Image: Astara as a child leaping into her home pool in Los Angeles, CA, circa 1979.
by Astara
Today is leap year, a global time travel machine we have agreed upon. Leap year comes every four years as our Gregorian calendar tries to play catch up with our solar calendar. This brings our typical 365 days to 366 days this year. It is as if you have a bonus day to create the life you want. A day to leap forth authentically! This leap year, celebrate our time-travel-extra-day by igniting your dreams.
First, ask yourself “What is my heart pursuing?” or “What do I really want?” If you do not take the time to ask your heart, let alone listen, you may find yourself moving through your world feeling a special gravity pressing on you.
The soul speaks through the body. If we ignore our heart and core long enough, your body begins slowing you down in an effort to get you to listen: a strong sensation unfolds inside you, you name an emotion and feel a pressure. Stuck energy builds and a physical problem is revealed. Perhaps months of a tightening in the chest becomes a heart issue. Or a tug in the gut eventually reveals ulcers. A constriction of the solar plexus becomes heartburn.
Almost all body aches and pains, lack of ease and discomfort emerges when we stop listening to what our heart is telling us. And if we ignore them for long enough it moves out of ease to dis-ease. In our modern world we often miss this and believe the story that there is something wrong with us. But really, there is only one thing happening, we are in avoidance of our own knowing.
If you drop below the story the mind tells that something is wrong with you, you discover it is all just energy trying to move, resolve, and come online inside you. There is nothing to fix, only something to reveal. Your body is trying to send you messages, showing you where your need to bring your energy and attention to inhabit your life more authentically, with more of you.
The heart doesn’t speak loudly. It speaks in whispers. You have to slow down and get quiet to hear. Which is why when we sleep, our dream life can be so profound. It may be the only time of day your heart can get a message through to your consciousness.
If you listen to the heart? All that body intensity will settle down. How do you spell relief?
H – E – A – R – T!
I am passionate about all the wise heart whispers and continue every day to develop and provide supportive offerings to invite you to listen more closely to the whispers, the tugs, the pull from within.
The sweet spot of inner bonding, wholeness, and self-love unfolds at the intersection of listening to your heart’s desires and then taking action on each one.
I wrote the poem Leap years back about this idea that nature spirals and expands all the time, which is to say leaping and stretching into the unknown is a gift you were born with. You can live your whole life tuned in in this way, with one eye focused on the inside, ready and willing to leap in response to each and every heart whisper. The surprise arrives when you realize that such a heart leap only feels risky to the mind. It isn’t a risk at all as far as your heart is concerned. Just a natural next step. Moment to moment, the possibilities of the unknown wait for you with open arms and a soft landing. Happy Leap Year!
Leap
by Astara
Like a flower that opens to water, the air, the light
without thought or concern or effort
each moment asks of us to leap
into the unknown with joy.
What is known is always fading
into something else that wants to reveal itself,
no matter our language or labels.
Good bad right wrong up down.
Each release, each seeming letting go is a welcoming.
The poppy knows this. The bumble bee knows this.
The coyote. The starling. That oak.
Each new now is all there is adding up to right now.
Always.
If we allow it,
what feels like a dangerous risk to our mind,
is a daring relief to our heart.
Leap.
What is your heart pursuing? Leap towards it and join our Inner Space Academy. You can also work one-on-one with Astara, the dream architect, to excavate your heart’s yearnings and build your visions into reality; discover the magic of the Heartifact Archaeology eco-system.
