“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a songbird will come.” Chinese proverb
Part One-Seven Steps
I have loved this proverb from the very first time I read it! I interpreted it as a call to open your heart to allow joy or love to come into your life. Easier said than done. Many people, due to negative and /or traumatic events in their life, have permanently closed their heart to any future joyful or loving experiences. This strategy only worsens their situation!
As Gauguin said, while sick and destitute in Tahiti, “I trust in the future, because I want to. Otherwise, I should have blown my brains out long ago.” Gaugin gives us a valuable clue regarding opening our heart: focus on the future.
So, how do we ‘open our heart’?... and get so lucky that a songbird will come? This is what I found from the website ‘thebreathingroomws.org’ (Emily Stewart Baker is founder of The Breathing Room).
1. Spend more time in nature. Sounds good, especially given the reference to ‘green tree’ in our heart. I truly feel being in nature is an excellent way to relieve oneself of daily stress and anxieties. A few years ago I was fortunate to meet Richard Louv, who wrote “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children From Nature – Deficit Disorder.” In speaking with him I learned of the amazing power of just being in nature. Many studies have shown tremendous curative powers of being in nature. A walk in the woods will not only help people with health problems it can also be used as a preventative therapy… Louv pointed out that very few treatments can be both preventative and curative! The Japanese have a practice known as “forest bathing” (Shinrin-yoku) used for reducing stress, anxiety, and creating peace of mind… this practice (therapy) of slowly walking in a forest has been scientifically proven to increase health and emotional wellness. The re-connection with nature overcomes our constant preoccupation with, and time spent, technology, and just slows us down and brings us into the moment…
2. Practice forgiveness. “He who has not forgiven an enemy has not yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life” wrote Swiss poet, Johann Lavater. Letting go is an incredible heart-opening exercise. Holding onto past hurts regrets or fears will hold us down and sap our energy, making it more difficult for us to love ourselves and others freely. This includes forgiving oneself for past mistakes or negative actions.
3. Perform a random act of kindness. This advice involves helping others or just things as simple as opening a door for someone. The website, says, “When we give to others, we experience joy vicariously through them, and this leads us to experience deeper levels of empathy on a regular basis.”
4. Practice heart-opening Yoga posture. Yoga works on your ‘chakras’. Certain poses work specifically on your heart chakra. As one example, the Sphinx pose opens your chest, allowing you to feel the heart chakra in a receptive position. (In Indian thought, chakras are the centres of spiritual power in our body – there are seven chakras).
5. Spend time with children and furry friends. Children and animals frequently enjoy living their lives with open hearts by virtue of their innocence. This attitude is infectious. I am never more content then with I’m playing with my grand kids.
“The soul is healed by being with children.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6. Schedule a heart-opening reiki or healing touch session. Energy work will also help to open the heart. Visiting a Reiki practitioner can be a good idea for people with heavy hearts.
Note on Reiki: reiki is an alternative medicine known as ‘energy healing’. The practitioner uses their palms through which a ‘universal energy’ transfers from their palms to the patient, thereby causing emotional and, sometimes, physical healing.
7. Feel your Feelings. Stop avoiding your feelings and keeping ‘a stiff upper lip.’ Express your feelings authentically – confront them, deal with them and move on.
Part Two – Patience and Luck
Not all of these heart opening suggestions will work immediately. It is necessary to do the work individually on each suggestion. One must be patient. Using a reference to nature again (re green tree metaphor) here’s some advice from Lao Tzu that I feel is appropriate: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” The process of opening your heart could take months or even years. I’m reminded of friends of mine, Buddhists or Yoga practitioners, who often talk of their beliefs or path of learning as a practise. As Aristotle wrote, “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet .”
American physician, philosopher, poet and author, Debasish Mridha says, we get a more hopeful tone: “The more you open your heart to others, the more your life becomes joyful. “Mridha’s research has taken him to deep truths that affect happiness and, ultimately, humane destiny.
I am lucky to have a sunny disposition. As Nietzche wrote, “We have art in order not to die of the truth. We have art so that we shall not die of reality. There is one thing one has to have, a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge.” I take this passage of Nietzsche as a touch melodramatic (mind you, Nietzsche suffered from depression, and eventually, madness).
