even a list!

Even though most of us find our willingness to discover how to be a wholehearted person long after we leave school I can assure you, it's still worth the journey.

With love, Helen