Finding Your Fearless Heart

There comes a point in all our lives where we feel stuck, overwhelmed, paralyzed by uncertainty. We can’t see the way forward and don’t know where to begin. But the problem is, the answers aren’t out there.  The answers are within. I truly believe that life puts the roadblocks in our life so we can remember how we truly are.  Release the child in us who was fearless and wore capes because we knew we had superhuman powers.  Each and everyone of us… not just the few who claim them.

This is a journey to find your fearless heart.  A journey I have taken over and over again, daily throughout my life.  Moving from pain and uncertainty to travel inside, listening and receiving the answers to my prayers.  The universal divine is whatever you call it. It  is the unseen that lives in your heart, always there waiting for you to ask for help.  Guidance most recently came in the form of a book recommended by one of my partners and mentors in a Circle to Mastery.  A commitment to grow my compassionate heart and consciousness.  Because I have learned that it is always an inside job that creates the world I see and live.

Meet Thupten Junpa, PhD and his book, A FEARLESS HEART.  How the courage to be compassionate can transform our lives.  I love this book and all the ways it strengthens my practice to be happy….

“Choice of attention - to pay attention to this or ignore that - is to the inner life what choice is to the outer life.”  - W. H. Auden

In Chapter 5, Making Way for Compassion, Thupten teaches how focused awareness keeps us on track.  He focuses on three skills that are essential to settle and focus our mind so we can expand our compassionate and powerful heart. We can all feel compassion if we stop and sit in our heart for a breath or two.  Living it is creating a practice that keeps us in our compassionate heart for others and ourselves.

Quiet The Mind 

Our mind is always wandering. In fact it is our default state focused on keeping us in unhappiness. We automatically turn to distractions whether they be tv, phones, alcohol, instead of solving the real problem.  Quieting our monkey mind.  So take a moment now, close your eyes and watch your mind for just three minutes. Listen to all the negative thoughts and emotions that swirl around.  How can we possibly ever get unstuck unless we quiet the mind, replace this swirling computer of images that tear us down, with emptiness so we can feel and be empowered to make new choices because we believe and know we are capable of more.

By stilling our mind, let it stand idle from the storms of our thinking, worrying, fearing - so we can see the truth of who we are more clearly and act in new ways.

• Develop concentration by focusing the mind
1. As we quiet our mind, we next need the ability to apply our mind in a more deliberate, conscious and focused way.  Developing concentration and attention to focus now on what we want to create.  Thupten provides exercise to develop our ability to focus our attention so we can apply our mind with sustained attention over time. I love that he teaches short sessions of 5 minutes or less to ensure you enjoy the exercise, finish on a positive note so you continue to come back.  It is the consistent practice that sharpens the blade of compassion in your heart.
   
   
• Strengthen Meta-awareness so we can observe our thoughts, emotions and behaviors.  Begin to understand what holds us back.  Why we feel paralyzed. What are the stories we tell ourselves over and over again that keep us stuck.  How our emotions play tug of war with our heart, pulling us from this pain to that, swirling in a spiral of sadness and hopelessness.  This is the practice that helps you be an objective observer and spectator of the theater of your life.  This is my most treasured gift of having a practice.  Seeing my mind and emotions at play as the observer, allows me to not get hooked in, but release the hooks that otherwise tear me apart, so I can stay in joy, peace and grace daily.

Creating a practice is free.  It requires nothing but you to show up and commit to change your life by running it instead of being run by a computer, your wandering mind, that keeps you stuck in unhappiness.  Choose you now.  ReThink Living Now because you can. If you need help, we have created Conscious Connected Community Now to support and guide you.  

You are never alone unless you choose to be….