Introduction
Have you recently had a heart opening? Are you feeling drunk in love? Are you experiencing an overdose of happiness, love, ecstatic all at the same time?
Congratulations! This ‘bliss state’ often marks the first phase of unblocking the Heart Chakra.
What follows the ‘Bliss State,’ is the Dark Night of the Soul. While the first phase feels light, uplifting, expansive, and almost addictive. In contrast, the second phase is dark, gloomy & depressive.
In this article, you’ll learn how to heal your Heart Chakra without getting stuck in the Bliss state.
Two Distinct Phase of Healing Heart Chakra
Unblocking the Heart Chakra entails two distinct phases. Most people don’t register or acknowledge this fundamental fact. They equate heart opening with love & light.
Clinging to the ‘bliss state’ is the quintessential rookie mistake. If you reject anything that feels heavy or uncomfortable, you are bound to get stuck in the bliss trap.
During the Dark Night of the Soul, you’ll feel sad, remorse & miserable. You’ll likely get triggered over the small stuff. Your feelings will get hurt. The second phase is ‘dark’ for a reason.
Majority of us are not taught how to embrace our uncomfortable feelings. We usually tend to reject the negative feelings bubbling to the surface. And try to latch on to & recreate the bliss state, either with weed or addiction or finding a new partner.
The dance between bliss & despair derails most people from their spiritual growth & integration.
In my heart opening phase, I became addicted to meditation. In retrospect, my obsession with spiritual growth & evolution was a disguise for escapism.
I believed if I meditated long hours, everything in my life would magically work itself out. I can laugh about it today, but not too long ago, that’s how I operated.
The truth is, I had become ensnared in the Bliss Trap & worse, was unaware of it.
The Purpose of the Dark Night of the Soul during Heart Opening
The Dark Night of the Soul is a legit phase in the spiritual journey, and none of us can bypass it.
It serves a greater purpose, of ensuring your spiritual maturity.
At some point in your healing journey, you have to learn to
- Take accountability for your behavior,
- Take responsibility for your life & the quality of your relationships,
- Learn to go beyond surface level emotions,
- Become emotionally balanced & develop a strong mind.
These attributes together made your spiritual body strong, resilient & mature.
When you strengthen your spiritual body, you experience divine love.
What happens to Emotions before & during the Dark Night of the Soul?
The two chakras connected with your emotions are the Second & the Fourth Chakra.
Second Chakra = Sacral Chakra = Called the Lower Emotional Body = Home of Lower Emotions.
Fourth Chakra = Heart Chakra = Called the Higher Emotional Body = Home of Higher Emotions.
Lower Emotions include:
- Addiction / Lust,
- Wrath / Rage / Vengeance,
- Greed / Avarice,
- Envy / Jealousy,
- Gluttony / Waste,
- Laziness / Discouragement,
- Pride / (+/-) Self-Importance
Higher emotions include:
- Unconditional Love,
- Joy,
- Forgiveness,
- Kindness,
- Compassion,
- Gratitude
Before the heart opening, the emotional pain in humans is anchored in the second chakra. You are usually unaware of the pain and act it out in your relationships.
During the Dark Night of the Soul, your emotional pain moves from the Sacral Chakra to the Heart Chakra. You start becoming conscious of your emotional pain, and at some level, can no longer deny how you feel.
Until you have opened & healed your heart, one doesn’t know what love is.
In relating to others, we confuse love with lust (which operates out of the Sacral Chakra).
In the beginning stages of your heart chakra opening, consider a simple exercise. See if you can discern if you are experiencing emotions out of the Second Chakra or the Heart Chakra.
To unblock your heart chakra, you must bring the pain stored in the second chakra up into the 4th chakra. And dissolve it through unconditional love & forgiveness.
The REAL Reason the Heart Chakra becomes Blocked
The key reason why so many of us live our lives with our hearts closed is heart wounds.
