Opening the heart chakra changes your life – no doubt about that. Sometimes I wish I had never learned anything about energy and the heart chakra - ignorance is bliss and much simpler.

Because…

Opening and expanding is always exciting but it’s also a double edged sword. The more you feel, the more you feel – more joy AND more pain. Being totally vulnerable and allowing a heightened depth of understanding and sensitivity can be a very dangerous place to be.

Pain without defense means it cuts deep and efficiently to the core. Without a reason, there is no need for a defense to be in place and we let our guard down and it’s easy not to see it coming – kind of a double whammi. No wonder many people never allow themselves to open up or let people get too close.

I have a high pain threshold – physically, quite high actually. But I had forgotten how much a pain in my heart can make it hard to breathe, buckle my knees or make me too weak to make make a fist.

Vulnerability is one thing, but I hate being weak.

Being deeply in love, expressing gratitude for it every day and fully appreciating its depth, taught me to forget that kind of pain for a long time.

From a spiritual cost benefit analysis perspective, isn’t it easier not to open the heart chakra this deeply in the first place?  Is the cost really worth the benefit?

Yet loving that deeply – even for a split second – may be worth it. After all, it is irreplaceable. People search an entire lifetime for this kind of love and to some degree doesn’t rarity define value in and of itself ?

I have spent most of my adult life learning how to express my emotions and allowing myself to be vulnerable. At the same time, if it were possible just to reformat and restore all the old blissful ignorance defaults and select the “remain ignorant” option from the drop down list, I might make that choice and live out life on autopilot.

Does this mean that Spiritual growth has to be painful? Does it mean that it is painful because I do not have enough Spiritual purity?

I think not.

There is no elegant way to feel pain. We always heal – mostly – with enough time. But the possibility occurs to me that since feeling true joy is such a vulnerable way to live,  it makes an open heart chakra kind of a scary prospect .

Maybe I don’t want to be that open. Maybe I’m afraid to really let go again.

That’s a weird thought – one I’ve never had before.

The problem is that you definitely can never go back once you start growing. Even so, every choice we make determines what happens in our life. We can always choose how we grow and how we integrate what we learn, unless we are in denial about that truth and choose to deny it.

In the short term, denial is an easier choice. But in the long run, denial is neither easy nor sustainable. The longer we hold it, the more energy it takes. Denial also tends to be a very selfish act because it leaves out how other people feel when your deny their true expression of love by not loving your self enough.

Yes everything happens for a reason and ultimately everything is in Divine order.

In any case,  you can not close your heart chakra once it opens. You can only choose to deny your true feelings and choose separation.