Fellow Creatures of the Heart

One of the things that has always been important in my life is communication ~ and in particular being able to fully express myself with, direct, honest heart felt communications in all my relationships.

One are of most difficult areas of communications at a heart level is between men & women. Particularly ~ men have difficulty in understanding why it's so important for women to work out their 'heart issues' using communication. So when I read this from and excerpt of her book:

"Heart-ache is real. Can we stop pretending that these things don't' matter? When you have a fight or are frozen out by someone you love, getting to the heart of the matter is the only damn thing that does matter."

I was excited...... because Sarah Ban Breathnach did such a good job in showing and explaining why the area of communications about heart issues is so important women, and why being frozen out in the area of communications by someone you love is so hurtful for women in particular.

Though her information is presented from the female perspective, my hope is that all (men & women) who read this excerpt will benefit from having a better understanding of what happens inside women as they work through issues of the heart.

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From "Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self"
By Sarah Ban Breathnach

"Earthly Tutorials" p. 287

"It has occurred to me that, for at least half this book, I've been writing about the negative components of relationships. Pain. Bad men. Wrong choices. This isn't a coincidence. Love relationships are where we women take our Earthly tutorials in spiritual growth. As Kathleen Norris, a 1930's novelist, wryly observed, "There are men I could spend eternity with. But not this life."

That's because women are heart-centered creatures. We live in our heart. Oh, we often visit our heads during the day; women do run corporations, launch banks, publish magazines, travel to outer space, trade securities on Wall Street, close million-dollar movie deals, get elected to national office, anchor the news, write Supreme Court decisions, and win Nobel prizes. But after all is said and done, women wake up and go to sleep in their hearts. The heart is the Sun of their own private solar system. Everything else – their children, job, home, family, friends, and need for creative self-expression—are the planets that revolve around the heart and depend on its energy to give them heat and light.

How many times must we stop whatever we're supposed to be doing at home, at work, or with our children, how many times must we cancel an appointment, miss a deadline, let something slide that we were going to do for ourselves, out of a driving need to sort, share, ponder, discuss, and dissect with a close friend the vagaries of an intimate relationship? One minute we're projecting profit-and-loss estimates and the next (either internally or in a quick telephone call to a pal), we're analyzing ways to respond to yet another unconscious slight, another missed anniversary, another hurtful silence. And it's only after we've aired these emotional issues that we can get back to crunching numbers before that big afternoon meeting. Peace at any cost, until we're physically bankrupt and need to file either for divorce or a Chapter 9 reorganization of the relationship to balance love's ledger.

We can't help ourselves. Getting to the heart of the matter is a soul-directed impulse. Getting to the heart of the matter is a sacred imperative, as pure as prayer. When a woman's heart isn't at peace, she can't invest her time, creative energy, and emotion in anything else. She can't focus. Since there's plenty swirling around her, impatiently awaiting the attention she doesn't have—because she's struggling to hold the center of her universe together with her bare hands—she becomes conflicted, confused, annoyed, scattered, depressed, and often testy.

All of a woman's spiritual, creative, and sexual drives—her power—emanates from her heart. When the heart is in danger, her Authentic Self is simply following its prime directive: get rid of the blockages, get the heart open to receive and send out love, get the heart centered and in alignment with what's truly important, and then get on with it. Real life. Nothing is more important to a woman than healthy intimate relationships—with her lover, partner, children, parents, siblings, and friends.

You might find it helpful, as I did, to understand the anatomy of a woman's heart. The heart is a hollow muscular organ that circulates blood to the body by swishing it through its chambers. Now, think of the blood as love. A woman's hollow heart is constantly filling and flowing with circulating love energy. When there is a spiritual blockage in the heart, a hardening of the arteries through the constricting emotions of anger, frustration, and resentment, love cannot flow freely and her heart hurts. Have you ever felt so sad, lonely, or upset that the middle of your chest hurt?

Heart-ache is real. Can we stop pretending that these things don't' matter? When you have a fight or are frozen out by someone you love, getting to the heart of the matter is the only damn thing that does matter.

In the chest cavity, the anatomical heart is held in place by muscular attachments of veins and arteries. Mystically, a woman's heart is held in place by her attachments to those she loves. A woman's heartbeat—anatomically and mystically—is regulated by a unique nervous system that either accelerates or depresses the sending and receiving of messages by impulses, tiny electrical shock waves that "travel along a slender bundle of neuromuscular fibers, called the bundle of His."

I swear I did not make this up. (See the "Heart" article in the Microsoft/Encarta Encyclopedia.) I'm struggling to make sense of it.

The bundle of His. His needs. His wants . His confusion. His preferences. His priorities. His problems. His pain. His hang-ups. His stress. His fear. His disappointments. His expectations. His phobias. His stuff. Have I left anything out?

Whenever we're successful at fixing or patching whatever needs to be repaired in our important, intimate relationship, when the rift is healed—or better yet, when we've been able to recognize that "his" mean-spirited, rude, obnoxious, inconsiderate, or selfish behavior has absolutely nothing to do with us (a lifelong curriculum in human behavior)—Women focus with amazing speed. When we're at peace, when we feel loved and are loving properly in return, we're back on track, saving the world with a smile. It's been said, and I agree, that there is nothing, nothing, nothing that two women cannot accomplish before noon, if left along to figure it out. That is, of course, unless one of them is upset with her husband or lover."

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