~ awake in this moment, at home in the world ~

Heart as Wide as the World

January 26, 2021

 

 

Upon learning from master yoga teacher Lisa Clark that each of us, in utero, went through a developmental phase when our hearts were larger than our heads...


You're walking along the dirt path,
kicking the can down the road,
the way we do when we're filled with
the greys of everydayness.

And then out of the corner of your eye
you catch a memory of a time before you were born,
of those brief moments when your heart was
the biggest thing about you,
when it was so large in fact
that your head used it as a pillow,
resting its heft upon the springy lightness
of the heart's glowing light.

Memories matter. The past remains.
And just like that
you feel your heart widen and broaden
and fill with buoyant strength,
and you reclaim that singular moment
when the heart was the largest part of you,
when your life was rooted in blood and warmth
and tendrils of glowing light.

You sense a rightness, a knowing, that
the heart always was as wide as the world,
and despite our frequent forgetting,
it can only ever be our one true home.

And what happens now, as you live
again with a heart so buoyant and strong?
What happens as you you remember
that the weight of the world
is no match for the faithful strength
that pulses through the center of your chest?

You stand tall once again, full in your radiant light.
Your shoulders drop. Your throat releases.
You walk forward and marvel at how easily
your head floats above the rest of you.

Lightness ascends. You look up.
In finding your heart -
so buoyant and so free -
you once again can see the sky.

 

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