Breaking Open

Last night my heart broke open.  I’ve heard people say that before, but I never really got it. Well, now I get it.

I’ve had the experience of heartbreak. When you literally feel a pain in your chest because your heart’s longing is taken away or gone from you.  In small ways I experience heartbreak every time I have to say goodbye to my niece and nephew whom I adore and they live 2,000 miles away.  In a big way I felt heartbreak in March of this year when I returned to full-time work following 3 months of maternity leave with my 2 children.  It felt like a severing.  Even now, writing, I can physically feel that separating in my body.

But a heartbreak and a heart broken open are two different experiences, though I guess they could be born of the same life event sometimes. When your heart  breaks open you feel free, as if for the first time.  You almost look toward the sky in amazement at how filled up you feel inside with just pure joy and love.  And for me, an enormous wave of gratitude just washes over me. Not a pious or obligatory gratitude.  An organic process of giving thanks that feels like the most natural thing in the world. Like you don’t even have to think about it, it just happens on its own.

But here’s the paradox,  these incredibly blissful feelings are coming through, and of, a trial. A difficult experience that at times felt insurmountable.

What Elizabeth Lesser, author and founder of the Omega Institute, says about the experience of a heart breaking open is: the process of transformation [is] a journey of brokenness leading to openness, descent to rebirth, fire to Phoenix.  And I think sometimes, there are tears, and one might mistake those tears as part of heartbreak, but they’re not.  These are tears of joy.  When is the last time you shed tears of joy?

Ms. Lesser assures us in her bookBroken Open that though the journey will be difficult, the payoff will come when we come into the liberating presence of our authentic self.  Doesn’t that sound delicious?!

To be honest, I didn’t quite get to tears. My eyes kept welling up and brimming with tears, but a single one just couldn’t make it down my cheek.  But I must tell you, crying is something that does not come easy to me.  In fact it is so rare, I could tell you the exact last time I cried.  But I do tear up. Often actually.  Including in moments of love and joy, the pinnacle of which I suppose was the experience I had last night because I felt I had finally reached the top of the mountain, and the climb had been substantial.

So what was this moment you ask? The funny thing is, not much.  I was just attending my orientation class for a course I am signed up for called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Now, I have been thinking about taking this class or something like it for a long time, like years.  And when my colleague told me of a new local nonprofit who’s mission is to offer programs that cultivate mindfulness, meditation and yoga, and it is 30 minutes from my house and my work, I thought, “perfect. Now I can give myself a gift.”

When I drove into the campus of the retreat center that is hosting the class I felt as giddy as a little girl on Christmas morning. And that surprised me.  I haven’t felt giddy like that in a long time.  I pulled into a parking spot and began to look around at other men and women entering the building, and I felt this wave of glee wash over me.  My eyes began to well up. I felt myself smiling and actually glowing.

Keep in mind, this was all for an orientation for a class.  That’s it.

I felt so moved by all of these powerful emotions that I decided to walk over to some benches that were framed in a circle amongst the trees and some beautiful religious statues before going inside to join the others.  After I sat down, I began to pray.  My prayer was one of thanks and appreciation.  For my life. For the moment I was in. And for allowing myself this gift of mindfulness meditation training.

I must tell you, giving myself a gift is very hard for me.  It brings up feelings of shame, unworthiness & selfishness.  A minefield of psychic history.  But here’s the miracle, I did it anyway.  And god did it feel good.  Like a huge breath of fresh air that makes your lungs expand and your whole body relax. Where you close your eyes, bring your hands together and bow your head and say, “thank you.  I have arrived home.” 

That is what it felt like for me to have my heart break open.  I hope it happens again someday.