Kneeling at the Doorway of Your Heart

Tami Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge, produced by Sounds True. My name’s Tami Simon, I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world, by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools, such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion, regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit soundstruefoundation.org.

You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Sarah Blondin. Sarah is an internationally beloved spiritual teacher. Her guided meditations have been listened to more than 10 million times. She hosts the popular podcast Live Awake. With Sounds True, Sarah has written a new book and recorded a new audiobook called Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love. One of the things Sarah points out in this conversation is that sometimes it can feel a little embarrassing—and I know this comes up for me—when we’re focusing on the heart, the heart, the heart, putting our hands on the heart. And yet, it’s pretty clear it’s where all the real goods, the deepest riches lie. Here’s my conversation, a beautiful, devotional conversation, with Sarah Blondin:

Sarah, you’ve written a new book that has a very interesting title, Heart Minded. I don’t know if this is word you created, but the main thing I want to know is what being heart minded means to you?

Sarah Blondin: I’m going to maybe say I created it, or I’ll actually give the credit to my husband. He finished reading the outline of my book, and he actually said to me… He looked up after the reading the last page, and he said, “Sarah, this book is about being heart minded.” And I went, “What? What does that mean?” So, in essence, he kind of introduced the concept and it slowly started to percolate in me and I could understand what he was saying. But it’s essentially to kind of find a way so that you are learning to inhabit the heart more than the mind. So that the heart begins to actually inform the mind on how to see, feel, exist, connect, and be in the world.

In essence, it’s a departure from what we’re used to, in that we are highly living in the mind, which is very analytical, problem-solving and seeking, worried. I compare it a lot to a dog chasing its tail to no end. A place where there’s actually very little rest. The heart is more like a porous, soft earth that kind of sees life from a perspective of like, an open arm. Like, you can picture an old grandmother sitting at the chair with this calm kind of demeanor and warmth and this acceptance exuding from her. The heart sees life in that way: very calmly, lovingly, acceptingly. So it’s really about moving down to the heart to inform the mind on how we live and exist.

TS: I want to talk about being heart minded right now, right here in the midst of the global pandemic, while we’re recording this conversation. I think for a lot of people, and I’ll speak for myself as well, being in that porous place of the heart is painful right now. More painful than at other times, not even so much out of personal pain, but out of the pain of connecting with suffering that other people are experiencing, whether that’s their economic struggles, or health struggles, or various kinds of losses. I’d love if you could talk about the specific challenge of being heart minded right now and how you see it. And especially address that person who might suffering right now in their connection to the pain of other people.

SB: I was actually hoping that you’d be open to starting this conversation with a short meditation that will kind of give us this practical setup for how maybe it will look and feel to be heart minded? Is that OK, Tami, if we could kind of breathe for a minute?

TS: Let’s do it. Yes.

SB: OK. I want you to just to kind of close your eyes and get really comfortable in your body, and if you would, just put both your hands over the top of your heart. I want you to push slightly against your chest, so that you can maybe feel the rhythm and the beat of your heart. I often like to bow my head a bit with a sort of surrendered weakness. As we breathe with the heart, we slowly wake the heart and warm the heart. We let the heart begin to bless the body and bless ourself.

May we join in this moment to illuminate the heart, so that we may begin to see all of life, both the trials and the tribulations, from a place of compassionate and loving awareness. Instead of anger and fear and righteousness, let us soften, let us disarm ourselves and our heart and our beings and let us feel the collective heart of our world. Let us take what is good in our life and use it as fuel for others. Let us speak not to the fearful mind together, but let us speak from the wise wisdom of the heart. Then open your eyes when you’re ready.

That’s just a practical way to start approaching some of these very hard places we’re all facing. It’s a sort of gentle reorientation, you could call it, toward that undefendedness. I think so often when we’re dealing with issues that are hard, and pain especially, we have this trepidation and this aversion and we push away, and we push off, and we protect the heart and we brace against the heart. But the heart can actually endure everything. Everything we experience in this life goes through this sieve. I call the heart the sieve. And it can transmute these experiences that we’re all having, to a place of gentle compassion and just awareness.