I take his passage as encouragement to find meaningful work, a new love, great art, and knowledge, especially about oneself. In my life I’m looking for more than a songbird or a cheerful attitude. My quest is for something I refer to as the ‘ineffable’ – something greater than joy, something more like the bliss that mystics experience.
I think Joseph Campbell said it best, “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
My writing, researching and questioning mind is always on the look-out for a higher kind of peace – a ‘glimpse of eternity’ kind of mind. Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. And, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” Seems like our opening quote – “perhaps a songbird will come” sounds a lot like luck. An old German proverb says, “Luck seeks those who flee and flees those who seek it.”
So in our quest for happiness it’s important to work on lifting the heart, planting a green tree, and waiting for peace and joy to fill your heart, overcome your fears and wait patiently as doors open for your future happiness. Viktor Frankl once wrote, “For success like happiness, cannot be pursued, it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended (my emphasis) side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as a by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.” This advice seems to not focus too heavily on your heavy heart or poor mood. Rather, do things that almost distract from your situation, like No. 3 above – performing a random act of kindness… or perhaps work for a charity?
Getting back to my personal goals of finding a high reality of being, a feeling of absolute peace and understanding, I don’t feel a need to change much versus experiencing more through acquaintances; spiritual practices; and, importantly, travel. The Romans felt travel was often a metaphor for life. It takes you outside your comfort zone, requiring change. I often experience transcendent moments when away from home. But I too need to be patient, I need to heed the words of the American young writer, Kao Kalia Yang, who advises, “All great achievements require time.” As the great opera singer, Beverly Sills said, “There are no short cuts to any place worth going.” Sage advice… like my Buddhist and Yoga practitioners, one must do the work. “Happiness depends on ourselves,” wrote Aristotle.
In my personal quest I don’t suggest taking my path: “Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” Albert Camus
What I’m looking for is hard to communicate. It reminds me of a passage in Alice in Wonderland, “I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself you see.” “No I don’t see,” said the caterpillar. My quest is beyond joy, it’s that feeling I’ve experienced when I’ve had the odd epiphany about myself or my business. Suddenly, I see a way out of some dilemma or get a powerful personal revelation… a profound truth. Henry David Thoreau said, “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” This is the key: be fully and truly in the moment – be fully present. Similarly Plutarch said, “To sail is necessary, to live is not.” I think Thoreau, Campbell and Plutarch are all saying that we must act, be bold, ignore our fears, and our happiness and contentment will ensue.
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela. The prescription, as I see it is to act and do something about your life.
The best description I’ve found about the state of being I’m interested in achieving comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Winter Dreams”. Our hero, lying on a raft in a lake is lost in reverie, hearing a distant piano. “The sound of the tune precipitated in him a sort of ecstasy and it was with that ecstasy that he viewed what happened to him now. It was a mood of intense appreciation, a sense that, for once, he was magnificently attuned to life and everything about him was radiating a brightness and a glamour that he might never know again.” (This passage reflects the meaning of Campbell’s passage on the meaning of life.)
From another short story, “Absolution”, Fitzgerald sums up the above feeling, “There was something ineffably gorgeous somewhere that had nothing to do with God.” A kind of Nirvana, I’m thinking.
Some of my best moments have come in nature. Sometimes, walking among trees, I’m overwhelmed by the simplicity, the amazing harmony and beauty. Another source of great peace can be found when gardening. “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of a garden,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. To see and enjoy the fall bounty from a good summer growing season is so pleasing! “Eating is an agricultural act.” Wendell Berry.
So whether my brief taste of eternity comes from gardening or following my bliss in my work life, I don’t care. Achieving that mystical state is what counts. It will be like having many songbirds in my heart giving me ample joy to share. Gratitude and generosity go hand in hand. Amen.
But this quest will take effort and I expect disappointments along the way. Confucius said, “Our greatest glory is not never falling, but is rising every time we fall.”
We need to remember that our road is unique to us. As the Zen saying goes, “We walk the path no one has walked before, following the guidepost left by others.” It’s time to be brave and say, “I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change… I’m changing the things I cannot accept,” Angela Davis.
