Author: livingheartpeace

I have been telling people lately that I am stuck.  In all areas of my life.  My finances are stuck, my relationships are stuck, my writing is stuck, my personal growth is stuck.  I am not feeling particularly inspired to make any drastic changes or efforts in any of these areas.  I am feeling inspired to let them all be as they are for now and rest and follow energy when and how it does appear in the small doses it is presenting itself currently.

The language of “I’m stuck” doesn’t feel good to me.  It’s not peaceful because I know it’s not true.  I am resting and peaceful and becoming more consistently in alignment and mostly content…and that is very different than being stuck.  There isn’t much happening on the outside for me right now, and the inside is in constant motion.  It’s like my heart is being defragmented.  Have you ever run the defrag function on your PC and watched the blocks move around and reposition themselves?  That’s what it feels like to me on the inside right now.  Nothing is really being changed, or removed or added, just rearranged and realigned for efficiency so that when I am ready to start moving again in the external world, I can move with as much ease and grace as possible.

Some things are definitely coming up for me to manage…specifically in terms of relationships.  Some are growing and deepening and more are fading away.  There are ways of relating to people that I have engaged in for decades that no longer feel right for me, and that causes changes and rubs with some people who have known me for decades and have become accustomed to the ways I used to allow myself to be treated when I didn’t believe I deserved time, attention, and an opportunity to be heard.  There are new people I am meeting who are only seeing me as I value myself today.  I am really enjoying watching how others react to me and watching myself be more consistently comfortable and peaceful as the woman I am now.  There are a few relationships that are only a couple of years old and I believe they are experiencing me as somewhat unpredictable as I oscillate between who I was when they met me and who I am today (which is of course still evolving).  Even more important than how “they” are experiencing me is how I am experiencing myself…and I am also perceiving myself as somewhat unpredictable right now.  The funny thing is, I am only unpredictable in that I am more and more consistently different than I used to be.  Less and less am I willing to hide and remain anonymous and invisible.  It’s not happening overnight, it’s taking what feels like a very long time in fact, but it is happening.  And it is not nearly as terrifying as I imagined it to be.

I am not stuck, or complacent.  I am cultivating a more consistent level of Heart Peace with ALL the circumstances of my life as they are.  And so because I am accepting things as they are, I am not pushing to change them as often and intensely as I once did.  I am allowing things to unfold more in their own time and way (sometimes I still try to take control and push my own ideas along) and come when I need them and let them go when it is time for them to be released or changed.

Allowing myself to work inward and allowing this Heart Peace to become a more consistent companion can look like complacency or being stuck on the outside, even to myself.  Because I said it out loud (thank you mighty companions for hearing me say it and allowing me to say it and not trying to tell me what was really going on), I got to feel my reaction to it and my reaction wasn’t peaceful, so I knew it wasn’t true.  And now what has happened?  By speaking something that felt true but wasn’t, I was able to recognize the lack of peace and feel into and find the peaceful truth.  And the peaceful truth inspired me to write it down and share it!  Grateful for the endless opportunities to learn and grow and share.

Heart Peace is not complacent.  Sometimes it may look so on the surface because the waves of life aren’t breaking furiously and continuously.  Heart Peace is deeper than those waves and the waves of life become more furious when I focus on them.  Choosing to focus on the depth of Heart Peace calms the waves at the surface so they can ebb and flow without being destructive.  This perspective feels peaceful, and so I choose it.

With love and Heart Peace, Kristen

This is an interesting question.  I am always looking for and hoping to see “evidence” of my personal growth and change.  I love experiencing my own development and appreciate any and every opportunity to bask in the glow of true change.  So how can I tell when I have REALLY changed?  There are several different ways that demonstrate true, deep, and lasting change for me.  One way is witnessing my reactions and responses in similar situations.  When my reactions to a similar stimulus are consistently different that they used to be, I know I have truly changed. The first time I have a different reaction or response, it is cause for celebration!  And when I watch myself have a different reaction repeatedly, I know the change has taken hold and I let the basking begin!