I think the beauty of this discomfort that we’re all facing is that we have the opportunity to kind of face what we haven’t been facing and to become very humble. Humility is a virtue, a divine virtue. With this kind of discomfort, if we are willing, we can meet the heart and start to transmute this experience. So throughout our day if we sense that the heart is kind of moving away and we are shutting down and we’re going up to the mind, and we’re going into places of fear, and distrust, and anger, we have to muscle our way back to the light. We have to refuse to be victimized by the circumstance and really say, “I will adapt. I will create. I will change,” and I will close the door on the fear of the mind, wrapping into the heart like we just did, to really figure out ways, from a greater level of consciousness, how to help this collectively.

When COVID began for me, I kind of went into a state of arrest, like most of us did. There was a few days where I couldn’t get out of the cycle of fear. I was that dog chasing its tail. I realized that if I was to continue to ride that river, I would end up nowhere. I would be just be thrashed my that water forever. I’ve been studying the waves of my heart long enough that I know there is refuge, and I know there is respite and I know there’s a higher vision that I need to be working on in this moment. So I closed the door on that. I actually just entered my own solitude in a very fierce way, with a sense of urgency that hasn’t been there before, Tami. I don’t know if you felt that. It’s this urgency now.

So I closed the door on my social media. I answered very few emails. I tried to separate myself and enter into the one place that I could find harmony and well-being, and that’s nature. I took that as my job and my purpose. Because if each of us is to close the door on the fear and enter what is right and what is still good in this world, and what is still good in our life, we become the illumined heart consciousness. I think that’s ultimately our task right now, is to really fiercely become devoted to sitting quietly in the stillness and the refuge of our heart. So that we can actually have the power to speak in the way we’re speaking right now. That we can answer our calls and our purpose to greater solutions and evolution of spirit in this time of essentially growth.

TS: Now Sarah, you mentioned “muscling our way back to the heart,” and this requiring a certain fierceness and intensity. Intensity is the word I’m having, that I felt in your response. Talk to me about the ferocity and intensity that’s needed, and this muscling action, what that’s like. Really, for that person who is kind of in between. They get what you’re saying, they’re kind of in their heart. But, “No, actually I find myself spending a lot of time in my social media world, kind of spinning around and feeling a little numb and unsure.”

SB: I can speak to that because I have been that person. I have agreed to go into the numbness, and I have agreed to go into the distraction. And even watching myself now, having removed myself from that, I see my habitual tendency to want to kind of escape, even when the discomfort comes up. But I’m pretty exhausted by that at this point. I think there gets to be a feverish sort of intensity that maybe you’re feeling, because we’re seeing this stark contrast in the world right now. We’re seeing tremendous pain and heartache for people. And this is where we have to muscle away from just looking at the catastrophes. We can’t keep catastrophizing. Because, in essence, when we are focusing on the pain, solely on the pain, we are kind of creating by default, not creating. So we’re kind of creating the same pain, instead of actually muscling ourself toward a higher vision.

And that requires an evolved outlook. That requires a creative force to awaken in the self as well. Because if we keep down the trajectory we are and we don’t start to raise our eyes up into a higher existence, we’re going to kind of be destroyed, ultimately, by this. And I think the spirit is getting so loud that we are starting to awaken more. That’s what I really felt for myself. It was like a non-negotiableness anymore. A part of me would dip in and out of a complacent state of being, in which I would say, “Yes. Maybe tomorrow I’ll focus more on my mediation. Yes, maybe tomorrow.” I realized, maybe there’s not that many tomorrows. Or maybe we’re on the precipice of so much change, that we can either fall into the hole of despair, or we can start painting a future together that we want to move into.

That’s why conversations like these can be so powerful, if we start kind of speaking to the higher consciousness of what we hope to see in the world. Because right now, I think we’re looking too much at the darkness, and we’re not starting to awaken that creative authority and actual purpose within ourselves, to try molding the world more purposefully. I guess I would say to those that are really on the fence, feeling their heart but also dipping in and out of that unconscious state of helplessness and hopelessness, is to say, “How tired are you of that? How tired are you of feeling that numbness?” And then really standing up on your two feet in a very brave sort of way to spend your time deliberately creating that which is good.

