Extract from Toby Negus’ new book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/heart-knows-what-mind-cannot-ebook/dp/B0975TK5W9/
It has been said that the greatest regret of the dying is that they wished they’d been truer to themselves. As if there is a life’s purpose in being who we are. As if who we are is a purpose. But where within ourselves do we go to find this truth, this thing of who we are that makes life worth living? Where is the source of our authenticity and what would truly make us happy, for they are intricately linked?
We can never be happy without living the truth of ourselves. It is the heart that holds the answer because it knows us intimately; our dreams, our hopes and our loves. It is where we will always go to know what is truly important to us, what it is that we would not want to live without.
But the heart is no place of shallow emotions or vain morality. It is the source of a passion and power that has created all the lights of the world. All great art and all the acts of humanity have been born from the heart because all beauty is created from the idea of love. Love is the heart’s purpose and our unique loves of life are its signature. Without its love, hope has no home, courage no direction, and fortitude no purpose. The heart is the home to the deeper dream of who we love to be and is the companion that is loyal to our purpose of life. When we follow our heart, we have no regret because the heart’s wish is for our happiness
When we were very young, we lived from the heart. There was little separation between our heart and our act of life. We loved easily and carried the freedom and creativity because of it. But we live in a busy world and its pursuit for ‘more’ of what we do not need, has made the things of life more important than our love. These false prophets have subjugated the heart and left us bereft of its presence. It has made the head the master and the heart its servant. So now, instead of the head using its great abilities of thinking and reasoning for the purpose of the heart, it has become lost in its own struggle for identity.
The heart is the source of our truth. Not the truth of yesterday or tomorrow that the mind struggles to know, but the truth of the moment, the living truth. When we speak from the heart it is always powerful. When we live from the heart it is always an adventure. The head may be good at sorting and planning in the outer world. But is not so good at being with the moments of life. That is the heart’s art. The head is just too slow and clumsy to perceive and know the cause of the manifested world, its energy and its meaning.
But how can we unlock this power of perception and power that exists within the heart of us. What attitudes can we summon will bring its love of life into the light of the day. And what do we need to let go of that makes us feel unworthy of the dreams we have of life?
The biggest obstacle to the love of the heart is Fear. Its energy is the opposite of love. Fear and its siblings, anxiety and stress close the heart. They dampen our passion and make us unwilling to trust the knowing’s of the heart. Love, gratitude, kindness and the heart’s infinite power of self-healing become out of reach because of the fears we carry. Fear is insipid. It creeps in through the holes within our integrity; lesions created from the doubt and uncertainty we have of ourselves, and of life.
If we do not have some love in who we are and what we do, we will make room for fear. We will step back from the inspired action in fear of the unknown. We will hold onto our truth in fear of what others may think. We will get in the way of the light and create a shadow of ourself. We then, over time, assume that the shadow is who we are and accept it as a true companion. But this is not so, fear is an illusion. It evaporates whenever we touch our heart and know what is truly important to us.
The heart is the custodian of our destiny for without heart our life has no meaning. It is our authentic touch in life that holds our path and our purpose. But knowing our heart is not so easy. We can’t read our heart through the turmoil of our own inhospitality, because all its guidance and love are smudged by the defiance, we hold against ourselves; to the parts of us we deem unworthy or inadequate.
We do not love the grumpy of us, the sad of us, the hostile of ourselves, the parts of us that act as if we do not care. We name them as ‘not me’ and so drive a sword into ourselves, separating consciousness into the good and the bad, the worthy and the unworthy. We declare this part of us a disturber of the peace a foe to our purpose, an antagonist to our harmony and so become the intolerant parent to the hurting child within; the part of us that is in distress, in need of understanding, in need of love.
But if we can get close to our heart, it does bring kindness, not just to other people but more importantly to ourselves. It allows us to forgive and have mercy on ourselves. For when we are in our heart, we know that we are family, the all of us. The good, the bad and the ugly; the parts of us that we love and the parts of us we do not.
Toby Negus
