OUR WORLD: REFLECTIONS OF OUR HUMAN HEARTS by Barbara Brewster

This piece arose from many personal opportunities, not fun but hugely revealing, for examining the role of how my, and everyone’s, heart is affecting our planet. Every battered, beaten, betrayed, hardened, sickened, shackled, starving creature, land or water mass, is a reflection of what we humans carry in our own hearts.

Some time ago when I discovered hardening calcium deposits around my heart, I immediately saw it as armouring. Sure, I did the “right” eating, exercising, creating, expressing, meditating. Looking honestly, though, there were issues of the heart:

FEARS-failings, missing out, disappointments of self and others, sickness, emotional attacks;

JUDGEMENTS-this place, person, politician, plan, potato, and particularly, ME, is right/wrong;

WOUNDINGS-perceived rejections, hurts, blames, aloneness, unsupported;

HARDNESS– “trying” HARD to “get it right”-demonstrating I’m really serious re pleasing-parents, authorities, teachers, husbands, the IRS. And for me, with childhood hearing loss, always trying HARD to hear;

VIGILANCE-perpetually ready for the next ambush, TENSING my whole body to ensure that nothing can zing in to squash or shatter me.

PROTECTION-I’ll feel safe within this unseen HARD, shell.

The more I recognize these attributes in myself, the easier it is to see them in others. Most of us find it too painful to acknowledge, let alone feel, these inner batterings, hardenings, starvings, shames and rages. So, we distract ourselves with sensations, busyness, goals, addictions, streams of thinking, perpetual judging-oneself, and then “out there.”

When we see horrifying pictures on Facebook, we cringe. We might sign petitions, donate money, muster groups. However, until we look inside and address the origins of these outer horrors, little outside will change. Because the outer pain is merely reflecting back to us the immense pain held in many human hearts.  We humans can be so full of pain, whether via anger, fear, shame, whatever, and lacking helpful tools, we can’t bear, let alone, acknowledge it. So, we project it outward. On to that elephant, child, forest, nation.

I have been about ‘the work’ of SOFTENING. Softening the hardness of my body, mind and especially my heart. It takes huge commitment. I still judge, fear, wound, be tight and vigilant, but at least I’m aware. Most of us don’t want to go that deep. Self-examination is not for the faint-hearted. One must be willing to encounter one’s frailties and falsities. It’s much ‘safer’ to focus on changing diets, lowering cholesterol, upping our exercise, tuning out with substances or electronics. 

I’m also softening toward others:

1) The guys on my street whose cars roar loud enough to hear in Brazil are, I suspect, little boys who feel unnoticed or unheard. There’s a self-focus/hardness there covering up a wound with no room to look at its effect on others.

2) The man on Facebook hugging his lion kill. Possibly he’s been judged or judged himself so harshly and is so unable to accept himself that he thinks maybe killing a big, powerful, wild creature will help him cover his inner sense of ineffectiveness.  

We can apply this to anyone; police who beat up the public; politicians or CEOs who produce massively hurtful policies; women and men who focus all attention on how they look or how much money they have; animal producers who aren’t even aware how cruelly they are behaving; you and me when we don’t get our way. On and on.

My and other’s softening within ourselves is changing our personal worlds. This encourages me. Perhaps as more of us humans notice, and diminish hardening, our personal hearts and our world will also begin reflecting softening and renewal.

Find out more about Barbara’s latest offerings and to purchase her 3 profound books please visit: https://www.barbarabrewster.com