That’s why I think Martin Luther King was such a powerful leader, was because he didn’t only speak of what was wrong. He spoke of a vision of a future that people could actually reach to, and hold onto, and anchor themselves in. That’s what I think we need to be doing, that we are being called to do, is to speak to the world we want to start seeing. Not just the pain—speak to the heart.

TS: Beautiful. A beautiful response, Sarah. Inspiring. For our listeners who are meeting you for the first time, I can imagine a listener who’s like, “Who is this woman, Sarah Blondin? She’s obviously very talented at leading guided meditations. She lives somewhere in the interior of British Columbia. How did she become a spiritual teacher, teaching about the heart? What’s going on?” How would you give this person a nutshell introduction to you, that would really help them know a little bit kind of from the inside of how you got to where you are now, as a meditation teacher and a teacher?

SB: I believe that we’re each kind of born, and what I speak to in my book is we’re each born with this inherent wisdom and connection to our heart. With time, as we kind of grow and evolve into the world, we separate and become distant from our hearts. That can be a very painful experience. For me, when I was a little girl, I came into the world and I could see within people, the dualities in them. I could see one person saying one thing to me and acting one way, but beyond their eyes I could see their sorrow. I could see their hidden loneliness. I could see all of these things. I was so confused by the incongruency that I could feel in the world. I think we each kind of feel that on a level.

So for me, from a young age, I felt all that and it actually scared me. It caused a fear to rise in me, because I felt like the world couldn’t be trusted. People couldn’t be trusted. Things were not to be trusted. I kind of averted into a world of my own, where I would secretly hum and dance and I was pretty much oblivious to the world around me. What I realized I was doing was trying to weave a world that I couldn’t feel people’s pain.

As I got older, I started looking only outside of me for validation. I became an actress. I wanted to pursue broadcast journalism and be an actress. Every time that I would book a job, I would have this very fleeting, very brief sense of joy and emulation. And there was always this haunting crash, that just made me feel like, “This is not it. This is not it.” I think we can each feel that longing. Within everything we do, there’s a secret longing in our bodies. We don’t often follow that longing. But that longing led to me to lie on the floor day after day, afternoon after afternoon, crying with a deep soul sadness that I couldn’t quite identify.

You can call it depression. You know, those are names for it. Depression, anxiety. But I call it a soul sadness, to try and link up with that longing. What was the longing? What was the more? And slowly, being on my back—I often tell people if they’re kind of on their back and they find themselves in a place of total despair, good. Because this is where you will meet the part of you that will start to lift and hold you, and that part of you is going to bring you to the doorway of your longing.

That part of me is exactly what began to awaken. I got so tired of that depression, that I started to pray. When that depression came, I would pray. I would become still, and that’s when the discipline began. That’s when I started listening to these innate whispers that would come, that said, “Write in your journal every day. Go out and talk to strangers and ask them what makes them happy.” These were all kind of insights that came from that place of desperation. I became so feverish and intense about listening, because I felt like something was leading me there.

So slowly—really what brought it all to a head was becoming pregnant with my first son. It forced me to move out from the city, and removed me from essentially any sort of external validation that I was having. That was gone and then I got even deeper into myself. That’s when I started to write more and more. Then I found what I would consider my umbilical cord to the divine. Every time I would sit down to write about something that was horribly troubling to me, as I transitioned into this tremendous solitude and motherhood at the same time, I found this voice would come. It would come around page three every time. It was the most compassionate and loving voice. Not only did it soothe me, but it felt right. It felt like all the fog had cleared.

Then I began to weave these kind of journal entries into guided meditations. The heart works in mysterious ways. But it was essentially an organic unfolding of the heart and vulnerability, and being naked and humiliated by life but saying it and finding the light in that. That kind of led me to where I am today, which is quite mysterious and wonderful. That it’s all because of the heart and the longing I felt inside it.

TS: A couple things, Sarah. One, I noticed just hearing you use the language, “the soul sadness” to refer to a period of depression. It’s so powerful to call it that instead. Instead of some kind of medical term, or something’s wrong, or something. This is an issue of the soul. So I just wanted to underscore that powerful language.

