THE VALUE OF SOFTNESS OF HEART

There is nothing I would rather do than to be able to feel a melting heart all day long. What comes to mind is the phrase in the Tao about the softness of water being more powerful than the hardness of rock—and how the water wears down the hard rock by it’s continual flow. Isn’t that the way love works?

More and more, I have moments when I feel that flow of love. Often it is not purposeful, but just a kind of outward flow of emotion to anyone and anything that gets in its way.

Unfortunately the feeling I am talking about is not there all the time—it comes and goes. I still have moments of anger and depression and experiences of many other emotions as well but this softness of heart is the feeling I relish.

I wonder if a life lived in a constant state of light is possible—or if it’s necessary to have nights at the end of each day. Maybe a life lived in a continual state of grace would be too much for a man like me. I think of all the gurus—ones I know and others I’ve heard of—who seem to live in that state. I may be wrong, but I think of them as almost sedentary—unable to move about in the world—with no need to actually do anything, living a life of freed of desire.

Which is not me. I am someone who lives in perpetual motion. But this thought of expanding the softness of the heart, perhaps it would help if I slowed my life down and sort of melted into the universe. Just the thought of that, how nice that would be, melting into life while softening the value of the heart.