‘You Have To Keep Breaking Your Heart Until It Opens’- Rumi

“As you move through this world advocating for what you believe in, do it with love and an open heart, not with anger and a closed heart.”
― Jenn Bruer, Helping Effortlessly: A Book of Inspiration and Healing

Why are we so easily provoked to share our rage and disgust? Why do envy and jealousy rise so quickly to the surface of our minds? Why are we so easily hurt by the words of others?

I think they are all symptoms of suffering caused by living with a closed heart.

A closed heart fears the unknown. That fears chaos. That fears pain. That prefers to divide than to connect. It is a selfish heart. It is an anxious heart. It is a lonely heart desperate to protect its borders. An open heart is fearless. Is compassionate. Loves unconditionally. Learns. Forgives. Grows. Gives.

To unlock the heart Rumi recommends something radical…to keep breaking our hearts. Here is my list of how to keep breaking your heart.

1. Risk falling hopelessly in love. Falling in love is a great way to break your heart. You have no control over the way your heart will be treated when you fall in love. You surrender to another and hope that they love you back. Make sure your love is unconditional. Not transactional. Not safe. Pure and unfiltered love is the best way to risk the feeling of love. It lightens your mind and lifts you off your feet. It is such a rush. You have to want it and taste it. But if love breaks your heart. Let it. Feel the pain. The pain will crack open your heart.
2. Lose something you treasure. Sometimes the best way to open a closed heart is to feel a deep loss for the things you treasure the most. It could be a person or a possession that you have long identified with. That feeling of pain and grief is like the manure that a seed needs to germinate. Does one have to go out of their way to give up the treasure? Sometimes. It might become necessary to walk away from that relationship or that place you lived or that job you did to create room for the new. I had to leave home to find my adventure. You have to cross your borders to progress. You have to see your treasures sometimes as the shell on the egg. You have to remove it if you want that Frittata…
3. Let your enemy defeat you. There is no better hammer to break open your heart than to get trampled by your enemy. It’s a wonderful feeling you have to learn to become friends with. Defeat is a great teacher. It shows you your blind spot. It exposes the cracks you were not willing to see or wanted to hide. It opens you up to see yourself in the flesh. Ralph W. Emerson wrote: “Our strength grows out of our weakness. A great man is always willing to be little. While he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits; . . . he has gained facts; learned from his ignorance; been cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.”
4. Become foolish at something. Our mind hoards titles and labels to feel safe. To feel protected. But sometimes the nest needs to be left to start a new one. It may have become too cumbersome. Learning a new skill requires that we become foolish again. Become curious about our own capacity to forge new connections. It opens our hearts to create something from scratch. Genetic transformation follows the same principles in nature. It has been proven that bacteria repair their DNA by opening themselves to external stimuli leading to genetic diversity.
5. Dismantle your ego. We live our lives thinking we have an ego that must be preserved. Look for it. Look inside for the thing called you. You will not find it. We must find the illusion and then dissolve it if we wish to become free and open. Erich Fromm captures it well, “The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.” Dismantling the ego will bring with it a period of chaos. Prepare for it. Create space for it in your life. Before the soil can bear crop it must be tilled into chaos. Be patient. Rumi also said, “Don’t worry if your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come.”

I also find the words of Gina Lake very insightful when talking about the way the ego holds on to the things that keep us closed.

“A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, and losses of all kinds- but these events don’t have to be the cause of ongoing suffering. Yes, these events cause grief and sadness, but grief and sadness pass, like everything else, and are replaced with other experiences. The ego, however, clings to negative thoughts and feelings and, as a result, magnifies, intensifies, and sustains those emotions while the ego overlooks the subtle feelings of joy, gratitude, excitement, adventure, love, and peace that come from Essence. If we dwelt on these positive states as much as we generally dwell on our negative thoughts and painful emotions, our lives would be transformed.”
― Gina Lake, What About Now?: Reminders for Being in the Moment

Coda:

I wish us all an open-hearted life. Free from anger, pain, envy, jealousy, and fear. I wish us all the courage to break down the barriers that we have built to get so far. I wish us all the fortitude to bear the chaos that we must undergo along the way. Because at the end of this tunnel lies a life of joy.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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