Now the other thing, you talked about “the umbilical cord to the divine.” To that person, who said, “You know, I’ve had moments, but I have to say at the moment I don’t feel like I have an umbilical cord to the divine. It’s gone. Ten years ago, when I was on some vacation or something, I felt that for a moment under a tree or for an hour. Help me find that umbilical cord to the divine.” What would you say?

SB: I’m going to say an answer most people don’t want to hear, is that it is practice [laughs] and it is discipline. I think the heart almost knows its worth and needs to smell the sincerity on your breath and the earnestness in your eyes. It needs to know that you are kneeling at the doorway of your heart. I would ask you, “How much time are you spending kneeling at the doorway of your heart? How much time in your day are you nurturing that quiet stillness within you?” If you felt it once fleetingly, it was probably divine grace being bestowed onto you. That is always a sign to follow.

For me, I still don’t feel my umbilical to the divine every day. I have practices that help me get there. But I know enough to show up regardless of how I feel, to feed what is good and true within me. I remember I was going through a state of paralyzing panic and anxiety for months on end. It was right after I got my book deal, Tami. [Laughs] I was so afraid to move into this next chapter, that I started focusing only on the pain and the darkness, and it became a storm of its own velocity and I was taken along with it.

I saw myself one day, walking up to my writer’s cabin. I have this little private place to go and write. It was almost as I if I could see myself, as an eagle would up top of tree. I could see this little Sarah walking to her cabin with her head down full of her anxieties, with her journal under one arm and a candle in another. I said, “Oh, look how beautiful you are. You are still showing up regardless, to seed what is true, amidst even the greatest storm of your life.”

That showing up is what breathed me back to life. I think we can fall into darkness, or we can fall into forgetfulness, or we can disconnect from our hearts for years at a time. Years, even our whole lives. But if we had established a very firm—we have voiced it. We have said, “I am here to be my heart. I am here to feel my heart. I am here to allow my heart to inhabit my being.” If we declare that, if we keep our hand pushed against the rhythm of the heart, we are led to more and more of those moments. The umbilical cord gets stronger. It becomes part of us, not apart of us, or from us. We start removing the noise that’s making us think we’re separate. It’s clearing out that debris. So I would ask you, if this is truly something you long for, you have to kneel there every day.

TS: You write in the book Heart Minded that, “Your sensitivities,” the reader’s sensitivities, “are your greatest gift.” I had a moment when I read that, and I thought to myself, “What if you’re feeling that your sensitivities are your greatest burden? That it’s actually difficult to be so sensitive. I already feel too much.” So what would you say to that person?

SB: Well, what I would I say to myself in that case? Because … [laughs] Everything is contrast. Right? A part of me is saying my sensitivities are my greatest strength, but that comes from me feeling, at first, like they’re my greatest burden. So I disassociated, when I was younger, from my sensitivities. I abandoned them entirely because they felt too intense to inhabit.

But I think part of the mystery and the magic of the heart is … it starts to build a stronger spine in you somehow. The more you start to inhabit your sensitivities and start to lead with them … I would have never gotten here to this point, having published my first book, had I not embraced those sensitivities. I think some of the greatest leaders of our time had to disrobe the heart and become vulnerable in the face of the world. I think that’s the only way to truly inhabit a powerful leadership role, which I think we’re all being called to do.

So yes, we can feel it. Yes, it feels like a burden. Yes, it’s hard. But if you drop down deep enough within that overwhelming sense of fear and trepidation … because I think we’re honestly afraid of them. So with feeling, we become fearful, so they come hand-in-hand. But if you start to kind of address those feelings of overwhelm and the feelings that are running through you and surging through you, and you start bringing in that tenderness and that mothering sort of quality, or that mastership, then you can start to mold yourself more clearly. Kind of become more solid, like you are part of the process now.

I think before, our sensitivities can kind of run wild, and we’re not really harnessing them properly. But if we actually start to kind of zone in—I mean, that’s why a lot of this book is about trying to harness the feelings. Make them something powerful, instead of something that burdens us.

TS: At this point, Sarah, I think it would be good if you’d be willing to do another short Heart Minded meditation together, maybe for that person who isn’t fully entering. At one point, you write about how pain can be a portal. You’re sharing that now. That our sensitivities, we can turn towards them. I wonder if you could take us into some meditation experience for that person whose kind of dancing around this, at this moment.

