June 29, 2023

respond to an old friend of mine who is an editor at Berrett-Koehler Publishing. The rest of the conversation lives on LinkedIn, but I want to turn my response into this art mediation.

J, I think it’s more of a rhetorical question, then directed at you, “When are you going to start using your Heart?” I think maybe I’m talking to humanity in general, which partly explains my isolation. One of my dearest friends owns up to me just how difficult it is for her to get into her Heart-Space, which helps me be patient.

There is no way I can explain everything in one comment, but here are a few other thoughts, based on the conversation we started. This post might be able to stand alone.

It is not possible to “reduce” the Heart. It isn’t really one or the other (heart or ego) but it is about holding the tension of both and parsing out which tender space is of the heart. I know you are very good at your job, and online conversations are a little one-dimensional. Egos need strategy, proof, rules and popularity - popularity is a huge one. However, the true heart isn’t looking out to prove anything, and true heart-influence isn’t measurable. A publishing company might miss this, by making sales and popularity primary, which it has to. But tapping into the depths of our Heart spaces, and the way Hearts are disruptive, is what I am interested in.

Yes, there is the (your) view that writing for myself is only ego-masturbation (my embellishment with the m-word). It’s really fascinating to have my work of years of healing and full self expression deemed as “egoistic”. It’s fabulous to lose before I’ve really even begun. Knowing that I am just getting started is key - a reflection of what is inside me and not how you / the world sees me. Also - because this ego vs. heart tension is fun - spiritually speaking, Ego-spaces are threatened by Heart-spaces, so this is good work. Good inner work. It may not bring my ratings up, but I believe in this kind of tension.

Am I really only writing for myself?

I’m not willing to lessen my authenticity or angle myself, my art and writing towards fake vulnerability (or fake anything) in order to be popular, or “seen” or recognized. I run into this all the time, the kind of positioning people do, to get higher numbers, better ‘results’. It’s very sneaky of our ego-spaces to recreate or pose as the Heart in order to be Seen.

Several years ago, a “friend” told me to stop all this - the price is too high. And what would I do differently, exactly? Become less whole again? Become someone else (again)? Become someone I think you like?

The whole point of my existence is to express my heart now that I finally found it. Authenticity is painful, not popular, which is really important to say now that corporate America thinks the concept of authenticity is the latest useful thing to kick around. I’m turning 55 in July - this is my time to hold onto my Heart. I grieve how much time I’ve lost.

To be honest, the ego part of me is worried: It’s dangerous to be arguing with an editor of a publishing company, you are exactly the kind of person I should be bowing down to right now. My ego is also worried about the number of people who can’t handle / aren't interested in me, beginning with my family. I should pretend to like everyone more. I am not vulnerable the ‘right way’. I should like humans more. I don’t demurely apologize for my existence. If I played it right I could milk people for affection, that’s what I was groomed to do. But being in my heart-space always goes back to the terrified feeling, feeling too raw, too vulnerable to say it - that space.

And so, I’m not really worried about the idea of ‘resonating’ with people, because I know how grounded I am within myself. I know how much healing it’s taken to speak and create, and that I’ve had to build this space up from nothing, into something no one can take away from me now. It’s pure - by which I don’t mean morally, but that I’ve learned how to put a filter on my heart and keep the air that surrounds me 50 AQI or lower.

I know when I’m in my heart-space and when I am not. What I am here to teach, in spite of the great resistance of ego spaces, are the TINY inner shifts that I have learned to listen to, and to believe that everyone else has it too - if we are interested in wholeness, our egos are not, and will do anything to keep the inner shifts from happening. Including ignoring me.

And still, developing our hearts isn’t a choice, it’s an organic piece of our evolution - one day there is just an opening.

If there are only two people on earth to “see me” - my partner and the other person - who can tap into me, but since it is real - real open love - then I’ll take it.

About you, and art and my Heart Art Bundles: the fact that you would not know what you are doing as you write INTO the art that I design for you, with variations and in layers, would be a way for you to make yourself very uncomfortable and grow. It would make you see and feel (not think) what I’m talking about. Art forces you to go beyond words. A very different role from your current job. You would experience new inner shifts… If you listen inwardly. My Heart Art bundles allow you to step off the grid for a while, and be in a space where popularity does not exist., and it doesn’t matter.

We say we love Courage, Creativity and Vulnerability, and that is why my Heart-Art Bundles exist.

My art for today is nearing the “end” of the Ocean Abalone heart-art bundle. I can’t emphasize enough how important writing INTO the art is. Art invites us into a slightly different space than just thinking and using words. Especially modern art, which is a little more confronting.

As for my life, I love patiently for the moment someone dares to say or do or better yet feel something new, deep from their heart, something they didn’t know they had in them, but yet they did and now they are starting it, and continuing it. I’ll be that person for now.

Anne