Another way I perceive my own true change is when my emotions are present and not overwhelming at difficult times and/or when being vulnerable.  Part of my expansion has involved getting more and more in touch with my feelings, ALL my feelings, and allowing them to come and go and be expressed.  I cry more now than I ever have in my life and it feels liberating to allow my tears to come when joyful, sad, proud, hurt, touched, frightened, and any other time they form in my eyes and wish to be released.  Most of my cries aren’t head hanging, sobbing, wailing sessions, like they used to be back in the days when I only cried because I couldn’t bear the emotional build up and repression any longer.  Most of my cries these days are tears rolling down my cheeks, with a smile on my face and an open heart.  I cry now at church because I feel so much love there, I cry when my daughter’s capacity to care for and about others shines through her eyes, I cry when a friend tells me her heart has been broken, I cry when my own heart breaks again and again and again at the way we humans treat each other, I cry when I am afraid of loss or rejection, I cry when I miss someone I love who has passed away or simply chosen to leave my life (years, even decades, later I still miss them and cry).  I used to perceive tears as weakness and a loss of power or control over my life.  In part because I only let myself cry when I was at a breaking point.  Like so many things, I had it all backwards.  Tears are truth.  Tears are strength.  Emotions aren’t frightening or weak, emotions are what connect us to our own heart and to others.  So now, when I cry, I feel so much gratitude and peace that I am strong and safe enough to allow my tears to come and fall freely.  These emotions feel safe for me now and I enjoy the feeling of tears rolling down my cheeks and most especially the feeling of light and peace inside after I have allowed them to fall.

The final way I know my changes are real that I want to write about today is when I can peacefully tell the truth, especially a difficult or painful truth.  I have not been a big liar in my life.  Of course I have lied, and felt the pain to myself and others caused by lies I have told, but it hasn’t been my default response.  What was my default response, for a very very long time, was withholding MY deeper truth.  When telling a story, or answering a question, I would be honest on a very superficial level and withhold the deeper truth underneath.  For example, when someone would ask me how I was doing after my divorce, I would honestly tell them “I am fine”.  What I didn’t share was that I was still healing my heart, that my capacity to trust felt irreparably damaged, that while my daughter was my greatest joy I was exhausted caring for and supporting her on my own as much as I was, AND that I was fine and would find my way through the struggles to the joy on the other side.

Last week, I was having tea and catching up with a dear friend and had the opportunity to experience a moment of true change in myself.  This woman and I have grown very close over the years and we inspire and nourish each other’s heart and provide each other a safe loving environment in which to share deeply.  It is not uncommon for one or both of us to have rolling tears as we share.  Toward the end of our conversation she asked me if there was a consistent way I judged myself or beat myself up in my life.  Without skipping a beat, I said “My body.  I used to live life feeling so obviously and fatally flawed because of my weight that I believed I had to be outstanding in every other possible way to ‘make up for’ being so hideous and broken.”  She asked me a few clarifying questions and I further responded with “I used to feel like I could never make a single mistake because I already had 2 strikes against me and any minor mistake made me completely worthless.”  We went on to talk some more and she asked if I still feel that way.  I truthfully shared “No, I don’t.  It creeps in now and again, but very rarely, and when it does I know it is not true.”

This was a miraculous exchange for me!  Not only did I reveal a deep dark inner secret that no one has ever known about me before, it came out naturally.  It came out peacefully.  There was no fear of loss or judgment, no feeling of wanting to hide, no emotional outburst, no regret a week later, no half truth, no self criticism for revealing too much.  This is an example for me of REAL change!  I am feeling genuinely safe, and peaceful, and free to be and share all of myself.  I trust myself.  I know who I am and I am not judging myself for it.  And…the cherry on top of it all…I am writing about it!  Yes, there are a few tears falling on my keyboard now, AND there is a smile on my face and my heart is open.

This is an interesting question.  My personal exploration of this question began years ago when I didn’t understand why I wasn’t happy, even though life looked good on the outside.  The exploration peeled back many important layers over the years including: increasing my gratitude, learning the truth of what I truly want in life (versus what I “should” want or have), letting go of unrealistic ideals of how I, “they”, or life “should” be (that “should” word again…it’s a peace killer), choosing to be happy, peaceful, and to share love (yes, feeling better can actually be as simple as deciding to feel better), adding a daily focus on the expansion of Love, Joy, and Peace, and many more.  Every layer removed has increased the Love, Joy, and Peace in my life and working on each layer has been vital for my progress.  My capacity to feel, cultivate and share all these wonderful sensations is at an all time high…and yet…there still seemed to be a ceiling.  A point beyond which I couldn’t go, even though I know in my heart there are points beyond my experience.