SB: Yes. Let’s do it. Get comfortable wherever you are. I want you again to assume that position with both hands on your heart, and the head slightly bowed. We’re just going to breathe deeply and start feeling the pulse and the rhythm of the heart. Imagine that it’s kind of creating a current of grace that’s running through your body. Oftentimes, all we must do is take one deep sigh, or one disarming bow, or one warm, surrendered stance, and so begins the great unveiling. Then the tipping point begins, and all the illusions keeping you separate from your heart, all the pain, all the worried whirlwinds that you have contained within yourself will begin to die like sandcastles to the seas. You will be rubbed raw, and you will be born clear, a tender babe.

Remember you, dear one, as a young bird reaching for the sun, as a small babe opened wide in the arms of love. Remember you, dear one. Let yourself be picked into the golden cup of your heart. Each time you hear a songbird sing or your dog rests his head on your chest, trace the lines the way you feel it in your body. That is where you are. That is where you are. May you rest in this warm spot as often as you need. When your hands are sore and your feet are tired, kneel here, dear one. Kneel here, dear one.

Open your eyes whenever you’re ready and be looking up at the sky, and kind of letting yourself remember the bigness of it all, and the beauty of it all. This is a muscle, this is a practice that you have to start incorporating in your day. You have to disarm. The mind is so frantic and so exhausting. There’s only one place within us that can actually quiet that.

If you just do that simple, very elementary practice—part of me writing this book, Tami, was a bit—this is so basic. You know, it’s rich with platitudes, and, you know? I was embarrassed. And then I went, “Oh, the embarrassment. That is our severing. That points to how we’ve each so disconnected from our hearts, because it is this simple. It can be this simple.” You know?

TS: Simple to describe, maybe.

SB: Yes.

TS: But certainly not easy to live.

SB: No.

TS: As you’re talking, Sarah, there’s this interesting energy of strong stance and sort of a fierceness in you, and a type of a kneeling and profound humility in how they go together. I wonder if you can comment on that. It’s a very interesting combination.

SB: I don’t remember where I heard this, but it was, “Strong spine, soft front.” That really resonated with me and kind of gave me a vision of how it looks and feels to really be in the heart. Because to be in the heart is not to be a puddle on the floor that can’t stand on feet. To love is not to become weak. To love is to become at one with the force that’s created this entire earth. That is the ultimate power, yet we’ve become flippant with how that looks and how that feels. Again, that shows how we’re afraid of entering the heart and that’s kind of why we stay separate.

But I think when you really meet someone who’s embodying the heart, there is this sort of vulnerability and accessibility that comes with, almost like a very swift, strong line as well. I think that’s kind of naturally what starts to happen. It’s a strength. It’s an inner strength that starts to infuse the body. I don’t know how else to explain it. You know, it’s not the easiest for me always embody, but it feels like what I’m supposed to be embodying. So now that I’ve kind of connected with that embodiment, I try my best to muster the courage to stand in that part of me. I think we each have that part of ourselves, that we’re just trying to work up the courage to step into.

TS: At one point, you write in Heart Minded that being heart minded is “a tiered journey.” I thought that was really interesting. Even as we’re having this conversation, one of the things I noticed is I don’t want to go up into my mind and get super analytical and all of that. At the same time, a tiered journey, that sounds a little bit like there’s a map of some kind or stages. That’s interesting to me. So I’m curious about that.

SB: Yes. I think its tiered, in that we can raise to great heights and then think that we’ve gotten to an established place of awakening and our hearts are open. And then we meet with maybe our greatest fear of our life or some sort of … something rocks us to a place where we fall from great heights. Then we have to recalibrate and keep going, regardless.

I remember seeing it very clearly in a meditation once. I was just coming up into really feeling confident in my spiritual evolution. I saw that now there was a mountain of truth in front of me that I needed to climb. So it’s like I had the awakening and the awareness and then I saw, “Oh, wow! Up ahead of me is a mountain of my truths that I must discover.” So that means you just have to keep going, like a staircase, up and up and up. As evolution goes, it’s a back and forth. It’s a dance. The paradox. We’re open, and then we close. We learn, we grow, and then we fall.

