Valentine’s Day has come and gone—reminding us all of the beauty of romantic love.

Yes, love is beautiful. It’s intense. And it can bring joy and happiness to our hearts.

But inevitably, if we’ve ever felt romantic love for another, we’ve probably also experienced heartache.

Heartache is a natural process that we all experience, at some point in our lives. And many times, in the midst of this pain, we choose to close our hearts.

I’ll never fall in love again. It brings too much pain.

But what if there’s another way? What if we can process heart pain faster by doing exactly the opposite: opening up to it, instead of closing.

On the surface it seems to make sense that we close down so often in response to pain. It hurts. Our minds are wired to avoid pain. Yet, if we look deeply, the closing of our hearts in response to pain does little to actually sooth us.

The more we close down, the more we trap pain inside. Pain is an energy that wants to flow. By accepting this, we can begin to live in a state of allowance. We open up to the present moment, even if that present is painful.

But there’s more to it than this. Aside from living in a state of allowance and openness to all that life brings, we can also process heart pain more quickly by disidentifying with the thoughts swirling around in our minds.

It’s not the heart pain itself that causes suffering. The source of suffering is the story our minds tell us in response to that pain.

Without stories and dramas unfolding in our minds, the heart soothes itself quite naturally.

~

Relephant read:

Music to Mend a Broken Heart.

 

Author: Christina Lopes

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photos: flickr