Lifeletter #124: The Undefended Heart

I dedicate this Lifeletter to every man and every woman who has been willing enough or desperate enough, to sit with me and explore the truth of these ‘matters of the heart.’

I kept bumping into something over and over again, during many years of working with people. I began calling it ‘the heart wall,’ because that’s what it felt like to me. I could feel this wall in myself as well. As I kept exploring, I discovered that there are many walls we have erected around the heart, without really knowing what we have done.

These heart walls are what block the free flow of our loving energy, the natural rhythm of giving and receiving. There are many ways that these walls arise. They are built in difficult situations, where there is stress and conflict. When we feel distressed, helpless, lost or rejected, it’s very natural to want to protect ourselves. It’s the nature of our organism to protect itself when it feels threatened. We erect these walls in order to feel safe; it’s like carrying a shield around, or a suit of armour. And here is the core of the difficulty: we put the wall up, but we don’t take it back down. Because we are not even fully conscious that we created it.

A healthy warrior puts on his or her armour in order to go into a dangerous situation, and then comes back home and peels it off. It feels so good to take off that armour, have a good meal and then go to bed naked, or in silk pyjamas. But we don’t do that. We keep the armour on. We get used to living with a heart that is protected, defended, and walled off. We are so used to it, most of us, that we don’t even know what it would be like to peel off those walls and live with a wide open, undefended, radiant heart.

When I started to notice all of this in myself, I saw how much I was still holding on to the past. That’s where our heart walls come from. They are the result of communications that have not been expressed or received. We human beings are not very evolved when it comes to dealing with conflict. I’ve had many women speak to me about these blocked communications that come up with the men in their lives. They would like the men to help more around the house, or get things done, or be more present, or listen to them. They struggle with these things, sometimes for years. And in this ongoing field of struggle, the heart walls are erected, bit by bit.

So the first step in dissolving these walls is to become more conscious of what is going on, bit by bit. I need to become familiar with all of the ways in which I try to protect myself when there is any kind of conflict. How do I distance myself? How do I become aggressive? How do I try to please? What stops me from expressing myself simply and clearly, as I am?

What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us.
-Gaston Bachelard

We hear a lot about the ways in which men diminish women, but we women have our own ways of diminishing men too, when we feel frustrated and powerless. There are all kinds of jokes about this, like this one: ‘If a man says something in the middle of a forest, and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?’ This kind of joke is pointing directly to the heart wall. When I speak in a way that makes you feel small, or wrong, this is the heart wall speaking. This is all of the unspoken things that have accumulated within me, waving their hands and asking to be heard, but not in a clear and loving way.

It often comes through in the tone of the voice. Many men have spoken to me about ‘the tone.’ I remember, about four years ago, hearing that tone in my own voice as I was speaking to my partner. I stopped right in the middle of the sentence and said, out loud, “Oh dear! Listen to the way I am speaking to you. I don’t want to speak this way anymore. I don’t even like myself when I speak this way.”

It felt so good to say that out loud. Because it was the truth. Why did it take me so long to get to that point? I don’t know, I’m just grateful that I did. From that moment on, I realized that I could speak from another place inside myself. I can still slip back into ‘the tone’, but not for long.

I feel it in my whole body now, when I withdraw behind the heart wall. When I don’t ask you clearly for what I want. Or when I don’t hear your no. Or I don’t hear the way I am asking, and how it is landing with you. The communication is not complete, because I am not fully present and transparent. I’m hiding behind the wall, not letting you see me, and what I am really feeling. And often, not letting myself know what I am really feeling.

So I walk away from our conversation still holding something inside me. That something is frustration, resentment, bitterness, pain. That’s what the heart wall is made of. It might be a very tiny bit of resentment at first. But if it isn’t cleared, it builds up. That little heart wall prevents me from being clear and open and vulnerable the next time we meet. So the same thing happens again. Now I’m carrying a bit more resentment. And the wall is a little bit thicker.

This is the story of how we create separation and disconnection. Not just between men and women-it can happen between friends, between parents and children too. If we really knew what an unfathomably precious resource our open and radiant heart is, we would never allow it to become closed off behind this wall. If we really knew the cost we are paying for living with a heart that is defended, we would do whatever we could to dissolve this wall. So the saddest part of this story is that we don’t know. We numb ourselves, so we don’t have to really feel the truth of what happened to our heart.

Instead of realizing that we don’t have to live behind these walls. The truth is, we can learn how to take them down, if we really want to. We can learn to really love each other, with practice and patience and persistence, and a lot of growing up.

Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.
–Tom Barrett

with love,
Shayla