Setting Your Heart on Fire

Today is the first day of spring, and it is still feeling more like winter, even though the skies have been bright and sunny.

As we prepare for spring, many of us engage in cleaning or making pertinent changes in our lives. The following comes from a book titled, Setting Your Heart on Fire: Seven Invitations to Liberate Your Life, by Raphael Cushnir, a book that was recommended to me by a friend and mentor last summer.

The book begins with this Invocation:

Love, speak to me
Render me willing
Receptive
Humble enough to hear your words
Strong enough to live your light
To meet your gaze in all things
To bless them, join them,
In your sacred heart of hearts

The First Invitation: Feel Everything

In the First Invitation, love calls you to experience
your emotions fully. To do so requires learning
when and why you deny them, and developing
the capacity for reconnection.

"Sometimes we kill our heart
in order not to feel."
- Tennessee Williams

"The master gives himself up to
whatever the moment brings."
- Lao Tse

The Second Invitation: Question Everything

In the Second Invitation, love calls you to
reconsider all your beliefs about yourself,
others, and the world. Whenever you find
that a belief limits your openness,
you're then free to let it go.

"To know is to be ignorant. Not to know
is the beginning of wisdom."
- Krishnamurti

"Often that which is true
will appear false,
and that which is certain, doubtful...
there is scarcely a single truth
of which we can have complete knowledge."
- St. John of the Cross

The Third Invitation: Resist Nothing

In the Third Invitation, love calls you to embrace
all of reality just as it is. This embrace creates a
peaceful relationship with your thoughts,
and lays the groundwork for positive change.

What you resist persists."
- Anonymous

"Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from,
everything we deny, denigrate, or despise,
serves to defeat us in the end.
What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become
a source of beauty, joy and strength,
if faced with an open mind."
- Henry Miller

The Fourth Invitation: Live Like You're Dying

In the Fourth Invitation, love calls you
to make death your constant companion.
The awareness of death helps you
heal old wounds, refine your purpose,
and lead a fearless, authentic live.

"When it's over I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world
into my arms."
- Mary Oliver

To be concluded....