Heartfulness is the ability to meditate on the heart, on strong emotions within, and to feel and show compassion and empathy toward others. It is closely linked with mindfulness and the two can be practiced together to promote sustainable healing.
When practicing heartfulness, we listen to our heart when making decisions and allow it to guide us. This means we allow our heart to intuitively lead us into a particular direction even if we do not have a definite answer regarding whether it’s where we’re supposed to head. When we trust our heart, we are inevitably steered onto a path that pleases us emotionally and helps us restore emotional balance, even if we take the round-about way there.
Some consider the practice of heartfulness and heartful meditation a scientific approach to spirituality. This is a spiritual practice that relies on the ability to harness our own internal positivity and transmit this to the world around us. By being able to tune into matters of the heart, along with the mind through mindful meditation, we are simply accessing another piece of self to elevate us to a new state of being. We are not only connecting with another piece of our healing journey but are using it to emit positivity to those we encounter along the way.
Matters of the heart largely have to do with feels of love, hate, resentment, joy. We speak of being heartbroken when others do us wrong or things don’t turn out as expected. Our heart is full when we’re surrounded by love and the comfort of close friends and family. These are matters that are at our heart’s center, and it is important for us to check in periodically and ensure we are content with what is happening in this space.
There are a number of heartful meditations that can help an individual dig deep inside and garner the energy necessary to better understand oneself and the surrounding world, while considering the emotions of other people. The following meditation will help you harness the energy of heartfulness:
Take a comfort meditative position, focus on deep breathing, and center your thoughts on your heart chakra. Your focus will depend on what prompted the meditation, but you might ask yourself in this quiet moment of self-reflection:
- Is my heart broken? If so, who or what caused the heartbreak? How do I feel in this present moment?
- Is my heart full? If so, what are the specific reasons for this? (Practice acknowledging each reason and giving thanks internally for each one by one.)
- Can I feel a void in this space? Why? What can I do, right now, to eliminate this void?