As a mother, I see how much I fall back into certain places. And as a wife, I see how I’m involved in loving my children more than I am my partner. It’s a tiered journey. But that’s the point, right? The dance, the friction is what actually pushes us. It pushes us to our borders and actually causes to kind of explore and expand into more and more.

I’m never going to stop. I don’t want it to end. Because the more that I’ve pushed—it’s so funny. I’ve had chronic back and chest pains all through my sternum for about six months now. It’s finally starting to lift, but it lifted after about a month for a little bit, and then I remember feeling sad that the pain had gone. Because it was almost like I was missing now the hand on my back. It was pushing me to go deeper into what this fear of this pain was bringing up for me. It was almost like I was missing that pressure to keep me looking and keep me disciplined. Do you know what I mean? It’s this tiered journey of just being pushed and then growing, and then being pushed again, and then growing more. Yes.

TS: I think—to point out, I think that many people during this COVID-19 crisis are finding themselves at a new place in that tiered journey and needing to be more intense about their practices and draw further on resources. It’s like, “Oh, I didn’t realize there was,” in your language, “a mountain ahead of me.” But clearly, there is. I think that’s an interesting point. I’m curious to what you have to say about that.

SB: Well, this is really where the rubber meets the road. Right? Our spiritual practices are preparing us for moments like these. I went into the fear so greatly when it first started. Even with all my years of practice, I still fell victim to the fear. But it’s that devotional aspect. Right? That I will show up no matter what.

I remember watching the movie Mary Magdalene the other day. They showed Jesus as scared still. He was following God, but he was still exhibiting fear. That really spoke to me. We can have all of this come to us but still be afraid. But are we still standing in our strength in this? Are we still kind of pivoting ourself to the heart? Are we still reorienting? That’s ultimately what’s being asked, is being pushed to our borders, and voting for the heart regardless of all of this, and seeing what comes of that. How we evolve is ultimately up to us.

TS: Throughout the book, Sarah, you weave in 20 or so meditations that people can do. One of the meditations starts with a description of how snakes will die unless they shed their skin, and how like a snake, we are asked at certain times to shed our skin. I wonder if you can say more about that metaphor of the snake shedding its skin and what that asks of us as we grow?

SB: I think if we’re truly stepping into our heart-minded self, we’re going to come to meet our greatest, deepest fears. I’ll use the example of having the panic and anxiety for months, right when I got this book deal. Again, because that’s when the analogy of the snake came to me. I was almost energetically refusing the growth that was being asked, and that was being brought to me. And I saw so distinctly that we are mostly living between fear of life and fear of death. We’re kind of on this teetering scale. Even though this was something I wanted, I was afraid of it. I was afraid of my life. Even though I wanted my children, I was afraid of it. Even though I wanted to marry my husband, I was afraid of it.

But I had brought myself to the doorway of each of these challenges. My soul, my spirit, my longing had led me to the doorway of each of these things. Then I saw my refusal was actually causing my body to begin to enter a state a dis-ease. I could see how you would create maybe a cancer or an illness, because you’re so out of harmony with the flow that is coming forth from your life. It’s like you won’t enter the current that you have yourself created, for fear of life and fear of death.

And that’s where the muscling again has to come in. That’s where practice is so priceless, because you have collected enough evidence to know that the heart will hold you through this. If we stop and we suffocate and we do not shed our skin and we do not roar in the face of our greatest fears, we potentially could be lost to the darkness for a very, very long time. It’s really ultimately up to us. But I saw that I brought myself to the door. My spirit brought me there. Why am I afraid of my own doorway, that I have brought? Why are we afraid of our own doorways?

And I think ultimately it’s asking us to awaken the power and the authority. That’s why one of the meditations is about holding a stance of the fist above the head in a stance of victory, regardless of the storms that are traveling through the body. I know how scary life can be. I have been there. I have thought that I would rather life end than have to feel this. But I know that if I stand like that … if I put my hand up, if I lift my face to the sunlight, if I put my hand on my heart, something awakens that is almost primal. That will hold me, the quivering self in that. There’s something stronger than what our mind is telling us we are, and what our mind is telling us life is.

