The Wounded Child (Anahata)

       "Fear is the heart of love," I swayed as she sang along to her husband strumming his guitar, "so I never went back..." a sad line to croon, but later that day I thought it to be true.  An argument between my own partner and I led to a hurtful exchange of words that left me sitting with a deep pain in my chest.  I quietly realized that the pain was wrenching in the area of my heart as I thought about the words that hurt me, but as I turned everything over in my brain I noticed that the pain began to move.  My segmented thoughts grew into sentences and unspoken retaliations that pushed the pain up into my throat.  I felt choked on the words that I wasn't speaking, and the more I suppressed my distress the more resentment seemed to build.  As the animosity grew and settled, the pain slowly fell into my bellybutton where my energy is affected by my relationships.  Of course my husband and I worked things out within minutes, but I felt that I suddenly understood myself a little better because of this interchange.  Our thoughts, words, and actions (or lack thereof) can either empower us or suck the life energy straight from our bodies.  Why did I continue negative thought patterns and self-harming belief systems?  Fear.  Jealousy, bitterness, anger, hatred, and the inability to forgive grow directly out of anxiety, crippling our hearts to its true purpose in the divine intention of our lives.  Lucky for us that love, compassion, confidence, hope, forgiveness, dedication, inspiration, trust, and the ability to heal can pour forth from our hearts to endlessly nurture our life force.
       The heart is the energy center that separates the physical from the spiritual.  The lower three chakras are based in physical, emotional, and mental aspects of the somatic realm, whereas the higher three chakras are based in the spiritual realm.  The heart is the transforming agent between the higher and lower worlds- isn't that beautiful?  In order for the spiritual to become physical it must pass through the heart, and in order for the physical to become spiritual the heart must transform it.  Love is the power of the divine.  Love goes beyond the sacrament of marriage, it is the internal union of the self and the soul, the true motivator of the human body and spirit.  Unconditional love, love in its purest form, is what gives us the ability to forgive others, ourselves, and fuel inner peace as we release the need to evoke justice and trust in the divine plan.  To embrace our pure power we must have the courage to listen to our hearts emotional messages and inner instructions.  The "wounded child" is what Caroline Myss calls the damaged emotional patterns, negative attitudes, dysfunctional self-images, and painful memories that develop within us during our childhoods.  She believes that a child who fears abandonment can become a jealous adult, a sexually abused minor can grow into a sexually dysfunctional grown-up, and a negative self-image can turn a healthy person into an alcoholic, bulimic, or anorexic.  Loving ourselves means letting go of that wounded child's authority over us and rocking our emotions until the tears stop flowing.  Someone who was abused many years ago can hurt themselves even more by reliving that abuse in their own minds every day of their lives until they are crippled from the pain of the memory.  Self-love means forgiving others, because our wounds don't hurt the people who hurt us, they only hurt us.  Our wounded child sees the world as working in a reward/punishment system, but a fully functioning Anahata moves past needing explanations and views life through fulfilling consciousness, not fear.  The word Anahata translates from Sanskrit as "UNHURT", the spiritual place where past experiences and grievances cannot harm us.  I will be fully open to giving and receiving love.  I will instantly forgive, not only others, but myself as well.  I love myself unconditionally.  I love others unconditionally.  Love is my guiding truth, my hearts desire, and my joy.  I will live gratefully, because it is safe for me to love and be loved.  I will have unconditional compassion for myself and others as I free myself from past hurts.  For "we will all have experiences meant to 'break our hearts'- not in half but wide open."
Is your wounded child still crying?

Music by Mary and Martin Callozzo

Dance, My Soul

      Silence is a phenomenon that does not truly exist.  When we are alone, quiet, at rest, we can feel that void as a heavy cloud weighing and pressing down on us.  But the reality is that we are never alone and the earth is never silent.  When the chaos of the day turns into a cool night, and the chatter of the humans we share this planet with subsides, that is when the earth is able to reach out and beckon our ears to the place where the music truly lingers.  The song of the wind calls us to hearken as the leaves and branches of the trees it blows invite us to come sit and listen for a while.  In the starlight the cicadas and crickets charm us into a dance of sacred steps that can only be known to the dancer who reaches deep within to remember the soul movement that was understood exclusively by those who once resided among awareness.  There is an emotional untethering, a mental and even physical release that gushes from deep in our hearts when we close our eyes and recall that ancient music that lives within us all.  It is a song of primordial consciousness, a freedom that exists only when we forget our mortal bodies and weave a tale too complex to be spoken with language.  It is a legend too powerful to be seen with human eyes and too essential to be understood by physical senses.  The song that we feel inside of our hearts, the dance that we release from the bottom of our souls, is a force that can't be written, spoken, or rationalized.  There is a reason that music makes a party, that love is expressed lyrically, worship is sung into the heavens, that we meditate and journey to the rhythm of the drum.  Ideas much too deep and important to be told plainly are crooned and strummed into earthly existence, flowing from our inner worlds of spiritual depths.  Emotions are expressed in a way that only song can convey and only dance can appease.  Music is a therapy, an urge, a desperate longing, a sacred calling, a means of transformation for the hybrid divine.  The oldest instrument known to man is the flute.  Made from bird bones and mammoth ivory, the flute was played at night while tribes sang and danced round a fire of heat and passion.  Alone, or surrounded by like-hearted kindred, let the music connect you with the earth and all that is in realms that cannot be seen.  The drum is the intoxicating heartbeat and our voices rise to mingle with the neural pathways of the heavens.  As we let our limbs twist and wind through the celestial ether, blood pounding in time with natures pulse, our feet drumming the earth and sending shoots of roots into the under-realms of space, we can clearly see why we smile.  Our hearts quicken and our ears prick up to the sound of a tune we can grasp onto and our faces smile when we realize that the song in you is the song in me, because it is the joy of the earth and the secrets of God.
What is your soul dancing to?

"Dance Of The Moonlight..." painted by bohomaz13

Music by Sarah Howle & Wyatt Garey

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

- Victor Hugo