Anahata (Sanskrit: अनाहत, Anāhata) the heart center – this chakra allows us to love deeply, feel compassion, and access a sense of peace and connectedness.
There is much yearning for me to live in the heart center. If you notice, it’s right in the center of the 7 chakras. I draw upon the energy from the lower chakras and pull down the energy from the upper chakras and they all meet in the 4th to generate a warm loving pulse, a strong drum beat that I walk to. Not all the time, but as much as I can manage. It is my life practice to keep the heart chakra open.
“Love is what we are; we don’t get it from somebody, we can’t give it to anybody, we can’t fall in it or fall out of it. Love is our true Being.” Krishna Das
This post has taken me longer to write than the others in the series because I want to do it justice. Like describing a lover’s face to somebody else, I don’t want to leave anything out, get it just right. And in the realization of that, I can let go and do my best, it’s just ego setting out its trip wire.
Once, when I was a pre-school teacher, one of my favorite 4 year old girls threw her arms around me and said “I love you so much, I wish I could kiss you on the lips!” and I received the pure uncensored abandon of her love. What my 4 year old girl wants to say about the 4th chakra is: “I am in love with this chakra, with this life, with YOU, with ME and I wish I could write a thousand love poems for the heart!” I wish I could throw my arms around the world and dissolve into one million points of light and ecstatically merge with All. (Maybe that’s what death is like…I hope so.)
This full moon time, I’ve been praying to take the “next step” in my work life, the next step on the path of meaning and service. I pray to be of service in the world, in the areas of death & dying, grief healing, suicide loss, threshold passages, sacred sexuality, body awareness/appreciation – you know, just the usual stuff. And ALL of it under the umbrella of sharing from the heart, with each and every encounter, seeing others through eyes of love.
“Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.” -Rumi.
So how to do that? Stay in love with the world on a daily basis…not always easy. Especially driving around Boulder at 5pm. My god I am challenged! I am humbled by how quickly I can get knocked off center. My blueprint for living these days is my beloved book: The Untethered Soul, by Michael Singer. In it, he speaks about how the heart center is an energy center and this energy (Chi, Shakti, Spirit) is unlimited and it’s our birthright. It’s our birthright! We store pain in the heart center and in order to be truly FREE, we need to commit to a practice of feeling our pain and releasing it, witnessing it as energy, nothing more/less, and allowing it to pass. This enables us to stay in our heart and not close it off anytime we think we might feel something painful. Living in fear of feeling something that hasn’t happened yet isn’t freedom. Singer says: “The only thing you have to know is that opening (the heart) allows energy in, and closing blocks it out.” The good news is that I am presented with mulitiple opportunties a day to stop, breathe and relax my heart and open it again. Which is why it is my most active, ongoing practice and it has immediate, amazing results. My life is changing before my eyes.
“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you?”
― Rumi
Roxanna Kopp Smith 
Beautiful, Dear! I waited until I could read/see it on my computer (which I didn’t bring to Philadelphia)
ah ha, I think you were the person whom turned me onto the Untethered Soul. I’m reading it now and I LOVE IT! I’ve been telling everyone I know to read it. I love how he puts these deep spiritual truths into such simple terms. Of course the practice isn’t always simple. It really helps us to see how quickly old unconscious habits of closing off happen. Thanks again Roxanna for sharing your truth.
Awesome!! I understand the contemplation in writing 4. Without reading the 5th, 6th and 7th in the Chakra series, this will be the most challenging to read, absorb and integrate. Chakra 3 gave me a charge. Chakra 4 is mirroring my vulnerability. I repel and invite it at the same time. I love you’re quotes and writing. Nice reminder of the Untethered Soul. It’s hiding on my night stand!