An Open Heart In A Big World Can Hurt

I'm committed to sending you a few updates a month with helpful resources in answering the time old question: What does it mean to live our best life?    

Originally Published, Wednesday, Nov. 13th, 2019 - through email
Sometimes living with your heart wide open is bloody painful.  

Sometimes, the reality of having my heart wide open feels like it is literally throbbing on an open white table, blood sputtering about, exposed and vulnerable, available for anyone to take a squeeze, or walk past by, or worse yet, stab through with a dull scalpel. 

I've had an interesting few weeks, full of wisdom and connections. 

I find myself seeing more of the world than ever before, and sometimes seeing more makes it harder.  

I see the opportunities for connection, for deepening, for shared experience, for co-creation...and I also see closed doors, fear, rejections, and incompleteness.  

I also feel the world more than I ever have. 

As I stand awake feeling into this world, with a rapidly expanding literacy to comprehend it, I find myself grappling with heavy doses of loss. 

I sat with some of this loss today.  

I consider what is it about me that creates rejection?
I consider what skills do I lack that I am not able to create more of the connection and opportunity that I see as being possible?  
I wonder what parts of me feel so distressed in facing this loss?
I wonder why it feels like a type of death, not just to my ego but to humanity?  
I wonder if I'm hanging on too tight, and what is it that I'm hanging onto?

I believe that I'm looking into the mirror of the world and seeing some truths. 
About me, about others, about how humanity is existing today. 
As the stark clarity of the dissonance between what is and what could be is revealed, I'm noticing I have whole new skill sets that need maturing. 

Part of that skill-set is training my mind and heart to release.

Part of it is to accept and celebrate the suffering.

To know that to suffer is to see.
To know that to suffer is to feel.

To grief over loss; is to love.   
And to love is to experience life in its fullness.  

Part of the new skill set is to allow and NOT resist, to have suffering move through me with grace. 

To embrace each tear as the medicine of the soul that the tear represents. 
To let the medicine cleanse rapidly and guide my self back to its perfect blueprint.

I share my learnings with you, not as a preacher or teacher, and not for your empathy. 
I share them for my own healing, understanding, and deepening.
I share them in knowing that my words may land for someone and that you may know that you are not alone. 
I share them so that I too know, that I am not alone.  

I wish you the fullness of love, and of loss.  
I wish you the embrace of cleansing tears that swiftly fill your soul with the love that you deserve.  

Here's to you!

Maurice 
Life, it's in you to live!

P.S. I need to acknowledge that the suffering I'm writing about is one of privilege rather than survival. There are many people that came before me who lived the suffering of survival, and many people that are still living this reality. To have the opportunity to safely experience, contemplate, and pursue the concept of living a best life is a great privilege.