All About the Heart

I asked myself this morning how I would define success in life. My definition came without hesitation: How well do I follow my heart? Then I reviewed my life to see how successful I have been.

Even as a child, I always wanted to do something with my life that would help people. My natural love of science and my innate curiosity with the heart led me to pursue a career as a cardiologist. I worked as an electrocardiograph technician in college. One day I overheard a bunch of interns in the hallway talking about the patients in not so nice terms. In that moment, I decided that was not the career I wanted. My career is about the heart and I found no heart in anything they had said that day. Even though it was an "isolated incident," it is still blazoned in my memory. Because of that experience and the loss of both of my parents shortly after, what I thought was my heart's desire was about to change.

I went from job to job for a while not knowing where my heart was taking me. I taught high school biology for a time, then I entered the Army Reserve and became a medical laboratory technician, and then began a career as an industrial hygienist for OSHA. This showed me that the only thing that will really change "the working conditions" of America is a change in consciousness, not a change in laws. I left and began a career as an alternative health practitioner. I became a massage therapist, Reiki Master Teacher, and Integrative Energy Therapy Practitioner and taught massage and Reiki. My interest in spirituality blossomed and it became my passion.

Even in love, I followed my heart instead of the norm. I had been attracted to women and thought that I would find my partner in the military. My heart led me to her within two years of enlisting. I thought what my heart wanted at the time was the "American Dream" but my heart wanted more. After 14 years, I left my partner and the home that we had built together for what I thought was another relationship when it was just the Universe's way of helping me to leave. Within a year, I left everything and everyone I loved to move to Sedona and follow my heart's passion.

I immersed myself in the metaphysical and learned and cleared much. I wrote my first book, In the Key of Life: An Activational Journey to the Soul and did much of the research for my second book, Hardwired to Heaven: Download Your Divinity Through Your Heart and Create Your Deepest Desires while in Sedona. 

I traveled across the U.S. ten times. My last trip to the Pacific Northwest was the most magical because I truly followed my heart. What I felt, I created. I manifested a beautiful house in Gold Beach on the Oregon Coast where I wrote the chapter on Blood and Water for Hardwired to Heaven while overlooking the Pacific Ocean each day. The trip took me back to Sedona to see that this time of intense learning and traveling was coming to an end. I returned to New York and lived with my sister. My days of traveling and searching had depleted much of my resources.

I've spent the last six years reliving and clearing old patterns. Who hasn't?! Hardwired to Heaven and my third book, Into the Heart of Love: Decoding Love's Hidden Power, were published during this time. Everything I did to get Hardwired to Heaven out there seemed to evaporate. I was judged by my family for not getting a "real job." I entered the dark night of the soul and at one point wanted to end it all, thinking that I was a failure and there was no reason to stay if I was not able to do my work.  

I looked back on my life today and saw that even when it was not "normal" to leave a good paying career, to have a same sex partner, to leave home without knowing where I would live or how I would support myself, to write books that many people did not yet understand, and through the enormous intensity of this ascension roller-coaster, I still and always, followed my heart. How could I not? An astrologer told me that I came to heal the heart and now I see that my life has always been all about the heart. 

What we gather materially in this life does not matter to the soul. What matters is how well we follow our hearts in service of the One Heart.

"Your soul's treasure chest is buried within the sacred coordinate in your heart. There you will find the riches of the Universe." ~ Hardwired to Heaven.