 

Earlier this year, I went deeper.  I went down to the root of what lies underneath Love, Joy, and Peace and am loving what I learned and the impact of this knowledge!  Why did my Love, Joy, and Peace have limits?  I discovered that my capacity to love (self or other) is limited by my trust (in self or other).  I can only love myself as deeply as I trust myself.  And I can only love you as deeply as I trust…myself…you thought I was going to say I need to trust you to love you, didn’t you?  Nope, the time I choose to spend with you may be limited by how much I trust you, my enjoyment of you may be limited by how much I trust you, but I can love you without limits when I trust myself.  WOW!!!

 

My feelings of joy are limited by my capacity to allow unfolding (of myself, another, and life itself).  How attached I am to any details of how anything “should” be (there it is again…ugh!!!) is how limited I am in my capacity to experience Joy in any situation.  When I can experience anything purely with no preconceptions or judgments or attempts at control, then I can feel the highest joy.  This applies to a day at work, my lover, my child, ANYTHING!  To feel the highest and purest joy, allow everything to be as it is and enjoy it exactly as it is.  People, things, and situations don’t have to be the way I want them to be to enjoy them…in fact, I will, can, and do enjoy things more when I don’t decide or prejudge how I want them to be!  WOW again!!!

 

The pinnacle for me…Peace.  How is my Peace being limited?  What’s underneath my Peace that restricts it even when I am focusing on it and living in it more day by day?  Safety.  Not external physical safety (although that’s obviously critically important and without it, nothing more is possible), something deeper.  Do I feel safe to be me…to be all of me…unfiltered…and share all of me without hiding?  The extent to which I filter myself, hide, pretend, or limit my own expression of self is the extent to which I limit my Peace.  When I can feel completely safe in my own company (regardless of who I may encounter in the world) I am fully at Peace!  When I doubt, judge, second guess or criticize myself, no meditation or yoga or mantra or prayer can get me into deep Peace.

 

So there it is.  This is what I have been working on for the past few months and intend to write about more in the coming weeks.  The biggest key here for me is realizing how little any of these blocks have to do with anyone or anything other than me.  My capacity to love is limited by my level of trust in myself.  My capacity to experience free flowing joy is limited by my lack of allowance of life to unfold without my input or requirements.  The peace I feel in my heart is limited by how safe I feel to fully be me and fully reveal my deepest truest self.  May you trust yourself, allow life to unfold, and feel safe sharing your deepest truths today and everyday.

 

People ask me all the time “Why are you so focused on Heart Peace?  What does that even mean?  Why is it so important to you?”  These are all good questions, and I have tried several other approaches to living my best life, but nothing has felt as good as finding peace!

Peace is underneath everything else.  It lives beneath all the emotions and reactions of daily life.  It feels like a stabilizer to me.  For most of my life, my emotions and reactions have been in complete control.  When I have been happy, it’s not generally been just mildly pleased, it has often been deliriously happy (which we all know isn’t sustainable and inevitably leads to an emotional crash).  And when I have been sad, it wasn’t only a mild melancholy, it could be tear-inducing sadness that tended to linger.  Both of these extremes and all other emotional swings have impacted my ability to concentrate and focus and maintain balance in life.

Now before you just dismiss me as some weird bi-polar extremist or some other wildly emotional woman, I ask you to consider that this is how most of us actually live, we maybe just don’t realize it or discuss it or admit to it freely or know that anything else is possible.  How many times have you been so excited or happy about something or someone that you can’t stop grinning and giggling to yourself, and been distracted for more than a few hours by your giddiness?  How many times have you been so sad or upset about something that tears welled up in your eyes every time you had a private moment?  Or been so angry that you snapped at your family or friends or co-workers who have nothing to do with the cause of your upset?  Or been angry for so long that you actually forget what you are angry about because the feeling has lingered and taken you over?

All of these examples are emotions and reactions without peace.  For most of my life I had no idea anything else was possible.  This was normal for me and everyone I knew…and it is still normal for most people I encounter.  When my mom was sick with cancer for 13 months before she died, my sadness was consuming and felt like it would never end.  It wasn’t depression, it was sadness, and there is a huge difference between those two.  Depression is a medical condition…an imbalance in the brain…and it requires medical attention and treatment.  Sadness is an emotion…a reaction to a situation or event…and the only way through sadness is to feel it until it evaporates.

During that terrible time when my mom was sick and I was so sad, two teachers emerged and changed my perception of what was possible.  Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” and Pema Chodron’s “When Things Fall Apart” introduced me to the concept of finding the peace underneath the emotions and the reactions.  I remember one concept specifically from Eckhart (I listened to the audio version of the book and can still hear his voice) that went something like “you might not be happy, but you can be at peace”.  The main idea in “When Things Fall Apart”, and a theme that runs thru many of Pema’s teachings is to “lean in” to the difficult emotions.  It was her book that brought the point home for me that “the only way out is through” which we have all heard so many times…but something about her words and her context made it make sense to me and made me want to try it.

These two teachings during a most difficult time introduced me to Heart Peace and though I didn’t realize it at the time, defined the course of my inner work for the rest of my life…and now it seems may be defining the course of my outer work as well.

The short answer to the questions I opened this post with is that Heart Peace is my priority because it came into my awareness when I was suffering deeply and Heart Peace shifted my suffering into something I could bear.  I was still dreadfully sad for a very long time during her illness and after her death, but in Peace, I found something to stand on and trust in and believe in that was bigger and deeper than my sadness or grief.  And after feeling the shift that came about during that most emotional time, I wanted to feel it more and more under all my emotions and reactions.

This did not happen overnight and sometimes still requires a conscience choice and decision to tunnel under the reactions and emotions that flair up to find the bedrock of Heart Peace that I now know is there in me and all of us.  I still lose my peace…I lost it one night last week in fact…the difference now is that I know what is happening and I know what to do inside myself to go under the wild emotional reactions and find something deeper and more real to hold onto while the storm of emotions and reactions swirls.

Let’s dive in together and help each other find and maintain our connection to a deeper foundation.  Peace doesn’t hide or deny emotions.  Quite the contrary, I still feel powerful joy and excitement and sadness and even anger.  They just don’t control me as often or for as long as they used to.  I believe I feel my emotions more clearly when I remain peaceful and am more able to receive and understand the messages the emotions bring to light.  Praying for Peace for you,me, and all of us!

Anyone who knows me knows that I prioritize Heart Peace.  About 8 years ago, after a very turbulent time in my life, I was at my wits end.  The ups during that time were euphoric and delirious.  The downs were devastating and paralyzing.  I was so churned up inside that I couldn’t revel in the ups or find my way out of the downs.  My insides were so cloudy and murky that I didn’t even know what I wanted or what would make life better.  All I knew was that something had to change.  During one of many long cries, it hit me like a bolt of lightening…I have no peace!

Unsure what to do about this, I started reflecting back.  Have I ever had peace?  Surely there were times…weren’t there?  We all have good times and bad, happy and sad times, so I had no problem remembering many examples of each.  But peace?  That was not as easily remembered.  There were a some brief windows of peace.  A few years from about age 12-14 were peaceful.  There were a couple of deeply peaceful years in my marriage.  But the overwhelming majority of my life was not peaceful.  That’s not the same as saying I was unhappy most of my life…I was happy quite a bit, just not peaceful.  There was always that undercurrent of discomfort or dissatisfaction.  Now that I had realized what was missing, I had no idea what to do next.

So on a whim, I got a tattoo on the back of my neck under my hair that is a red heart with a peace sign inside of it.  I didn’t know how to achieve Heart Peace, I just knew I needed it.  A tattoo seemed the most overt and permanent way to make my request and to ask for help from whatever higher power was out there.  I wasn’t a religious person, but I knew this was a bigger issue than I could push through on my own.  Someone who had a closer relationship with their God than I had at the time might have laughed at me and said “oh honey, you can just pray for what you want.”  But I didn’t know that and I didn’t have a relationship with a higher power at that point in my life.

So my prayer was a tattoo.  My intention to live in a different way was permanently branded on my body.  And you know what?  That is one damn magical tattoo!  From that day over 8 years ago to this day, whatever challenges have come and whatever joys have been experienced (there have been and continue to be many of both, and everything in between), my inner peace has grown consistently and exponentially.

Heart Peace is now who I am.  Heart Peace is now what I strive for.  Sometimes it is easy and sometimes I fail miserably.  But everything always comes back to Heart Peace for me.  Every decision, every choice, every action, every conversation is driven by a desire for peace.  Sometimes what I “want” and what brings me peace are in perfect alignment and those are good days!  When love, joy, and peace are all bundled up in one person, place, thing, or idea, peace is deep and spirits are soaring!  Sometimes I realize that what I have been wanting or working toward brings me no peace (even when I get it) and I have to let go and change direction…those days are harder…to let go of someone or something that I put time and effort into is not easy for me.  Peace is not the same as pleasure and it is common for me to experience pleasure and still not have peace.

So that is why I am writing about it.  There is so much to share and so much to learn and I am excited to be opening up and writing about my life’s mission.