Intimacy and the Iron Door


 “God dwells within me.”
Liz Gilbert, Eat Love Pray


So many of us have cast-iron doors over our hearts. A massive attack by nuclear bombs couldn’t begin to blast open the doors that so vigilantly guard who we really are. Yup. For Many years now those doors have done a stealth job of keeping everyone out—including us.

I’m just beginning to realize that most all of my life I, too, have been standing on the outside of the mega-iron doors that I built, placed and sealed over my heart. This is why I haven’t really known me, and this is also why other people haven’t really known me or been able to warm-up to me—including God.

When I say God, I don’t mean that I have kept God out by having these big iron doors over my heart. No, quite the contrary. God dwells within me and within all of us. In reality, when I sealed those iron doors over my heart, I not only sealed myself out, but I sealed God inside. For many years now, I have been standing outside of my heart and God has been resting inside. The Iron Door has separated us. It has kept me from being intimate with God just as it has kept me from being intimate with myself and with others.

As a result, I have had a one-dimensional relationship with God, myself and others. I’ve had head relationships, but no heart relationships. Knowing through our minds is only one way of knowing and it’s not very satisfying. We need to know, or rather, feel through our hearts as well to be truly three dimensional people.

If I only know my Higher Power through my head, what happens to my relationship with my Higher Power when something bad happens that logically shouldn’t have happened to me? Well, because I’ve never known God three dimensionally, I can logically begin to challenge God. I can challenge whether my Higher Power really cares about me, I can even challenge God’s existence because I have no heart-felt relationship to guide me.

A heart-felt relationship with our Higher Power is essential. We have to FEEL the presence of our Higher Power within us. But this requires that we be vulnerable enough to open up the Iron Door. This means we have to go inside ourselves, really experience the presence of Higher Love within us and really come to experience who we really truly are ourselves. This means we will have to open ourselves up to really feeling love from our Higher Power and love for ourselves.

Ultimately, it means we will have to do a lot of internal work. And many of us just don’t want to go there. We’d rather take a (supposedly) Get-Happy Pill. But there’s no pill and there’s no magical easy means that can give us the true rewards of honest, heartfelt, grace-filled intimacy—with ourselves, God and others.

If you’ve been looking for your Higher Power outside of yourselves, STOP. Look inside instead. Open up the Iron Door. Let yourself in and introduce yourself to Higher Love. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Allow yourself to feel. Allow Higher Love to come alive from within you. Stop pinning down the world in your head. The real world can only be known three-dimensionally through your heart.

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