The heart knows, often before we do, when we are out of balance…
The flight was not what wore me out. Waking up at 4:30 a.m. to catch the plane was what caught up with me by the time I landed. All that effort, and I was still late, since Carol was going into open-heart surgery in fewer than two hours. I had a forty-minute drive from the airport to pick up Barry before we navigated our way to Cincinnati, which was another hour or so more. Under the best circumstances, we were cutting it close, but during morning rush-hour traffic, it would be a miracle if we made it to the hospital before Carol went into surgery. Our plan looked like it was turning into a good intention, but a failed one. I scolded myself mentally for not arriving the night before. What was I thinking? Time seems more manageable before you jump onto its conveyor belt heading toward a deadline, and then it stops cooperating.
When Barry and I pulled into the hospital parking lot, I envisioned tires screeching as we slid into a parking space. If it didn’t happen, I sure envisioned it in my head. The fact that we continued to rush indicated the endless hopefulness of the human spirit.
Fast forward ten minutes, and we were literally chasing Carol’s gurney down the hall toward the operating room. I don’t even remember the delay in her surgical procedure that gifted us with a few extra moments, but we made it! She knew we were there. With “I love yous” and air kisses, we accomplished our mission.
Waiting for Carol’s return from the operating room was a more difficult task, but everyone in the surgical waiting area was friendly. The feeling of powerlessness built instant camaraderie.
My friend Barry was a psychic, and being in a group of people with him was always entertaining. The few times we were in a crowd together, I understood why he was a loner. His psychic gifts came with a lot of responsibility. If people started a conversation, the next thing I knew, Barry was helping them with their lives.
Of course I asked Barry the obvious. “What do you pick up about Carol’s surgery?”
He said, “All I get is the doctor called a meeting.”
“No, Barry, what about her surgery?”
Barry replied, “I am not picking anything up.”
Frustrated, I asked, “Why? You can read all these strangers perfectly well, why not Carol?”
Barry said, “I am given what I am supposed to know, Sofia. Sometimes even that information is difficult to interpret.”
Naturally I wondered if something bad was going to happen and we weren’t supposed to know yet.
The precious time that was flying by when we were trying to make it to the hospital slowed down to torture us while we were waiting for Carol to come out of surgery. When her doctor came out to meet us two hours into her six-hour surgical procedure, I had to make a conscious effort to breathe.
The cardiologist said, “Before surgery, I routinely take more detailed photos of the heart while the patient is under anesthesia. What I saw today did not convince me she needed open-heart surgery at this time. Her symptoms and the tests we ran before surgery indicated open-heart surgery, but that was not my conclusion today. I brought in two other cardiologists, and we met about it before I made my final decision.”
My relief was a tad spoiled by curiosity. “What caused the symptoms, then?” I asked.
He replied, “Did anything happen in her life that would hurt her heart? I am talking about emotional events.”
Carol lost the love of her life and was having a difficult time recovering from the blow. My awe at the doctor for his openness was surpassed only by my awe of the human heart. Without a shadow of a doubt, that day I understood that the heart knows everything.
The axiom “As above, so below” endorses what Carol’s doctor thought. When her cardiologist told Barry and me that Carol’s heart was broken from something emotional, it made sense that our feelings and thoughts have an impact on the physical body. What didn’t make sense was how most physicians jump over the cause of disease while chasing its symptoms.
Likewise, too often we jump over wholeness to indulge in a sense of lacking. When we are convinced something is missing in our lives, that single-pointed focus, narrowing in on what we don’t have, disturbs our balance. When we live for what we don’t have, our spiritual heart is ignored. We can’t even hear that inner knowing, that thing often called intuition.
My psychic friend Barry taught me intuition is different from being psychic, and we are all blessed with intuition, whether or not we believe in psychics. He actually said intuition is more accurate than what he does, since it doesn’t need to be interpreted. It is a solid sense of knowing, a sense that comes in the void of feeling and thinking. Unfortunately we are conditioned to contain the force of our spirit into something tangible, rather than to use it as a guide. When we are disconnected from the deepest part of ourselves, we lose our connection to right guidance.
Nothing compares to connecting within. There is a common saying, “Let go and let God.” The intangibility of the saying is difficult to comprehend. It is asking us to allow guidance from within, rather than forging our way through life with a faulty compass, since our feelings and thoughts are often irrational and subject to change.
How we label God doesn’t matter. If we cannot acknowledge a presence within us as our spirit, how can we love ourselves, much less anyone else, since our personalities are all flawed and at times unlovable?
In a self-balancing universe, the word balance is the clue. Anything that gives us balance is a key to nurturing our spiritual heart. Meditation is an obvious avenue; however, sometimes we are too overwhelmed to sit still. Exercise is a good way to recalibrate energy being used to overindulge our feelings and thoughts. Self-expression is a wonderful touchstone to the deeper part of us, too. The relaxed focus required for most forms of self-expression, such as playing piano, painting, or doing crafts, is a form of meditation. There are many ways to nurture our spiritual heart. There is not one right way. It may be different for each of us.
As Barry and I drove back to his home from the hospital, we were both quiet. Our exhaustion was partly due to trying to wrap our minds around the 180-degree turn of events, but mostly we were exhausted because so much more had happened. The more distance our car gained from the hospital, the more affected I was by the events of that day. The day that turned into a mind-body lesson eventually anchored a spiritual message: Life is rarely about what we can perceive with our senses. The events are the outline for an inner lesson. No matter how the outline is painted, the lesson has a similar theme.
It doesn’t matter if I exercise or eat well to strengthen my physical heart. It doesn’t matter what psychology I use to check my feelings and thinking mind. If I am not connecting within, to strengthen my spiritual heart, my life will reflect imbalance. Before I know it, I feel I am lacking something, and I am surrounded by drama. The heart knows, often before we do, when we are out of balance.
Written by Sofia A. Wellman
