The Gifts of a Willing Heart
“Many of you have a habit of allowing your Mind to drag you off into its fearful imaginings about the future. Notice that you are very willing to believe in the terrors you imagine even though most of them never come to pass. Notice that the more traumatic your early life was, the more you believe in a terrible future. Depending upon your personality, you will either believe that you can control the future, or believe that the future will overwhelm you. Notice that this story of what will happen is your personal mythology, based on your conditioning, your history and your beliefs. Notice that it has nothing to do with your possibilities to experience essence in the now.”
— Spotted Eagle
Spotted Eagle says that if we are to have peace of mind, we must first admit these things: we are resisting what has already been created; there is an uncertainty we cannot accept; and this uncertainty cannot be changed or controlled. We must further admit that the one thing we are most able to change is our thinking. If we do not start here, addressing the mythology of the Mind, then what we can and should do in the present moment will be hidden from us.
Spotted Eagle teaches that a willing heart accepts what has already been created, and then from this state of non-resistance, chooses to act or not act. He tells us that the willing heart can clearly see the facts. It knows what essence it desires, and uses this desire for essence as a context for action.
A willing heart is not a heart filled with fear-based or excited emotional reactions to an imaginary future. Instead, its willingness gives us a measure of neutrality that is palpable. When we are willing for the now to be what it is, we know how to transcend the mind’s restless desire for certainty, and instead move with the flow of the present moment by focusing our attention on the essence qualities of what we desire.
If we expend our present moment imagining all the terrible things the uncertain future might hold, our energy will be spent in agonizing paralysis or unnecessary action to prevent what we imagine but which is not real. If we fix our attention on a certain outcome and insist that the future deliver it, we squander the opportunity to experience any number of outcomes or forms which would satisfy our true desire, our desire to experience essence. Attachment to a certain outcome is incredibly limiting. Only that outcome satisfies. Essence can be satisfied by many forms.
Essence keeps our desires open and practical. It focuses our attention on what is now-based and available to us.
Essence defines the result we want—a feeling experience—in a way that keeps our options truly open. The anxious mind is obsessed and controlling and its strategies lead us to bitterness, frustration, disappointment and anger. It is only the expanding awareness of our potential and how to actualize it that the willing heart knows to nurture.
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Posted in Consciousness, Emotions, Fear, Uncertainty
