The Voice of the Heart

As I was reading this weekend Mark Nepo “Book of Awakening”, I stumbled upon this paragraph…

“This holds a powerful lesson: Time and time again, the head must be brought beneath the heart or the ego swells. If you do not bend, life will bend you. In this way, humility is accepting that your head belongs beneath your heart, with your thinking subordinate to your feeling , with your will subordinate to the higher order. This acceptance is key to receiving grace.”

It spoke vividly to me because I realize over and over again that we must surrender to our heart in order to move forward. Does that mean that our ego is not healthy? I believe the contrary, our ego is at the perfect place where it should be! So, what is a healthy ego?

When our ego is deflated or inflated, we are not well in our skin, we are not at peace. Let me explain. Most of my life, I only heard criticism about me, that I had to change, to be somebody different in order to succeed in life. My ego was totally deflated as I tried very hard to be somebody else that I was not. My mind was in control, not my heart! One day, I realized that if I did not allow my heart to speak to me, I would collapse. Not good!!

An inflated ego is when we believe that our possessions, such as money, power, fame, a job, knowledge, or spiritual wisdom, make us superior to others. What an illusion…Again, we are not at peace, and we believe that those things define us. The mind is in control (again), not the heart. I see over and over again famous people, actors, singers, and yoga gurus that believe they are superior, when in fact, they are like everybody else, trying to shadow their own insecurities and humanness, their heart. Their ego is deflated under the mask of an inflated ego.

So what if we accept our own suffering and woundedness? What if we let go of our mind ego centric needs and allow our heart to come through? What if we completely surrender to our vulnerability so that we can’t go any lower and once we have touched bottom, we can spring back above the water so that we can float on the waves of life with an open heart?

No money, fame, or knowledge makes us stronger than the willingness to accept our own humanness, the voice of our heart. In the end, we are all one and the same!

Namaste!

Leave a Comment