Greatful

[Steppingfeet]

Dear Ankh,

I spent time with your story of pain and beauty this evening. Thank you for the courage to reawaken a heart that earlier circumstances in your life caused you to numb and hide, and thank you for opening and sharing this story with other seekers, Ankh. I offer thanksgiving also that in darker days you did not succumb to the desire crying out for a quick and final escape from the pain and limitation of this incarnation.

Like you, the thrust of my adult life has been the whole mind/body/spirit dedication to and seeking of the mystery of being. And like you, key to my own quest has been the reactivating/unblocking of the heart, the reawakening of unconditional love. An accumulation of small circumstances in the formative years of the incarnation - none so dramatic and hurtful as your own - caused my heart center to seek protection in a numbed state of being. Like you, many truths were intellectually perceived, many moments of beauty and depth were known by the mind, but I could not *feel* what I "knew", I could not connect the experience to the central door in the being that brings it all to life in the vivifying presence of light, like flowers struggling to grow in a permanently shaded meadow, I yearned for the sunlight to warm and make visible the colors and the beauty/joy of my heart's upward reaching for life.

This icy situation caused me great pain, because how can you celebrate life if the heart is not open? If there are guard dogs around the heart protecting you from a threatening world, how can you embrace this experience and say, "Light and dark, good and bad, pleasure and pain, I absolutely, unreservedly open myself to you, and *love* each iota of this experience! I see these outer forms, accept their rightness in my life and the divine from which they spring, and I seek the deeper truth these symbols represent with my heart open and free!" Without the heart you see things as separate parts and pieces diced up in the analysis of your mind, each thing its own thing but connected to you only through philosophy or science or utility, not through knowing its essential oneness with yourself, and *feeling* the aliveness of consciousness contained within what appears to be an outer shell of minimum interest. Without love you are unable to, in an experiential way, render the many sharp-edged boundaries transparent to the unifying divine within each seeming part.

Self-judgment was a big heart-pummeling agent for me, creating an icy experience due to the thinking that analyzes but separates one from the living truth or suchness of the experience. I have long consciously known that no progress forward can I make without the re-opening and full activation of the key of keys, the heart. So I have sought the experience of love, asking for the divine to again make the heart fearless in knowing and expressing itself.

Much work has been undertaken already and progress, in terms of being able to feel the moment and give/receive love, has been made. Two sources of catalyst have proven pivotal in the dethawing of the glaciers surrounding my heart: One is and continues to be meditation. No more powerful a means for effecting self-knowing, self-accepting, and transformation do we have than meditation, in my opinion. The other no less important catalyst was the love of a mate. The intimacy of another mind/body/spirit who lives nearly always from the open heart undermines the various self-negating illusions we spin about ourselves, both through the mechanism of the mirroring effect and in the same way that darkness is dispelled by light. Ultimately of course the true and only healer is within, but in my experience I have found these two sources crucial in tapping that inner healer to allow the rivers to again flow through parched soil.

I believe you are a magician of the heart, and have powers and oceans within awaiting your exploration and your expression through the vibrancy and light-giving nature of your being.

I hope your wounded heart continues to turn toward the forever available limitless nourishment of inner light. And in so doing I wish for you the discovery of infinite identity and infinite worth. Thank you dear Ankh for sharing your beautiful story, I am "greatful". = )

I would truly enjoy reading your book sometime should you ever feel the impulse to share, and would most like to know its ending when it begins writing itself in you. : )

In the Creator,
Gary