Your heart can become wounded for many reasons, including:
- Previous trauma,
- Pain suffered in childhood,
- Accumulated emotional issues from other lifetimes,
- Our physical bodies also carry core wounds from being born on planet Earth.
Core wounds are abandonment, betrayal, and lack of trust, fear, cosmic rage & unworthiness. How these wounds play out in your life depends on your upbringing, your soul mission & so on.
The bottom line is we all carry wounds in our heart. When you deny or disown these emotional wounds, you close your heart. And you act from a place of woundedness & fear.
A wounded heart is a traumatized heart. Think of a feral cat. She only knows survival.
She has no reference of love, nurture, caring, and belonging. So it’s no surprise why she acts the way she does.
Similarly, a wounded heart becomes cold, cunning, cruel & calculative.
Tending to Physical vs. Emotional wounds
When a person has physical heart ailments, they make it a point to see a doctor.
They believe if they take medicines, they will find relief.
Do you tend to your emotional wounds like your physical wounds?
Where do you go when your heart is emotionally injured? What meds do you take to heal the ‘abandonment’ or ‘betrayal wound’? Denying the existence of the emotional wounds doesn’t make them disappear.
Practical Steps to Healing the Heart Chakra
Here’s a list of practical steps you can take to heal your heart chakra.
Suggestion #1
Number one is tapping into the sensation of ‘warmth,’ which is like god’s food for a traumatized heart.
Warmth can include spending time, energy & money on things that warm your heart. It means hanging out with real people who nourish your soul.
The two big enemies of warmth are: Conformity & Complacency. So you want to be mindful that they don’t sneak up on you.
Suggestion #2
Number two is find people with whom you feel a heart resonance. That is, people with whom you don’t have to put up defenses.
Suggestion #3
When the heart is wounded, it’s packed to the brim with pain. Consider creating tiny pockets of breathing space.
Where your heart can breathe deeply, and relax. Overtime, these tiny pockets add up, creating more space & openness in your heart.
Suggestion #4
If you want to unblock your heart chakra, you will need to face any buried and unresolved pain in the second chakra. This means, facing your shadow, and addressing emotions of grief, sadness, and despair.
Suggestion #5
The mental matrix of the Third Chakra & the Heart Chakra are usually disconnected. That is, the Conscious mind is not aware of the contents of the Astral Mind & vice versa.
You can set intentions to restore communication between these chakras.
Suggestion #6
Unblocking the heart chakra means to devote yourself to learning how to be in love. You can’t love others unless you love yourself first.
The bravest thing you can do in your healing journey is to never forget what love feels like. That’s how you preserve the divine spark in your heart. And that’s how you unblock your heart chakra.
In Summary
To heal Heart Chakra,
- Don’t deny or disown your heart wounds & commit to healing them.
- Create tiny (atomic) moments of solace & comfort that offer relief to your Wounded Heart.
- Embrace warmth in all shapes and forms.
- Dare to know what pains your heart so you can transmute it.
- Learn how to be in love. First with yourself & then others.
- The bravest thing you can do is to never forget what love FEELS like.
Additional Resources
- Traumatized Heart – https://tinyurl.com/mrynv24x
- Healing our Heart – https://tinyurl.com/36cuerf4
- Male Heart Wound – https://tinyurl.com/yckk3a4n
- A 42 yr old follow-up of the Harvard Mastery of Stress Study on Perception of Parental Love by Linda Russell & Gary Schwartz – https://tinyurl.com/5bcnxnn4
- Soul Psychology – https://tinyurl.com/y5wc5r3b
- Multi-dimensionality – https://tinyurl.com/mvuduu7e
- Astral Bliss – https://tinyurl.com/3bjzwk7a
- Preserving our Heart – https://tinyurl.com/5t3r9kab
Books:
- Healing the War between the Genders (The Power of Soul-centered Relationships) by Linda Marks
- Touching (the Human Significance of Skin) by Ashley Montagu
- The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff