[vickie h]

We have all exoerienced life's ups and downs, the better and the worse times, phases when everything seems to go right and when nothing does. We can debate all we want the whys and the wherefores of such stretches, and whether they relate to our way of thinking, or the alignment of the stars, or karma... whether it's pure dumb luck or whether there isn't any rhyme or reason at all. Some people put forth such statements with absolute certainty, as if each and every consequence conforms perfectly ans without contradiction to their models and descriptions of how and why the world is the way it is.
While I appreciate efforts to link cause and effect and the rewards that come with growing knowledge, wisdom and virtue, eventually I find myself tiring of exactitude and shunning precision in favor of a formless form that's bigger than pictures and pronouncements, mysterious and ever-the-same-and-changing.
So, when I meet someone as I did the other day who is so obviously in a place and time where everything is wonderful and magical and successful, though my predilection is to recognize and reinforce it and encourage it at the same time, I'm disinclined to explain it. But explain she did, at my urging and, surprisingly, not only was it easy to receive and accept her explaination, but I believed her and was, in fact, affected by her account.
The reason, according to this woman, who is gliding along on a glorious wave, for the great and good fortune that has found her and for why things work out so well and wonderfully is because she is unrelenting and uncompromising in the pursuit of her own path and in following her heart. Only when she said it, it was alot bigger than "on yeah, I follow my heart." In her case it seemed the barometer and the principal upon which all actions and decisions rested.
She maintained that if some offered, opportunity appeared as if it might keep her from being truly and fully who and what she is or prevent her from doing exactly and whatever she wants to do right now and not at some point off in the future, then she would not choose it. I believed her.
Conversely, She claims to choose and do only that which reverberates-physically, psychically, karmically, emotionally, causally, and any and every other which way-in her heart, and which sets her soul a-flutter. For me, she said, that is what it means to take care of your heart, and if you take care of it, it will take care of you.
I thought about our conversation and our encounter and all the things we let impinge upon ourselves. I thought about the forces that tug at us from the inside, which may pertain less to the physical heart and more to the inner heart, the core of our being, or what some people call the heart of hearts. Any consideraton of health is incomplete without adequate attention to this non-material center of force and feeling which, like the hand inside the glove or the inner self, is the real mover and shaker.
We can be disciplined about the food we eat, the amount of rest we get and our exercise program, and heedful of our heredity, and all the other factors affecting our health, but if we do not take into account the things that we absolutely know about ourselves, our reasons for being and breathing and taking up space, the things that fuel our love and cause the heart within to start vibrating, then there shall be a strain, a stress, which presents a true and actual threat to our health and well-being, and our joyous living. With love and peace, Vickie