Heart/Love

     What is of the heart and what is the heart? Whether a topic or feeling has the qualia of emotion that will stir the body to forgetting reason or the very center that focuses upon that feeling is being identified is posited here. The long moments of silence that allow us to become completely immersed in our own feelings, devoid of expectation, stress or outward awareness grow our hearts. From convenience this term has been deemed the label to represent an infinite focus point. The experiences, feelings and people that bring us love are sources of received love. If the focus point, the heart is elevated, kept open and cultivated, then that received love will grow the heart to pour love out again. This is not always the case, as we all have friends and relatives who remain catankerous and shit all over lovely things. When the heart grows in a healthy, vital way though, love and the ability to love grows. To love what is known, received, experienced is to be open to the world. To love one's own self, to be content just to be, even without those received experiences and feelings, is to have love.

     The heart begins with self-awareness, and awareness of the world. Fascination in a child grows their intake template. The way we connect with the world around us influences our view of the internal universe and we become either loving or fearful creatures. If a leaf falling through the air captures the imagination, and the mind is taken away, feeling what the leaf does, spinning about on a breeze, hardly affected by gravity, twisting and curling in the heat, crispy skin bursting upon contact, crackling leafy powder back to Earth, then the heart thus grows. Should that same child soak up the changing grain of asphalt, tracing and dancing skin to connect and feel every pore, then the desire to experience the world grows. The ability to love, thus grows. Years later, when that child is a grown up and gets utterly lost in the taste of a perfect pair of lips, lingering on the texture, remembering the taste for later, yet still utterly absorbed in the moment, the electricity, the heat exchange, the pair of heartbeats matching pace, the breathing that equals upon withdrawl, the energy tie that remains. The ability to experience life is linked to the ability to receive and give love. The energy tie that awakens in moments of empathy explosion, such as seeing a strange dog across a patch of grass and immediately shifting focus to a receiving state and without surprise finding the dog instantly turn friendly and run towards us. The hazy warm spot where you can hug a new friend immediately upon meeting them. The ties that linger float about before, during and after all of these moments. In this intangible current is the ability to influence the world through self-awareness and subtle calibration. After many years of waking up, embracing this current as my path and seeking to elevate awareness and immersion thereof I have realized that love is the ability to live.

     When we truly love ourselves, treat our bodies right, stretch and embrace our muscles and bones, get lost in dance and song, sing without shame, release concepts of body distortion and damaging self-image consciousness vitality and love grows and a broken world becomes merely imperfect, growing. A work in progress, to be noticed and admired. Curiosity, warm feelings, humor, lust for new activity and ideas emerge in a state of being in love with life. When I was young it seemed like falling in love was frequent, and with it came a passion for living. As I matured and grew more connected to reality, being carried away became less an aspect as time and expectation were let go. Today I carry the chamber that awoke from every time I ever thought I was in love. Today I am in love with my life.