Gratitude and my Heart's Presence

Today, I learned something about gratitude.

Our hearts are the living centres of our emotions. It is the space of gratitude. To access this, we need to experience the full range of emotions that show up. It is a state of paying attention. We become grateful when we pay attention - to our hardships, our challenges, our grief, and heaviness. So when we can experience all of this, we become grateful. Because we are paying attention. We are present in our hearts. It's all our heart wants. Our presence, and our attention. It doesn't need solutions.

To explore this, I decided to be present with one of my pains. It was something about losing a friendship. The energy came. And I sat with it for a few minutes. Until it was ready to be released. I felt sadness, grief, and relief.

Today I attended an online workshop which was about mapping out my heart landscape. The workshop began with a quick warm-up. This included intuitive drawings of four different types of hearts. A heavy heart, soaring heart, empty heart and flourishing heart. It was so amazing to see everyone's expression of these hearts. Here are mine.

Clockwise from top left: heavy heart, empty heart, flourishing heart and soaring heart. 

Then we went over to create my heart landscape. I took a few minutes to be in touch with my heart and body's energy. We were encouraged to not think this. Instead, to just feel and paint the expression. Initially, I started mind mapping with a tonne of text. But I didn't want to lose out on an intuitive, flowy experience. So, I drew out a basic scheme for my heart landscape. And then I painted it.

I wanted to express that my heart is like an egg. Ready to re-experience life with a fresh perspective. 

Finally, out of curiosity, I explored whatever I felt within in abstract colours. I didn't give this much thought. I painted the colours I felt within - without making any meaning of it. When I was done - I asked the colours to reveal their story. Which they did. And it was fascinating to see the story my energy expressed.

In both exercises - I felt all of my complex, intricate emotions being witnessed. I put on some music and went with the flow of it. And the process felt so natural. Easy and breezy. It looks like I'm gonna be practising this more often. The best part was that although I am not good with watercolours, this exercise helped me gain a bit of control with it. And it was fun to play with the colours in the flow of the moment.

I definitely felt a whole lot lighter, more transparent, carefree and happier to bare myself.