September 27, 2025
You and I are made of stardust. We are the stuff of exploded stars. ~ Bill Nye
The advice to live a heart-centered life seems to be intrinsic to most spiritual practices. I can understand that. But one of the quirks of being a lifelong writer is that words come alive and sparkle with personality. Individual words are laden with connotations and personal history, something I’m consciously aware of in a way many people probably aren’t.
The word “heart” has such a literal meaning (I instantly get an image of that meaty-red life-pump in the center of my chest) that attributing spiritual, psychological, or otherworldly meaning to it baffles me.
I don’t feel my physical heart as a spiritual heart. I can’t visualize it that way, even though I was given a “heart healing” during a course of Emotion Code work several years ago and ought to have felt “connected” after that. I just can’t seem to master the serene certainty that seems embedded in individuals who endeavor to act from, speak from, and live from their hearts.
It’s like a code, or a secret language, only understood by those who have attained a certain spiritual elevation. I listen to that language but only hear meaningless chunks of sound. And meanwhile, within my sphere of self, a calm little Buddha-girl sits like a frog on a lily pad, bobbing on the sea-with-no-shores in which we all exist. She knows exactly what the chunks of sound mean.
*****
Who is that little Buddha girl? Is she my “heart”? She smiles a secret smile. She gestures, and another lily pad appears, grown-woman size, with a chair for the comfort of these older bones. Here, she invites. Sit and hold my hand, and I will share with you that which you wish to know.
Something expands when I take her small hand in mine. I can’t say it’s a heart. The main word that keeps recurring is kindness.
Act from your kindness, the Buddha girl whispers. You know how to access that. That vulnerable chink in your armor of invincibility is where it seeps out. Allow it to seep, allow it to widen the chink. Kindness can dissolve your fear, your bluster, the blocks you perceive between where you are, and where (and who) you wish to be.
A deep breath arises spontaneously. There it is! The word kindness.
I often fall short of kindness, especially in midst of blustering. At the core is fear – kindness is love, love makes us vulnerable, and losing that which we love is unbearably painful. It’s safer to avoid the whole progression.
*****
Perhaps first I must treat myself with kindness, and forgive the personality traits that divert me from the path of gentleness. Because I also know the truism that how I treat myself is how I will treat others. I feel like this gives me divine carte blanche to begin inwardly, so the benevolence I create can flow outwardly.
Kindness isn’t a where, it’s a what. I don’t have to pinpoint it within my body, which was probably never the intent of the “come from your heart” advice. I don’t need to assign it a place.
It is a click, a shift, that I sense instantly when I pause to consult myself, randomly or in midst of upheaval. Ironically, asking, “What does your heart say?” can click me into that ability. It’s a mnemonic, a key, a reminder that continuing in the upheaval mindset is uncomfortable and can prolong it. Pausing to dip a toe into the bottomless well of “heart,” which I see as “kindness,” can cool off the volcano and bring a more balanced self to bear.
*****
Maybe kindness is how Universe sifts grains of itself and scatters to the vastness. Is every particle of light an infinitesimal two-sided coin? One side Light, the other, Kindness?
I hold out my hands and allow those invisible particles to fill the cupped space. This, I can understand, and hold, and emanate. I don’t need words that others use. Only this feeling of rightness and serenity, echoing from those distant stars and resonating within the star that is me.
