Heart Scribing: a deep look into your heart to create the space needed to deal with personal pain, fear, or sorrow. A spiritual writing practice of your heart.
In my life there been times when I have been very depressed and overwhelmed. I felt alone and unable to do anything but question myself especially the deeper parts of myself. I felt utterly incapable of bringing the experiences of my life into alignment with my joy and desire.
In those distressing moments, particularly when I was younger, I would seek help outside of me. From a counselor, a book, a friend. I went outside because I didn’t trust me.
In this search, I learned a lot! For example, the best way to eliminate fire is to go through the fire. Denying, ignoring, blaming. None of these worked.
Another learning was the difference between breakdown and breakthrough. During overwhelm, I felt like my life was falling apart. And sometimes, it did. However, what I found was that the falling part was me making my way to a new perspective or understanding – a break through to a new way of experiencing my life. And like fire, the only way to move beyond is to move through. Step in and go through.
My learning outside of me brought me back to me and helped me learn to help myself by starting inside me first instead of going outside first. Walking into the fire, breaking through are all about inside me.
Going through is like following a thread of feeling or awareness. You won’t know where this will lead, but you are aware that something is calling you forward.
If the best response is to step into the fire, then I found that if I would look into my heart and mind and write down whatever I felt or sensed or heard there, I could create a space for myself to break through — eventually.
This is listening to pain and fear in the moment instead of pushing it away, pretending it is not there. Pleading ignorance or choosing denial is not going through, it’s backing away. The away motion doesn’t eliminate, it prolongs.
Let me be real: looking into your heart and mind this way can be extremely painful and upsetting. But if this is what is burning within you, giving it space to speak will in the end help you resolve the depression and the overwhelm for this simple reason: usually what is trying to hide is not as bad as you fear. Or by bringing into the light that which hurts, you can see it for what it truly is. No longer a specter of your soul, heart light offers both a safe space to observe and a path toward understanding.
Heart Scribing
In the past, scribing was writing or making copies of documents. In many ancient mythologies, it is the scribe who pens the Book of Life.
For me Heart Scribing is writing down what I find in my heart and hear from my mind when I am feeling either elated or extremely overwhelmed. In this process of scribing, I am not judging, I am not editing, I am not ignoring. I am simply writing down anything and everything which comes when I ask, “Why am I so overwhelmed, fearful, depressed?”
I am putting words to paper about everything I encounter in my awareness. From a stream of consciousness process through my heart and head into a solid form before me. A form where I can see and look, perhaps even lift up the corners and look further below, allowing more words, thoughts, and feelings to emerge.
There’s no doubt this can be a painful process. Yet that’s the point. Allowing yourself the freedom to enter and and make of whatever is there without judgment or condemnation.
Now you have a more realistic clue about what the fire and pain is about. To see feeling and thought, perhaps even belief personal story, all which no longer serve.
Heart Scribing Guidelines:
- To Heart Scribe, find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed.
- Write in any medium you feel comfortable. On paper, your computer, your phone. Or dictate if that works for you. Choose what works for you in the moment.
- Catch judgement, or criticism, by acknowledging it is there but that you are going to step past it in this moment and will return when the moment is right. Make a note to identify but not block the flow.
- Breathe! And cry if needed. Screams of dismay or pain might even erupt. The main point is to not resist whatever is honestly arising through the attention your Heart Scribing is raising.
- Once you have written all that is there, put it away for a bit. Give yourself a moment to recover. Maybe an hour, a day, a week. Trust yourself to know that you will step away the right length of time.
- When you return, read what you have written as much as possible with a new eye. What is here? What do I see that I didn’t see before? How does this help me resolve my issue?
- Know that sometimes you will repeat this process several times to get to the root. Go gently with yourself, allowing thoughtfulness and tender loving care of self to emerge.
Heart Scribing Example
I wrote this over 18 months ago at time in my life where I was in extreme distress, disappointment, and disgust with myself. When I read, I can feel myself in those moments feeling helpless and angry.
The good news: in looking back, I realize that the moment of writing all of this down was a pivotal moment. A moment which helped fuel my leap through the fire. It took several months, but I experienced break through. And I have left these feelings of failure behind.
I feel like an utter failure.
When I let my guard down and get out of my mind and step away from what I think I “should” feel and yield to the pounding in my heart and the rushing in my ears — here’s what I feel:
I am an utter failure. Nothing in my life is working or as I worked so hard toward.
A failed marriage. A failed home. A failing family relationship. No home. No partner. No retirement. No security for my future. A business which, to put it politely, has hit a rough patch.
I feel so much less than what people think of me.
And it’s not that I don’t agree or believe that there are some amazing parts of me.
Yet when I look in my darkest shadows, I feel like an utter failure.
And when I try to buck myself up and smile and pretend as if, I feel like a fraud.
And I realize that this feeling gets in the way of being fully honest in my relationships especially with those who I value and cherish.
And that seems to make it worse.
And even as I write this I can hear critical voices telling me to get hold of myself and quit whining and be grateful.
And yet I’m overwhelmed with embarrassment that I let my life get to this place.
If I’m all that then surely I should have been able to get this all to a different place.
And I feel myself running around carrying a house of cards which I’m trying desperately to keep in the air.
A house built from falseness and I’m putting all my energy into keeping it standing.
And it feels like no matter how fast I run or how hard I try, nothing works, I don’t see improvement.
And maybe that’s because I’m putting so much into the house that nothing is left for the rest of me or my life.
And I get that this is perhaps a momentary feeling on the way to a new beginning.
But in this moment, I feel so entirely overwhelmed I don’t know what to think, what to feel.
I am so struck with the enormity of this feeling.
I am so blown away.
All I can think to do is be forgiving for my lapses, my less than moments with those I adore.
I can see that fear of pain and trauma and rejection and abandonment and the resulting pain and loneliness and lack of connection have kept me running after the house of cards as a way to hopefully avoid the pain and trauma and rejection of the past and hopefully not of the present or future.
And that’s control which keeps me from what truly is.
And because I’m not sure of what truly is, I hold out the house of cards as the real me to fool myself and deflect others’ view of either the fake me or the failure me.
My heart hurts.
And because I’m not sure of what truly is, I hold out the house of cards as the real me to fool myself and deflect others’ view of either the fake me or the failure me.
My heart hurts.
For a deep dive, begin with What is Spiritual Practice?
