Johanna’s Week Five


As I was trying to live the bravest me, I noticed that somewhere along the line I had stopped listening to my heart. Instead I had started to listen to the shatter of my mind. I had started to make logical and rational decisions, instead of listening to what my heart told me. How did that happen?

I always thought I was the kind of girl who followed her heart. Some people will probably say that I am. When it comes to work it’s in many cases true; I have embarked on a journey as a writer for film and television which is nowhere near simple or safe. I put myself on the line on a daily basis, financially, artistically and personally. I absolutely love to create stories about people who risk their lives for a greater cause, no matter if it’s about love or war, because deep down that is the kind of a person I want to be. I want the audience, or the reader, to be swept away by my stories, just like I want to be swept away by life. But when it comes to my personal life, I’m not always as fearless as I write my main characters to be.

We all have those specific areas of our lives that reveal us not living exactly as we preach. Most of us have since our birth, for all possible and impossible reasons, learnt to close our hearts and to start acting on fear. We have stopped listening to our heart for answers. As we grow up in this scattered world we become more and more disconnected from our heart’s truth. Instead of listening to our inner voice we tend to go with what we believe others are expecting from us, or what others in fact are expecting of us without questioning it or them. We have come to believe in a wrongly perceived truth no one really wants or needs to live by. Of course there are a few exceptions from this fearful living, that of the enlightened masters, but for most of us we have some part/-s in ourselves making us feel vulnerable. And so, more often than not, we choose to close our hearts to protect ourselves from being hurt.

For a number of reasons, in the course of my lifetime, I have found life to be a bit too scary to keep my heart open at all times. I closed it enough to feel a little safer, and by that I started to shrink a bit. I shrank enough for me to feel a little less courageous, a little less happy, and a little more chained to my past. I realized I had closed my heart one tiny step at a time. When pondering this I realized that I at a younger age was quite aware of what I did, as if I made a clear cut choice to put another brick to that wall that would lead my heart to be guarded from attack. But as an adult I noticed that it has turned into a practice, a practice if not supervised, is done without minimal effort and knowing. It had somehow become the routine, something that just happened by reaction, because as adults we have grown accustomed to the hurt and the brick wall building. Like it’s a natural part of life. ’People get hurt, then we die.’ But is that really the way we want to live life? I don’t think so. Not me. I don’t want to shrink anymore, I don’t want to belittle myself. I want to stand up tall so that I at my dying days can say that I am proud of how I lived my life. By that, the closing-my-heart-days are over.

What I realized now was that I had unabled the most natural element in my life. I had became trapped in old patterns, unable to get out of my own way. The very thing I now so eagerly wanted. The Bead Movement became my action plan, it became the daily assessment schedule to keep myself open. Open to live fully, open to love and be loved, and open to be hurt.

As I started to pay attention to what I deep in my heart and soul wanted and needed, I noticed that I had a hard time hearing the voice of my heart loud enough to understand it. My heart barely whispered. I started to practice meditation a year ago, and it took me quite a good while before I could hear the voice clearly. As I started to check in and let my heart guide me in my decision making process I noticed a second issue. I found it hard to distinguish my heart’s voice from that of my mind, which more often than not are guided by fears. When I felt an uneasy feeling about something I couldn’t tell if I felt anxiety because I wasn’t supposed to go after a certain thing i.e. the potential results, or if I was afraid of the risk of maybe failing while getting there. So how do we tell the difference between our heart/intuition/our gut feeling and that voice of our ego’s fearful thinking?

Deepak Chopra says that if something within speaks back to you with a logic sense, trying to make rational arguments, and with some sort of self-interest – that means it is your ego mind and your fears’ that are talking. If you instead have a sense of a light, opened, relaxed and not restricted feeling within you – that means that it is your intuition/your heart that is guiding. The word ‘restricted’ and ’self-interest’ really makes it easier for me to distinguish the two. In order for me to keep my heart open, as soon as I get an uneasy feeling in my body, I try to figure out what’s the force behind it. There’s no more hasting through life. It’s a more aware living than I previously lived, one where I make sure that my actions are pure. Pure of love for not just me, but everyone around me.

Some days are easier to live like this than others. What I do know is that it is a continuous journey to live to be the bravest me, and it will take time. It will make me take one step forward, but a few steps back. And that is okay, because just like my characters I want to take that leap of faith into the unknown. To live bravely in the uncertainty of this magical world. To trust my gut feelings, and follow my heart. Because I am sure, it will take me on a far better adventure than if I stop at the risk of failing or getting brutally hurt.

Love, Johanna

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