A Call to Love Action: Following the Wisdom of the Heart for a Life Well-Loved
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
A Life Well-Loved
A little over 2 years ago, I found myself at Wisdom 2.0, a mindfulness conference in San Francisco, listening to Frank Ostaseski, founder of the Zen Hospice Project. In his decades of service, he’s sat at the bedsides and borne compassionate witness to the deaths of countless individuals facing their final moments in the earthly realm. He told us: “At the end of our lives, only two things matter. Was I loved and did I love well?”
I sat there in the audience, tears streaming down my face in recognition that at 52 years old, I could answer both questions with an emphatic, full-body YES. What a gift it was to realize that if I died at that very moment, would have lived a meaningful life! Because as Frank shared, in the end, a life well-lived is a life well-loved.
At that moment it struck me that my remaining time on this planet — whether days, weeks, months, or decades — was bonus time. A realization that has fueled me to live, love, and lead from the heart to make the most of this insight for whatever precious time I have left.
Awakening to the Wisdom of the Heart
A few months later, I found myself on an Awakened World Global Pilgrimage, a trip I said yes to immediately when I learned that it started on May 11, 2018, 10 years to the day that my mom took the A Train to the spirit realm. It felt fated. The journey was led by Dawa Tarchiin Phillips whom I’d met at Wisdom 2.0 and had nicknamed “the Jolly Lama” because of his joyful spirit. A Tibetan Buddhist teacher and awakened leadership guide, he led me and 22 other curious seekers around the planet in 30 days.
We arrived in Egypt, our third stop on this epic adventure and a destination I had longed to visit since I was a fourth-grader fascinated by this ancient civilization. As we explored the Museum of Antiquities and the temples surrounding the Great Pyramids, I noticed that Pharaohs were all depicted with their left foot forward. When asked our Egyptologist guide about this, he told us the left side is the side of the heart and the ancient Egyptians believed the heart to be the source of wisdom.
Through this posture, Pharaonic statues announced to the world that these leaders were guided by the wisdom of the heart. The voice spoke the wisdom of the heart into the world, making it manifest. The brain? It was pulled out the nose with something resembling a crochet hook and discarded, not being deemed essential for the afterlife. The heart was removed and carefully preserved for eternity as the source of wisdom and emotion.
A Right-Brained Girl Living in a Left-Brained World
I was raised by a rational, insurance lawyer, a man guided by reason and rather suspicious of intuition and emotion. I spent decades as an ENFP — a right-brained, heart-led and emotional intuitive — leading front end design and development in the radically left-brain world of Silicon Valley.
For most of my personal and professional life, I’ve felt less than. A fish out of water. Distrusting of my inner wisdom. Embarrassed for being too emotional, for feeling too much. My intuition and ability to harmonize human dynamics superpowers that were largely misunderstood by my father, my coworkers, and most importantly, by me.
My experience in Egypt triggered a profound shift in my consciousness, a shift away from my mind’s chantings of “Less than” to lean into, embrace, and celebrate my powerful intuition and the wisdom of my heart.
Minding the Gap in Big Data
As rooms full of left-brain people in organizations across the globe intellectually debate and advocate for insanely great innovations and opinions rooted in “Big Data”, we fail to take into consideration our greatest source of wisdom: the wisdom of our body and our somatic experience. We fail to voice or factor our inner guidance into our decisionmaking.
Noticing whether our bodies expand or contract when we make our case.
Noticing the nagging feelings that surface as we advance ideas from the minds that our hearts or our guts viscerally reject.
Noticing whether we feel a YES or a NO as our big brains push us forward.
My friend and coach, Jen Rice, calls tuning into this inner wisdom “navigating like a bat”.
When faced with a decision, our minds tell us one thing and often our bodies tell us something entirely different. Or at the very least have important data for us to consider. I’m not advocating that we disregard our minds altogether as the ancient Egyptians did, I’m suggesting that we take our somatic wisdom into account, treating it as an equal if not superior source of meaningful information.
A Call to Love Action
We are collectively navigating some of the darkest times in our human existence. Our conditioned response is to harden ourselves — to harden our hearts — as if preparing for battle. Doing so divides us and cuts us off not only from each other but from the greatest source of our wisdom and humanity, that of our hearts.
It may seem counter-intuitive and, for many of us, more than a little uncomfortable, but being vulnerable, heart-opened, and heart-led has never been more essential. Vital not only for our survival but for our thriving, for our aliveness. It’s time we reframe vulnerability and tenderheartedness as the superpowers they are.
It’s time we lead, live, speak, and connect from the heart for life well-loved.
It’s time we find the path of loving-kindness and compassion, the path of the heart, for ourselves and all beings and for our planet.
It’s time we put WE above ME.
It’s time for action rooted in love.
Because at the end, as Saint-Exupéry says, “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Because at the end, the answer to all of life’s questions is love.
If you’d like a guide to help you tune into the wisdom of your heart, book a curious conversation so we can explore what the Vulnerability Doula can do for you.