That is, to me, the heart. And as soon as you unlock that, as you start showing up for that, get ready. It’s beautiful, but it’s not easy. Like you said, it’s not easy. You will be born anew, I say. Over and over again, you will endure many births. For any mother who has been childbirth knows the velocity of energy that is moving through your body that you do not think you can possibly withstand. It does it for you anyway. There’s a force carrying you through it, and it will drop you on the warm, safe shore with your babe in your arms, God willing. But it’s about entering the current that you create, so you don’t suffocate yourself. Yes.

TS: When you mentioned that you wrote this meditation, that it came to you after you got the book contract with Sounds True to publish Heart Minded, this idea that snakes will die unless they shed their skin, what was the skin that you needed to shed at this point in time?

SB: I had to step into a bigger version and vision of myself. That’s what we’re seeing with this COVID. We have to step into a bigger version and vision of our world and ourselves and how we want to connect, and how we want to create. It was asking me to create a new self, essentially. It was saying, “All of these things that have kept you safe, all of these things …” I felt great hiding behind the microphone with my meditation and no one seeing my face and exposing myself that way. But now the world is showing up, and saying, “OK, now you have to show up even more vulnerably. Your face is now with it. Your being is now accountable.”

So I had to find a way to step up into that, to shed the older skin, the illusion, the small self that wanted to stay hidden, the part of me that wanted to hide, the part of me that wanted to refuse this. I wasn’t willing to step into the future that I had created for myself. That is the snake. It’s almost like a smaller, less capable self that I was needing to let go of entirely. And I did.

TS: Let’s say someone’s listening and they sense that they need to do that right now in some form. They can sense it. They can feel it. What would be your suggestion to that person?

SB: Start creating. Start getting very quiet. Go within yourself. Close out the world. Start dreaming and manifesting. Start listening to the longing that’s within you, asking the longing what it wants, asking the longing how it looks. I have a meditation where I just close my eyes and I say, “Show me. Show me.” It’s shown me everything. Often it shows me things that cause my whole body to react with goosebumps or like, waves of heat. Then I know for sure that I’m on the right track. But again, this is a muscle. Right? It’s a practice that needs to be put in place. If you’re really serious about creating the most authentic kind of a life for yourself, then begin looking.

TS: Now, Sarah, I think I know what you mean about our minds spinning and creating all kinds of worries and fictions, and just being a way that we disconnect from our heart by spending a lot of time just going on and on and on, over and over and over. It’s a story we’ve made up. It’s fiction. It doesn’t [inaudible] really. OK, I get that. At the same time, when the heart and the mind are kind of seen as separate and the mind is vilified in some way, I get uncomfortable. I’m just sharing. Something in me gets uncomfortable. The mind is also the source of the brilliant language that you are using to describe this transformative process. So how do you see the mind and heart working in partnership in a beautiful way? How do you see that?

SB: I kind of said that in one of my chapters. We’re not trying to pit the two against one another. We’re trying to marry their aptitudes. So I guess what I really want people to understand is that there is a heart mind. There’s a mind within the heart that has actually a tremendously big force field around it, bigger than the mind itself. It has thoughts, and feelings, and visions. That’s what I’ve been following. I know that because there’s almost like an irrefutableness that comes with it. It’s using that wisdom and then asking the mind to implement the wishes of that, the heart.

A good example is in intimacy, or ones we love. I can love myself very easily, but when it comes to letting someone else love me, I have a list of requirements, or, “Do this, this and this, and then I’ll let you into my heart.” That’s the territory of the mind. Right? There’s no rest there. But if I’m truly wanting to be heart minded in my relationships as well, I have to go to the heart when I’m feeling that restriction against someone and I’m feeling the lists come up, and I’m feeling the judgments and the separation. I have to go to the heart and I say, “OK. Remember what you want. Remember how you want to feel. How you want your life to look. Remember that these defenses do not serve you.” Then you start to visit the heart, and the mind will then start to adopt that more kind, more loving philosophy.

So yes, we need the mind. There’s no way about it. I didn’t mean to vilify the mind. I’m just saying the mind unharnessed can often act against us. That’s when—if you partner, you give the instructions to the heart, it will then inform the mind, and then our life will start to kind of transmute in that way.

