Cultivating a gentle heart and spirit. (pt. 1/2)
Hi folks!
I have a few minutes before my son is up from his nap and I wanted to post on something that is rather close to my own heart. (Aside from my little boy. 11 months already! Goodness, what *am* I going to do!?!) This is the matter of having a gentle heart and a gentle spirit. In today's life, you find alot of people who seem to feel that having a gentle heart or a gentle spirit is a bad thing. Oh, they won't say it directly, but it's frequently looked at as some type of weakness. If you're sensitive, you're obviously over concerned with a wide range of things, be it other people's feelings and opinions or the fate of the world (possibly even the weather).
Let me share with you all something that I was told by a friend of mine a few weeks ago. It is not a weakness. It is a source of great strength. Yeah, when I was first told that, I was dumbfounded. For years, I had been told that I was 'too soft-hearted' and that I needed to be more discriminating, among other things. I came away from my childhood with the distinct impression that I was some how fundamentally flawed because I am a deeply compassionate and highly emotional person. I was rather taken aback when a friend of mine gave me a Tarot reading and he told me that this 'flaw' of mine is an incredible strength that I shouldn't push away.
One may ask what the point is in cultivating such traits in oneself. I won't say that it's in keeping with the 'will of God' because I don't know and I won't claim to know what that is for anyone else. (I have a suspicion as to what that is with respect to myself, but I am a bit different from most people.) Cultivating a gentle heart makes it possible for you to achieve a deeper relationship with the people around you fairly quickly. This doesn't mean that you lower your emotional defenses readily, but rather you actively seek the good in others. That little fact about children is also true about adults, by the way. People will act in the manner you expect them to in the relationship, as within their ability and in accordance with what they believe is in their best interests.
This means that when you treat your neighbor as a good and decent person, they will act as a good and decent person to you. It helps when you work to exemplify and modle the traits you wish to see in those around you. It also means that it becomes easier to communicate with others because you are making an effort to understand their perspective. A gentle heart is compassionate and understanding. As such, we who seek such a thing within ourselves are going to work very hard to ensure that we comprehend what the other person is saying and the other subtle cues that go into communication.
Clear communication and good will leads to healthy relationships. And this is what many people mean by having a 'deep' relationship. A gentle heart is also trusting. It is not naieve, but trusting. This is where having a discriminating mind is a very good thing. It's best to trust things to be as they are, not expecting them to be what you wish them to be or as they seem to be. This leads into how a gentle heart is a honest.
Honesty with yourself keeps you from expecting a con artist not to be a con artist, no matter how pretty their lies are. Honesty with yourself also allows you to know when you are infatuated or in love with some one. Honesty with others helps keep communication open and when expressed with good will and tact is always the best course of action. When it is not possible to state something in anything other then a lie, choose silence. Silence can make even a fool wise.