Frank Ostaseski

Heart Practice

The thread of heart runs through everything. For me, a path with no heart is not a path for human beings. That seems to be an important part of spiritual practice to recognize and appreciate the heart of Being. It is also what helps us deal with conflict and difficult emotions.

Have you ever noticed what happens when your partner gives you that disapproving look?  Or maybe she/he uses that tone of voice, (Isn't it interesting how in our mind she/he is the only one in the world that uses that certain tone of voice?)

The trigger happens and out of nowhere, there’s this whole felt sense of dread or anger, refusal or deep sadness.

Usually, we are not even aware of what is happening. Te nervous system is just firing away in response to a collection of object relations. Before I know it I'm reacting and defending in the way I did as a teenager! I realize—at a cellular level—that my entire personality was designed to never go toward this particular feeling of being helpless, unloveable, inadequate or vulnerable.

Before I know it, we get sidetracked with our words, with thoughts about our emotions with all our strategies, which are always designed to move away from the felt experience. And the inevitable result is that the emotions escalate.

I’m sure this only happens to me….probably not any of you!

Meditation can help interrupt this pattern. We can develop the capacity to allow us to feel strong emotions, live them, taste them, gain insight into them.

Suppose we didn’t battle with our experience. Allowed it to change, stay the same or go away. That is really is not your business. Our work is to hold it with loving awareness.

One way that works for me is to allow the emotion in all its glory and then to ask. "Is there any part of me that can be with this experience?"

Just that question inclines me toward discovering the deeper resources of my nature. The thread of heart.

Frequently it helps to unhook me from the habitual pattern which includes the way I attach stories to my emotions which escalates them and causes me to swept away, losing all perspective.

When I ask, "Is there any part of me that can be with this experience?"  I find much-needed perspective an often something more essential like compassion emerges. Then I allow the two to meet allowing the destructive out of control emotion and its physical manifestations like my clenched jaw, my tight chest to mingle with the compassion or other wholesome qualities that have been evoked by the question.

I’ve found relief from my suffering not by turning away but by turning toward what is most difficult with heart. This helps me to regulate…and gradually I see and feel something that is more substantive and more true that my emotional reactivity.

So, the balance doesn’t come through control or denial. There is no value in denial. There is no freedom in those strategies.
Freedom comes from seeing more of the truth and feeling the thread of heart.