Support flows from the open heart

There are a number of methods you can use to facilitate the opening of your heart space.

One of the strongest is the creation of a ritualized sacred space, a place in which people can share from the heart. The advantage of this is that you acknowledge your human limitations and create a safe form to explore your edges. You do not try to dissolve into a sea of loving bliss with everything and everyone, and then kick yourself every time you fall out of it. Rather, with each person's agreement and support, you create a sacred circle. You might meet once a week or perhaps on every full moon.

The circle is the nonhierarchical form of sharing that allows hearts to open to each other. There are only two rules for communication and participation in the circle - love and trust. You may like or dislike someone, but within the circle you can love them. This allows the creation of deepened mutuality that enables the heart energies to be expressed beyond romantic or family bonding.

Another practice of unconditional support that can be done individually will open the flow of giving and receiving. Simply choose three people who you want to work with and internally send them a flow of loving support every day. No one else needs to know about this - this is work on the nonphysical plane. Quietly support their essences, their heartfelt desires, and their truths. In doing so you begin to experience the joy of blessing others as opposed to experiencing the "other" as a threat.

Another heart opening technique is applicable to any emotional reaction we experience, especially the so-called negative ones. Instead of riding the roller coaster, we can actually bring our reactions into the heart and work with our experiences of them, as opposed to projecting them onto some one or some situation. At first the heart may remain closed, but by gently bringing our reactions into the heart we begin to acknowledge the possibility of a new kind of resolution, a resolution that is not dependent upon an us-against-them mentality.

~Rick Jarow