Sharing "Light Food" I've learned from others with you
BALANCING LOVE AND WISDOM IN OUR BUSY LIVES
Concerning the relationship between love and wisdom: can wisdom suppress or impede in some way an opening of the “heart”?
The mind, in its attempt to order and organize your various lists and appointments, oftentimes seeks efficiency rather than the type of attitude which allows for a room to express the heart, the emotions in general, and to relate in a fashion which is, indeed, of an open-hearted nature. Too easy is it to move rapidly from one item to another, feeling the satisfaction of checking off each item upon the list and, at day’s end, congratulating the self for having done so.
And yet, if you look at the lists of your spiritual journey, you will find it is a simpler list, for primary amongst each of your priorities, we feel, is the expression of the heart in a way which embraces the unity of the moment, shall we say. This unity of the moment may involve your spending a good deal of time and honestly sharing emotions with those who may be a portion of your round of lists. You may find it inconvenient, often in the extreme, to take the time that another entity may need in any particular moment of your day. Life is often a messy business. There are hurt feelings, painful memories, doubtful futures, difficult moments in the present that intrude upon the smoothly functioning checking off of lists. In this case, you see what could be described as a battle between love and wisdom; the wisdom of accomplishing your task as you define it within your third-density illusion, versus the compassion that is a part of your spiritual journey and which requires reminders throughout the day, much as your list reminds you of your appointments and your schedule.
Thus, we would suggest that the life you live on Earth provides you with a, shall we say, degree of difficulty in accomplishing the activation of the heart, for more and more your mechanized, computerized, digitized society requires you to move at increasing speeds in the physical sense, as well as the mental and the emotional senses as well—speeds which oftentimes necessitate, or would seem to, the omitting of what may become extraneous details in dealing with others’ needs for your listening heart.
Discernment
The wisest among you may be deceived, and this deception can go very, very deep because those factors which you use to sort out one intention from another, a good intention from a bad, an open-hearted intention from one which is closed off and selfish . . . These criteria, we say, can be easily mimicked, and if you allow yourself to judge based upon factors which do not go to the heart of a communication you can very easily discover that you are well on the way to a path that does not lead to the open heart, but rather to a way of selfishness.
These ways of selfishness are, in fact, very many, and very clever in the manner in which they are offered to the self. You may see them as temptations, but they are temptations which are wrapped, very frequently, in an envelope of good intentions, shall we say, such that it can appear to one who engages with others that they are in a fine place with respect to the offering of service, when in reality, the service offered is already of the nature of that which primarily seeks to promote hidden interests of the self.
Opening Your Heart or Not
It seems like foolishness to open the heart, and therefore it can seem that open-hearted love is in a state of tension with those factors of wisdom which are essential for self-maintenance and self-preservation. The more you learn to loosen the bounds of wisdom, the more you learn not to limit your conception of who you are by acts of preserving what you have come to think you must preserve in order to be a viable self in the society you enjoy, the more you learn that you do not need to be who you have been trained to think you must be, the less you will be inhibited in the opening of the heart to the other. (Deep but worth reading slowly again)
It seems then that the opening of the heart is a great act of folly and indeed, my friends, we would suggest to you that it can be precisely this, that when you do open the heart, you do find yourself vulnerable, when you do open the heart, you do put yourself in a position where another may act in such a way as to cause you pain, and when you do open the heart and get catalyst that is of a particularly strong nature (catalyst to help you grow as a person faster), you can find yourself in a position of recoiling back upon yourself which makes any future opportunity to open the heart all that much more difficult.
One is like the springtime flower opening on the first days of bright sunshine and warmth, but doing so in a manner which is tentative, which tests the air to see whether there is, after all, a hint of frost, a hint a danger lurking. But the flower must open to fulfill its destiny, and it must do so without full realization of what the day will bring, and when it finally comes to see that its glory will lie in being fully opened, even if this glory subjects it to the possibility of damage, then it realizes that destiny which is uniquely its own.
We cannot tell you, my friends, that you will be safe in every effort you make to engage with those around you from a standpoint of love. We cannot say that your offering of love will be accepted and well received. We cannot say that you will emerge from every interaction you enter with the intention of love in a manner which celebrates the love that has been there offered, for you may find that your love is rejected; you may find that those that you have sought to love will not give you love in return.
You have a saying among your peoples that “it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all,” and we find that this is indeed true, but its truth does not neglect the fact that to have loved and lost is to have lost indeed. And so, it remains true that it is well to exercise some judgment in guiding your interactions among those around you. It is well to allow this judgment to be imbued with that wisdom which has accumulated as a result of your many past interactions, for it is possible, to quote another of your sayings, “to throw your pearls before swine.” It is possible to unwisely enter into an interaction with the best of intentions in a way and in a circumstance that in truth, offers little opportunity for positive engagement.
And so, you do well to be aware of those limitations, both within your own person and within your group interactions that can put a limit to the possible efficacy of open-hearted communication. Even there, however, we would say that it is still always a possibility for you to keep the heart open, even where it is not fully exposed; to keep the heart open, even where you have taken up a posture in relation to those around you such that those around you will be known not to be able to see that you are being open-hearted in relation to them. There simply are many circumstances in your daily lives where you will be dealing with those who have no intention and no present capacity to engage with you heart to heart, and it is well then to privately wish well these that need to go their own way, to hope that they find what they need to find in order to find their way to the spiritual advancement which they too inevitably seek.
Thus, we find that it is always a very, very great gift when you are able to address your energies to those of others who do have an interest in engaging with those energies as a part of a process of mutual heart opening. It is always a great gift to find another who can resonate on the same wavelength that you enjoy, and here it is, indeed, not only possible, but highly desirable to open yourself in ways that can seem tremendously foolish. It is desirable when the circumstances offers the promise of sufficient safety for you to avail yourself of this safety and take a chance, and take a chance that you may love freely without stint of reservation, that you may love freely without fear, that you may love freely without holding back in the concern that your love will intrude upon the subjective life of the beloved, for only when your love is offered in this uninhibited way, does another have the full advantage of the catalyst which this moment can uniquely provide. It is a very great joy which you sometimes are able to discover in the sexual life. It is a very great joy which you are sometimes able to discover in the simple gaiety of friendship. It is a great joy when you are allowed to be of some service to another whose pain, or whose suffering, or whose sorrow asks for healing, for that healing that can only come through love.
Every offering of love is a risk. A risk, on the face of it, can seem unwise. Wisdom, however, that has taken account of itself, will eventually come to realize that perfect wisdom is itself an imperfect thing, for perfect wisdom would counsel that no risk ever be taken. Perfect wisdom would counsel that the odds militate against the possible fruition of open-hearted interaction. And yet, if perfect wisdom always prevailed, that spiritual sustenance, which is the very life blood of soul, would be denied, and so to return to our metaphor, the flower must open, the bud must bloom despite the risk of frost, despite the rough winds that may soon blow, despite the hungry animal which may happen by and be attracted to the blossom."
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