Can you keep your heart open in hell?

This week’s spiritual healing blog starts with a question – Do you feel anyone goes to hell after death?                                  No. I didn’t think you did…

The only hell I know of is the one we create when we allow our thoughts to take us there. So, when I ask, ‘can you keep your heart open in hell’, what I mean is this.

When you are closing down from anger, fear, insecurity or feel you have lost your way, try to keep some openness in your heart.

Say ‘This too will pass,’ and Believe this will prove the case.

If you do not, you’ll push your negative feelings deeper into your being. They will take root and what will happen is that not only will your heart get tighter, you will repeat your old patterns and mistakes.

It is only in the understanding that all situations and feelings are temporary – whether we regard them as positive or negative – that the heart can breathe.  This means not clinging to things we’d like to last forever and not despising pain.

When we can answer ‘Don’t know’ to the questions that come to trip us up, the heart is able to heal its wounds.

Will he/she love me forever? ‘Don’t know.’

Will my house be taken by bailiffs? ‘Don’t know.’

Will I fail my exams? ‘Don’t know.’

It is only in the openness of ‘don’t know’ that we can experience the melting away of conditioning and expectations and begin the process of just ‘being.’  When we can open to the truth of what each moment brings, life goes beyond heaven and hell – and beyond the mind’s constant quest for satisfaction and answers.

There is fear in the mind. Who is feeling it?  ‘Don’t know, but it’s OK for this too will pass.’

There is jealousy in the mind. Who is feeling it? ‘Don’t know, but it’s OK for this too will pass.’

Whatever you think is not OK, closes the heart. That’s when you feel pain.

The next time pain rips into your heart, feel the openness of saying ‘I’ve got no idea what’s happening, but I’m OK with it, because this too will pass.’

This is what is meant by keeping our hearts open in hell. When we do, the raging fire burns to ash and both heart and spirit are healed.

Jaylen Grace is the author of Omtopia (The seven steps to enlightenment) and other books.

www. jaylengrace.com

Another Mum bites the dust

The house where I grew up was an embarrassment.        Then.    Funny how death changes our perception of things.  Our living room was my mum’s temple. It was the room where she displayed victory over poverty.  The mantel was crammed with her trophies.  A leather donkey with a striped blanket on its back. Castanets from Benidorm. A recipe for paella in a gaudy gilt frame.

I hated that room with its climbing ivy wallpaper. The squiggly orange carpet. The poster with fairy lights blinking on and off. It was a sunset shot of a Caribbean island, complete with china ducks in flight.

Dad didnt mind sitting in a curiosity shop. He didnt mind the sideboard stuffed with junk. Didnt mind the plastic matador with a willy, that pee’d when you pressed its head.

Mum would giggle like a schoolgirl. ‘Got that in Torremolinos,‘ she’d say with pride.

I’d give anything to watch the sun go down with her on that Caribbean island. I can hear her voice.

‘Cocktail, dear?’  It’s got a bit of pineapple floating on top. She’s wearing a straw hat with cherries on the fringe.

Oh, what I wouldnt give to go back to that living room.

– Exactly, but exactly, as it was.