“The greatest potential we have for opening our hearts lies in the opening of our minds. The heart is simply a bank of emotional potential. It’s a vastness of possible experience. We all hold within us the capacity for joy, love, and laughter, but not everyone uses that capacity. In order to use it, we need to reach a unity between heart and mind.” So begins a paragraph I highlighted in The Love Mindset, by Vironika Tugaleva. I found this statement to be moving. Let’s think of every wrong, or every prejudice we feel we have stored inside of us, and imagine it melting away with the opening of your heart. To do that we often hear, you have to be more “open-minded”. We, as a collective, could benefit from that statement.
“Each commonality that we acknowledge between ourselves and another person acts as a sedative for the mind. You find sameness and your mind loosens slightly, opening ever so gently to allow the breeze of love to enter into your core.” In my experience of teaching little children, I have found that they most often think we are alike until we teach them otherwise. That’s right. I had to teach a whole unit on similarities and differences. I always did it differently than most because I wanted my class to remember that what’s inside us is all the same. So for me, this book was more about getting back to basics. Re-setting yourself, if you will, and allowing your heart to be open as it once was. Before the layers of hate, self-loathing, guilt and anger piled on to cloud your vision.
There were many moments when I reflected on healing my heart in this book, but none so clearly as when I read this passage “That which is good for us requires less upkeep than that which is not.” For me, I have to crawl deep out of the pits of despair I feel when diagnosed with yet another “disease”. She goes on to write “Living in a mind polluted with isolating, self-defeating thoughts is very, very difficult. It is like drowning. Once in a while, you surface up and take a gulp of air. You remember that, maybe, you don’t have to suffer anymore.” If at some point in your life, you have felt that way, you need to hold onto that lifeline being thrown your way and remember that there are countless others who love you and are there for you. There really are. So come back up, reach out, and learn what the love mindset is all about.
Vironika Tugaleva is an author, speaker, people lover, reformed cynic, and a different kind of spiritual teacher. She helps people heal their minds and discover their inner strength. *You’re invited to read more about Vironika and her inspiring book The Love Mindset.
*Don’t forget to comment if you would like a copy. I will enter your name in a raffle and pick two!
