April 5, 2016 - Daily Notes

For five days now, I have been using the mind in my chest. I had forgotten, for awhile, how it feels. Then, like a funny April Fool's joke on Friday the sensation re-appeared, thrumming from the inside. It coaxed me to listen; to stop thinking so that I can know.

Listening with your heart is a return, a drop down into the space, the organ, as it beats. It is feeling the soft pressure of each pulse, the way it moves against the inside of your body. Thoughts here are wordless. Feeling, sensation, instinct rules.

Returning to the heart, I am that lioness again. I embody what is most wild about her as I realize lionesses do not have thoughts made of words like we do. They think with their entire bodies. They must. When resting on her rock in the savannah, a lioness can feel her heart beating. She can feel her entire world with it. She perceives what is true not by mental analysis, but pure sensation.

Thinking too much does not give me answers. Listening does. Heart feels strong and receptive to what is true.

It is April now, and the pace of life is quickening. I get nervous about growing Lucia, all of the ideas I have and how will I have time to bring them to life? Brain becomes busy and wants to drive the bus, organize the things, boss body around.

But every morning and every night I have been pausing to place my hand on my heart. I close my eyes. I breathe into those thoughts and coax them down, down, down into heart. Sometimes, if I stay still like this long enough, I can even feel my heart pulsing on two sides. Wow, is there tenderness. Maybe this is what it is like to know truth. Sometimes tears come. Brain gets excited and wants to explain them, cure them, make them into something that can be fixed.

"Hush," heart says, somehow. "Listen. You know."

Welcome, April.

xo
laura