Creative Mysteries & Heart Portals
Being an artist motivates me to constantly keep my mind and heart open to the world around me. Sometimes it's too much for me to handle on my own. I have found that to be a challenge I must meet with pure love and the skill of discipline, as I refined my sensitivity to the world's collective chaos. To find my artistic way forward I followed my heart.
My creative explorations have led me to develop a series of innovative, meditative, and imaginative, practices and experiential journeys (that I named Kundalini Rising!) for consciously raising the creative energies within myself. It consists of a series of ritual circles where we learn of the many sacred practices and different concepts of the universal life-force energy systems from ancient and modern spiritual traditions around the world. In this shamanistic exploration of our inner realms, I have found that the sacred and creative arts contain keys to unlocking the doors of understanding the creative mysteries and how we navigate them.
By consciously moving through each intentional journey of this exploration, we allow ourselves to have a deeper understanding of what our bodies, and everything in nature, are made of - energy, and therefore we come to understand ourselves and our creative process more thoroughly. To know thyself is to love thyself. To know and love nature is to be in harmony with the universe.
As I prepare for this year's Kundalini Rising!'s Heart Portal activation and awakening journey, I begin with a refresher by rereading the notes of my previous circles. Then I begin another document that builds off of my past experiences and includes the energies of the current circle's participants. Every time is different because it's tailored to the current energies at play.
What follows are bits of the info I share in this rite and a few practices from this year's heart portal awakening. This a small part of a larger body of work that includes 7 journeys. I have been studying, practicing and recording my experiences with the intention of completing a book on the subject. In all, there are decades of experience devoted to this work and the past 6 years have been invested in recording each completed series. Six is a number associated with love.
As I invite you to surrender into this experience with a joyful and a willing heart, I am opening my own heart, expanding my love for this work to you. Sacred work, into which I have infused my heart and soul. I offer this Heart Portal Activation in the spirit of which it is intended, to awaken us to our heart's possibilities for pure love in our lives...and to radiate that light into the world. You are encouraged to experiment with the practices, making them your own as you work with the foundation I've designed for taking these steps towards a more creatively engaging life. I think you may find it illuminating, gratifying and maybe even rewarding. ;)
KUNDALINI RISING! - HEART PORTAL ACTIVATION:
The heart center rules love in all its forms, especially the purest - unconditional love - and compassion. It deals in the ways in which we give and receive love. We are nurtured here. It is the source of love that sparks life into being connected, vibrant, alive.
This is where we hold our grief when we experience the loss of love. In the Shadow side of love, the darkened, wounded, closed heart portal is expressed as indifference, neglect, abuse, and cruelty. A hardened heart bears grudges, grievances and fear. It is contracted, separate and isolated. It creates with destructive, poisonous intent.
Beginning with self-love is crucial to a healthy, balanced heart center. Discerning choices around relationships are cultivated in the heart center. This is where we find our heart’s desires, our most authentic loves and our wounding from our past loves. By paying attention to and appreciating what we love in our lives, we expand this love, deepening its effects and radiating its gifts to others and into our life experiences.
Love will show up in unexpected and surprising ways when we learn to keep our heart centers open to the love in the universe while keeping a balance with strong boundaries and healthy support systems as our foundation. It is sometimes described as light-heartedness and as playfulness. Innocence thrives and matures into wisdom in the light of pure love.
Acceptance of others as they are can result in a much greater enjoyment in relationships and life in general. Clarity, integrity and honesty become the baseline for all of our heart-centered communications, actions, and experiences. This is due to the fact that a conscious, clear and honest heart attracts clear, authentic and honest interaction.
An open heart is engaged and at the same time can provide a sense of peace, with self and others. It’s where we feel harmony, unity, joy, and kinship. We are connected with everything, everyone and the ALL in this portal. Our sense of touch is awakened and our delight with life’s journey is heightened.
Learning how to protect the heart center, while keeping it open, is one of the most important lessons a soul can learn in life. This allows us to fully appreciate our experiences and interactions as we surround ourselves with love and compassion. We are built for love.
When we become wounded, we lose our ability to trust. As we lose trust in others, we can also lose trust in ourselves. This creates turmoil in the heart, as the clarity and honesty within is shrouded in doubt, confusion, and pain.
When we are “in love” we feel completely alive, aflame with a passion for living and for doing it in partnership. We then allow ourselves to open more fully to the expansion that is love. We become finely attuned to the frequency of joy and feel the most vitality and aliveness during these “in love” moments. This attracts even more of these moments. Love is expansive, magnetic, unconditional at this pure resonance.
Heart Portal Questions:
How much are you willing and able to be open and honest with yourself? Others?
When do you experience love for yourself? For others? Is this an equal and equitable equation in your life?
How do you weather the challenges in relationships? Do conflicts create more honesty or less? Do you close down or keep yourself open to what is present?
How do you express love to yourself? To others? Are these expressions balanced?
How much do you love others? Yourself? Are they balanced?
How often do you forgive yourself? Others?
How much compassion and acceptance do you have for yourself? Others?
When do you use your heart as a guide for making choices?
How do your choices and actions balance the heart’s desires with rationality and reality?
Where do you find the love to accept your limitations?
As you consider the questions, list the answers in your journal. Take some time to meditate on your breath, daily. Inhale love and exhale compassion. Inhale acceptance and exhale pure love. Experiment with the inhale intentions and the exhale intentions as you visualize the light of love entering your breath and leaving on your exhale.
Practice looking at yourself in the mirror and telling yourself OUT LOUD that you LOVE and ACCEPT yourself, unconditionally. At the end of 3 consecutive days of this practice, go back to your questions and see if any of the answers have changed. Note how your life has changed in general. It will surprise you. <3
(Original Art & Kundalini Rising! course by C.Shepard - www.cshepardarts.com)
