Bridgett
08-03-2006, 09:24 AM
I promise that you won't regret reading this article. And I also promise that you will feel so good when you practice this. Enjoy!!
Several years ago I took my mother shopping for a winter coat. Shopping is not my favorite activity, and it was close to dinnertime before we finally found the right coat, needing just a few alterations. The tailor helped Mother onto the raised platform and went to work. I sank into a chair in the corner of the fitting room, lost in my own little world, wondering if I had time on the way home to stop at the grocery store to pick up something for dinner.
Gradually, on the edges of my consciousness, I began to hear a conversation. Mother would ask a question, and the tailor would answer. At first the answers were rather brief, but as the questions and interest from Mother continued, the answers became longer. The woman’s voice became more animated. By the time we left, the two of them were laughing together like old friends. And I was left out — a shriveled self-absorbed, tired little soul in the corner. And withholding myself, I exited just as I had entered. I looked at Mother. She had come in with an extra spring in her step.
As I sat in the corner of the dressing room with my little closed heart and thought about the list of things I still had to do, my fatigue increased. Mother looked down at the alterations lady and opened her heart by expressing her interest, and Mother’s energy increased. Here was a discovery that I didn’t recognize then, but when I began to experiment years later, I thought back on that afternoon and identified a process that is repeatable: Opening one’s heart creates energy. Closing one’s heart depletes energy.
I learned something else about opening hearts from the coat-buying experience. An open heart often coaxes open someone else’s closed heart. It’s almost magical. An open heart presents a safe place that others sense, and they respond, sometimes immediately and sometimes much more slowly. No matter, however, whether they respond, because, in the meantime, we feel so much better living this way.
Several years ago I took my mother shopping for a winter coat. Shopping is not my favorite activity, and it was close to dinnertime before we finally found the right coat, needing just a few alterations. The tailor helped Mother onto the raised platform and went to work. I sank into a chair in the corner of the fitting room, lost in my own little world, wondering if I had time on the way home to stop at the grocery store to pick up something for dinner.
Gradually, on the edges of my consciousness, I began to hear a conversation. Mother would ask a question, and the tailor would answer. At first the answers were rather brief, but as the questions and interest from Mother continued, the answers became longer. The woman’s voice became more animated. By the time we left, the two of them were laughing together like old friends. And I was left out — a shriveled self-absorbed, tired little soul in the corner. And withholding myself, I exited just as I had entered. I looked at Mother. She had come in with an extra spring in her step.
As I sat in the corner of the dressing room with my little closed heart and thought about the list of things I still had to do, my fatigue increased. Mother looked down at the alterations lady and opened her heart by expressing her interest, and Mother’s energy increased. Here was a discovery that I didn’t recognize then, but when I began to experiment years later, I thought back on that afternoon and identified a process that is repeatable: Opening one’s heart creates energy. Closing one’s heart depletes energy.
I learned something else about opening hearts from the coat-buying experience. An open heart often coaxes open someone else’s closed heart. It’s almost magical. An open heart presents a safe place that others sense, and they respond, sometimes immediately and sometimes much more slowly. No matter, however, whether they respond, because, in the meantime, we feel so much better living this way.