Have you ever had a nagging voice deep inside your heart telling you this is not really it? That who and what you think you are is not really you? I have had that voice eating at me, tugging at my heart, scratching from the inside and I have not been able to dampen it no matter what I do. I have heard the call of my devotional heart, and can’t ignore it any longer. It has made me question my very existence, examine my roles and has painfully burst my heart open like a flaming sun.
I am not a woman, I am not a man, I am not a mother, I am not a daughter, I am not a neuroscientist, I am not a meditator, I am not a patient, I am not a victim, I am nothing and everything all at once. In silence there is nothing and beyond all of these roles the one thing that remains, bursting at the heart, is love. The love and the courage, to listen to the heart no matter how confusing, how frightening and winding the path— to have the courage to love myself and listen to the heart’s call.
I know this as the space to live in the courage to love and to let go of fear. In listening to the heart and her call, in the space between the sound and the silence, my heart is willing to break herself and in that shattered-ness the old idea of me, the old patterns of me, die, the roles of who I think I am are shed, and a new me is born.
And I start to ask myself, what is it that I want in life?
I may not see an entirely clear path and, at the same time, I have begun to ask myself, in the breaking of my own heart, can I trust in the path I am choosing? In choosing a new way, can I learn to love the call of my heart and not deny myself? I may not know who I am or what I am doing but I do know the first step is listening to my heart.
And in that, I am letting go of who I think I am, who I think that I have to be, the idea that I have to exist for anyone or anything other than me. In the silence of the heart, with an empty mind, I am nothing and whole, all at once.