2022 - The Courage to Live from Your Heart

To everything there is a season. We just happen to be in the season of chaos. It is all around us and it grows larger every day. Governments in turmoil, protests around the world, food and water shortages, threats of war and terrorism, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and floods creating more and more climate refugees, and poverty - all amidst a global pandemic that has pushed us to the brink of more division, arguing, and hatred. We seem to be self-destructing. Is there any way to save us from ourselves when we can't even agree on basic human rights?

We are at a critical juncture in the grand cycle of the cosmos. Everything changes, from the universe to our milky way galaxy to our solar system, sun and Earth - they all change like clockwork. We just happen to be living at a quarter to midnight before the next grand cycle ends and a new one begins. This is how creation works: From nothing comes everything, from chaos comes creation, from creation comes destruction, from nothing comes everything. Every 12,000 years or so, the cosmos cleans and clears the energy. It is similar to wiping a computer clean and downloading a new operating system. When the cosmic alarm clock goes off, there is great destruction...and from nothing comes everything and so starts the grand cycle over again.

We can't stop the Universal clock but we can wake ourselves up from centuries of nightmares from living in fear. Perhaps the reason for this season of chaos is to wake us up to realize that the only way we can make it through this extreme chaos is to live from our hearts.

We are all on this Earth together and together, in what may be a matter of decades, we will hear that cosmic alarm clock sound. Our ancestors before us have survived these grand cycles of change because they were connected to Mother Earth through their hearts. We have forgotten how to live from our hearts.

The overriding themes of this past 12,000 year cycle are greed, power, corruption, get ahead at all costs, and selling our souls to make money just to have basic survival needs that were once free for everyone. When humanity decided to charge for what Mother Earth so lovingly supplies us, such as food, water, and materials for shelter and clothing, corrupt thinking was born. Power and domination took over and we forgot that each soul on this Earth has a right to all She provides for us regardless of social standing, job title, or how much a person has in the bank. Mother Earth loves us unconditionally but we forgot to love her back. The Hopi say that when our hearts and minds become separated and are no longer one, Mother Earth will heal herself through catastrophic change. Even with all of the fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes, we still haven't gotten the message.

It takes courage to live in these times. The courage to do your inner work and raise your consciousness. The courage to be different. The courage to follow your heart and trust its guidance even when it goes against the what the majority believes. The root of the word courage, cor, comes from the French meaning heart. Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." How many of us have the courage to speak from our hearts?

2022 is a year of cour-age: the age or time of the heart. If we are to survive even greater changes and challenges, we must live from our hearts. Living from the heart means listening to that still small voice. Following what feels right even though it may be illogical. The heart is not logical or linear for it is connected to the universal or cosmic mind that knows more than what our human minds can comprehend. 

The Institute for HeartMath has shown that intuitive information comes into the heart first. Your heart has over 40,000 neurites that form a mini "brain." Your heart's electromagnetic field is 5000 times stronger than your brain's. The heart is mission control, not the brain.

We have been living mainly from our minds. It is time to come into our hearts and listen to what our intuition is telling us. We must balance our minds and our hearts in this time of great change.

Find your courage, live from your heart, raise your consciousness, pay attention, set intention, be in your integrity and 2022 can be a magical year.

(If you want to learn about the heart and how to use its power, you can purchase my ebook, Heartwired to Heaven: Unlocking the Power of the Creative Heart, on Kindle or Google Play Books.)

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.

Cosmic Gift

Today is the final Pluto Uranus square in a series of seven that started in 2012. This celestial event will not occur again (thankfully) in our lifetimes. What these two outer powerhouse planets (why isn't Pluto still a planet?) bring us is transformation (Pluto) and awakening (Uranus). The energy of this final square asks us, "What patterns have we not yet purged? What are we still holding on to that no longer serves us?" 

In just a few days, we will also experience a total solar eclipse in the very last degree of Pisces, on a super new moon, just hours away from the vernal equinox. This is one power-packed week. I have been feeling this intensity since last week. It hasn't been pretty. Healing usually isn't. 

Yesterday, I delved deep into my soul and asked why I continue a certain behavior. What I found is that the behavior was passed down from my mother who probably received it from one of her parents and so on. The past patterns of our ancestors can be inherited by subsequent generations unless we are aware enough to identify and change the behavior.

My mother was a perfectionist and she expected no less from her children. No matter what I did, it was never good enough for my mother. "If you got 98, you could have gotten 100 on your report card," she would say. Slowly but surely, I took on the energy of "not good enough" and what comes next? Low self-worth and self-doubt, of course. To counteract this, I created scenarios where I thought I had to do more and be more than anyone else - the quintessential overachiever. I had worried that if I didn't meet my mother's expectations, she wouldn't love me. That was the story I told myself. Eventually, not good enough turned into not worthy of love.

So here I am writing about the heart, the symbol of love, in my book, Hardwired to Heaven: Download Your Divinity Through Your Heart and Create Your Deepest Desires. "Your greatest wound shall be your greatest strength," my astrologer told me years ago when speaking about Chiron. In Greek mythology, Chiron is known as the wounded healer. As I heal my own heart, I am able to heal other hearts.

My journey to the depths of my soul revealed a pearl. It was always there, waiting for me to acknowledge it. My gift. My raison d'etre. I am loved and lovable. We all are for we are never separate from the love that created us. May this week of once-in-a-lifetime energy, bring you a cosmic gift and unearth your pearl.