TS: What would you suggest if someone’s having an experience where their thinking process and what they feel in their hearts seem out of sync? It doesn’t feel like a very good marriage at the moment, let’s say. What would you suggest if someone’s in a place like that? Maybe it’s about a decision they have to make or something like that. The heart feels one way, but their intellectual process is telling them something different.

SB: I would probably tell them to get really still and really quiet. Then often, if you kind of devote time to really quieting and really stilling in the face of that kind of back-and-forth that you can feel. It’s almost like you’re crucified by this decision you’re trying to make.

Another good example. I was getting married to my husband. I had to sign a prenup. I remember getting a lawyer to read over the prenup, and my mind just started to spin. She started spewing stuff about, “He’s going to get half of this and this and this, if this goes this way, it’s going to look this way.” It was carrying me off into so many places, all so very far into the future of potentials, so far from my heart. I began to get so overwhelmed and panicked. I remember my mum sitting me down, and with that incredible clarity that mums can give, she just said, “But what does your heart know?”

It was like she cut the frenetic static of the mind. She cut it. I was finally able to feel what the heart really, truly was. It hit me like a ton of bricks. “I know that he loves me, and that all will be all right.” It was so clear. So sometimes it can happen that way, but it’s a clarity. So if you’re feeling that you’re bouncing between those two things and you can’t find rest in anything, then you have to enter the stillness.

Also, another really good practice is flow writing. It’s something I can’t live without. It helps me burn off the fat, so to speak. So I flow write, which means you never let the pen stop and you wrestle with what it is that you’re afraid of, and what you’re trying to come to a decision around. And you wrestle and you wrestle, for 10, 20 minutes, whatever you need, never letting the pen stop.

Oftentimes, there comes a sentence or an insight that cuts that frenetic noise again. You’re able to see with clarity. Then you just have to work on the courage of shedding your snakeskin, moving into the vision, moving into the belief, moving into the new revelation, and finding the courage to actually implement that in your life. Again, not easy. But if you’re really wanting to embody that truth, it’s not going to be easy. Yes. But what is easy? Nothing.

TS: You know, Sarah, as we come to an end, I want to circle around to a word that you offered in our conversation, which is “devotional.” I would love if we could end on a devotional note together, especially during this time where calling on powers to help us are so important. If perhaps you could leave us with a short, guided practice of some kind that we could do together.

SB: Yes. OK. This is so beautiful, Tami. Because I saw this in my meditation before. My idea was that maybe for a little we could go back and forth, almost like a sounding board of what we’d like to see. Just a few things. So I’m just going to ask us to close our eyes again. Just close our eyes and get comfortable in the body again. I want you to ask for your heart to come forward, your heart-minded self. Let the words “joy” and “love” fill your body. I want you to start envisioning goodness in this world and yourself, or this world, or for those you love. I’ll begin by saying, “I see a world of people that look into each other’s eyes and do not shy away from that connection and intimacy.”

TS: I see a world where everyone has enough to eat, to their delight.

SB: I see a world where mothers everywhere are cared for, so that they may care for the future of our world.

TS: I see a world where the rivers run clear, sparkling, and bright without any pollution of any kind, without any trash. Just clear, sparkling, blue water, clear water.

SB: I see a world where we are governed by love and kindness, where equality of all reigns supreme, where we begin to heal the foundation of this somewhat broken world. If you just want to finish off with the last one, Tami.

TS: I see a world where all the people who are listening to this right now inhabit their own visions with a lot of ferocity and courage and stepping into their power to be creators during this time. We need all of you. Every single one of you, please.

SB: Amen, Tami. Yes, we need all of you. I stand here with all of those that are oppressed, with all of those that are silenced, with all those that are suffering. You are on my back. I carry you into the light, in courage. I carry you with me. Let us not waste this opportunity to dance on the skirt of our heart. Let us each choose to use this time, to use all the extra time we have to create a self, a world that is illumined and guided by our fears, strong yet soft, wise hearts.

TS: I’ve been speaking with Sarah Blondin. She’s the author of a new book. It’s called Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love. It’s a beautiful book filled with meditations throughout. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for listening.

Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a transcript of today’s interview at soundstrue.com/podcast. And if you’re interested, hit the Subscribe button in your podcast app.

Also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.

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