The mature human heart learns to live with heartbreak without shutting it down.
It’s really so simple. It all begins with love. If we just love, life is simple. How do we get to love? That’s really what practice is for. If it’s not for that, it should at least be preparatory for it.
Mindfulness, non-dual awareness, absorption, consciousness as all, radical acceptance, working with hindrances and afflictions — all these many faces and categories, styles, methods, approaches of practice, they all have one true aim: to bring the human being back to their heart, where love is. It also happens to be the heart and core of this moment, of any moment, and at its deepest level it includes all.
Perhaps, usually or often, the real obstacle to being back in the heart is heartbreak. At some point our heart broke and we didn’t want to feel it, it was too much, and we managed to shut off its pain to some degree. We didn’t realize that heartbreak is a natural condition. The mature human heart learns to live with heartbreak without shutting it down.