By Lisa Campion
I am cultivating a resilient heart. My hero, Carolyn Myss, says we need to be really strong to live down here on this crazy planet and I tend to agree with her. She says that having an open heart is not for weaklings. She says that it requires stamina, strength and resiliency.
Love isn’t for sissies! And I say, Amen sista.
How do you build a strong heart full of stamina? Get it broken. A lot.
I am a serious contestant for the ever-popular Heart Break of The Year contest. And all that achy-breaky stuff has made my heart all strong and bulgy with muscles. By now, it’s like Popeye, Superman or possibly The Hulk.
I have had to process a lot of grief lately, some about my pending divorce, some about a few recent and unexpected deaths in my family. Some of it is for my clients and their tragedies and some for the general pain of the world, which I feel a lot these days.
(It’s getting pretty weird out there. Have you noticed?)
Frankly, I was thinking an insurance policy against HEARTBREAK would be a great idea. I want the biggest one you can get, with a huge BEING AN IDIOT clause, because it’s … well… ME.
Imagine if you could…
Lisa: “Gosh, darn it! Look what happened! Ouchie, ouch, ouch…” <Holding the broken pieces of my heart in my hands…>
Lisa’s Heart Insurance Agent: “Jeeze, Lisa! Did you break that thing AGAIN? Didn’t we just fix that thing up, like last week? Who did you go love this time…?” <Insurance agent eye roll>
Lisa: <Sniff. Whimper> “EVERYONE! Waaaahhhhh!”
Lisa’s Heart Insurance Agent: “Man, that is going JACK the premiums up on that puppy! I have the hardest job on the planet. I need hazard pay trying to keep your heart from breaking everyday! Sheesh…”
I work a lot with people suffering from loss and bereavement and I always have with the mediumship work that I do. When I was younger, I wanted to go to seminary. I wanted to do chaplaincy work in a hospital or work as a pastoral counselor and in an odd way, that is what I do.
I am no stranger to grief and loss. They are some of my best teachers, allies and familiar old friends. I know that grief is the great heart opener and a powerful agent of transformation, literally turning us inside out. Believe me, I am not one to underestimate the power of love to either mess you up beyond recognition or elevate you to the highest states of ecstasy, usually all in the same day.
Even though my heart is soft, squishy and a little broken, it’s still a tough little bugger. It eats nails for breakfast these days. Really. And it’s getting stronger by the minute.
I can tell because I am not shutting it down. I still believe in love. I am still called to throw my heart in the ring to love again despite all my relationship “adventures.”
(Hey, it’s all research, right?)
A strong heart softly opens to love again. Why be afraid? I have already survived the biggest heartaches imaginable, and you have too, haven’t you? I mean about 90% of the people I have meet are born with a broken heart, right? Once your heart is broken open like that, you should never be afraid to love again. A truly resilient heart is strong because the worst has already happened. As far as I can tell the resilient heart just knows it can survive heartbreak, because it already has, so there is nothing to fear.
“Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love
as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.”
–Rumi
And you know that with love, there are never any guarantees.
I will choose to love again with no training wheels. Without the money back guarantee. Without knowing what is going to happen next. I feel like I have finally broken my childhood derived Disney version of love which promises the happy ending. There is no surety with love, unless you take a BIG step back and look at love from a more cosmic perspective.
Which is where I find both my comfort and my faith. The Big Picture version of love is that BIG SOUL LOVE is eternal and never ending. The heart knows no time and in the end, love is never lost.
Pretty cool, right?
Love feels so tender when we are here on earth. So fragile. So dependent on other people being with us, being alive, being in the same room or on the same page as you. Perhaps human love depends on you even agreeing on your definition of love, your relationship agreements and your mutual Facebook status.
(Current Facebook status- In a Relationship with The World. The world and I are still in the honeymoon phase, it’s very sweet, really…)
Human love, little love, appears so easily lost, misplaced, stolen or given away. How can our minds ever fit big, giant, messy SOUL LOVE into the little boxes, programs and rules we make for that essentially insane condition?
Our poor, little battered hearts get all beat up by this crashing around that we do with each other. So much illusion, miscommunication, conditions and projections. It makes me want a crash helmet and possibly a bumper car. Or at least industrial strength air bags, even if I can’t get my guarantee or heartbreak insurance.
But I know, I really know that LOVE never goes anywhere on a soul level. It just cycles around. Love can never be lost. Once you love someone, BAM! It’s forever and don’t you think for a moment that isn’t true.
And yet, for all the potential violence, turmoil and crazy chaos of love, I still choose it daily. I still feel it moving through me like a current of energy. In my meditations, I just lean back into it and challenge myself to see how big I can get my heart to open. And I feel it pouring through me every night, as I sit alone on my meditation cushion. Alone and never alone.
My head is bursting
with the joy of the unknown.
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell,
taking wings,
flies about the world.
All seek separately
the many faces of my Beloved.
–Rumi
I believe, actually I KNOW that love is the most powerful healing agent in the universe and that you literally can heal yourself and others through love. I believe that no real love is ever wrong or bad. And that most of us poor, sorry souls down here on planet earth just get a little confused between BIG LOVE and little love.
BIG LOVE is eternal, healing, all-powerful, divine, filling and delicious. It is literally the fabric that makes up the entire universe.
Little love is based on our ego and it’s often painful, temporary, inadequate, lost, and fragile. What we think is love is actually need, dependency, control, power, lust and attachment.
But don’t despair, our hearts have their own wisdom, their own agenda and a logic that has nothing to do with the silly rules we set for ourselves about who we and can and can’t love. This is soul stuff and it’s messy, juicy, life giving and delightful. (When it’s not agonizingly painful…) Our hearts never just color inside the lines, it’s a big world out there and ultimately we are all connected to each other through this fabric of love.
Your heart is going to outsmart you no matter what, and that is the best news of all. The mystics have always knows this, punch drunk as they were on divine love. I know it too, and so my dears, do you.
The Lover is ever drunk with Love.
He is mad,
she is free.
He sings with delight,
she dances with ecstasy.
Caught by our own thoughts,
we worry about everything.
But once we get drunk on that Love
whatever will be, will be.
–Rumi
