Chapter 1

My Experience of My Spiritual Heart

You will discover that your spiritual heart has the power to transform your emotional conflict and turmoil into true peace in only a few minutes. It is an amazing thing to suddenly not be worried or upset after only a few moments of connecting with your spiritual heart. It really does happen. Wow, think of it – the ability to stop feeling hurt or upset whenever you want. The science will explain these startling changes that people all around the world have proven for themselves.

What do you really desire for your life? You will discover that your spiritual heart is your connection to the wisdom that is there to bring your deepest heart desires into full expression in your life. Your spiritual heart can make that happen .

Before I discovered my heart’s potential, or understood anything about it, I had an experience of my spiritual heart’s transformative power. It so deeply impacted me that I began a journey to discover what this power was, and to find its access code. This first experience only hinted at the wisdom and fulfillment I would eventually find through my spiritual heart.

When I first experienced the power of my spiritual heart, I did not understand what it was. What I did know was that in the greatest emotional anguish I would experience in my life, when I asked for help, I received it. I would grow to eventually understand that this response to my desperate plea was the response of my spiritual heart.

I found myself in a state of hopeless emotional turmoil. My wife Kathy – a wonderful, vibrant, beautiful, loving, caring young woman – had been murdered by a young man with a gun.

We had found each other on a blind date with one of my fellow law students. My life was suddenly transformed by her beauty and her eyes, which always held the sparkle of an indescribable, effervescent joy. This petite undergraduate, who worked in the law library at the law school I attended, became the gentle presence whose caring touch invited me out of the stupor of adolescent student into the world of meaning, sharing, caring and discovering how, through love, we could create a wonderful life together. Her love was the mystical force that helped me find my heart.

I remember one of my first glimpses into the beauty of her soul. In one of those conversations in which we explored what was important to us, she shared a memory of being a teenage girl, walking home after school with friends. One of girls in the group made fun of another girl, who was walking by herself. The girl in the group was belittling her for not being a part of an acceptable clique. Kathy shared how her heart went out to the girl, and she left her “friends” and joined the lonely girl, walking home with her and becoming her friend. Her gentle, caring heart began to show me the often-hidden beauty that kindness and thoughtfulness create in our world.

We married, and she graduated college as a teacher, eager to begin teaching young children. We were so delighted when she brought our daughter, Lisa, into the world. Kathy had again opened a truly magical experience for me as I joined her in caring for this amazing little being – so dependent, and yet so eager to discover, explore and delight in life.

As a graduating law student, I spent a day in Santa Fe in the Governor’s office, reading the bills that had been passed in the legislative session. That morning as I was leaving, with a delighted smile, Kathy said to me, “The house is full of angels.” I returned home that evening, and little Lisa was standing in the crib, holding out her arms to me. I lifted her up – my heart lifted by her smile – and called to Kathy. There was no answer.

Four days of unbelievable anguish would follow. Hours of hope, on the precipice of a despair that was so dark I could not go there. Then the police chaplain came to the door. I learned that a young man we knew had passed the bounds of sanity, and with his gun, had ended this precious life.

The world I lived in had disappeared in one moment. I suddenly found myself the single parent to a precious baby girl who had just lost the center of her life, her mother. The overwhelming pain of my own loss made it difficult for me to function at the level of love and care that my little Lisa needed. The pain I felt made it difficult to function at all.

My daughter, this tiny, beautiful being, was about to have her first birthday. Her delight, her security, her joy, her whole short experience of life was her interaction with her mother. Daily she had experienced the amazing mother love that responded to each moment and experience with complete delight in caring for her. Joyously her mother had been there for her, meeting her every need.

I loved to listen as Kathy would laugh with delight and Lisa would squeal with glee. That tiny hand would reach out and touch her mommy’s face, her bright eyes shining as tender arms surrounded her, holding her in the security of that deepest love. We treasured each moment – where rolling over became crawling – where each new toy was tasted, chewed and thrown. There were those tentative first steps and falls, and getting up to try again. Kathy’s tender hand was always close, as steps became trips across the room, and we laughed in delight at each magnificent accomplishment. Lisa’s world was filled with baths and songs, books and lullabies. Those two – again and again, moment by moment – created a world that was filled with a pure magic of the heart. It was a world that knew only care, tenderness, warmth and love.

Suddenly, that mother’s love was no more. That loving embrace was not there. Her mother was gone. All the goodness this precious little being had ever known had ended.

The precious eleven-month old baby now depended on me. I had been an active part of her life, but compared to the connection and care of her mother, my presence was minor. Moreover, at that moment, it was difficult for me to function at all. I existed in a world numb with shock, which would suddenly and frequently open to wrenching emotional pain.

As I focused on my baby daughter, and reflected on her overwhelming loss, I realized what an extremely poor substitute I was for her mother. I constantly struggled to not fall into the world of anger and hatred toward the individual who ended my wife’s life. I knew that this little girl who had lost everything needed her father’s love, not the attention of a man struggling with anger and debilitated by loss. I was painfully aware of this impossible conflict within me.

I had to fight each moment to not give into the anger and hatred that seemed so easy, so justified, so natural to feel. I knew that this child, in the loss of all that had been her world, her security, her happiness, needed my love and care – because I was the only one left. I knew that if I let myself be consumed with anger and hatred, I could not begin to bring to her the level of love, tenderness, understanding and patience that she so deeply needed in this moment, when her small world had been violated so deeply. So I asked for help.

My desire to care for this wonderful child, to be the daddy she needed, was a huge part of what caused me to reach into a deep place of sincerity within myself and ask for help. The pain, blame and anger it would be so easy to feel seemed so right, and so justified, that it was very difficult to even consider turning away from them. However, for my Lisa, I knew at some deep core level of my being that I had to do it. I had to find some peace, some relief from my pain and turmoil, so that I could love and care for my daughter.

I asked for help. It was not an asking to anyone or anything in the outer world. I did have caring family, both Kathy’s and mine, who were there to help as they could. However, I had no concept that there was anyone or anything in the outer world that could help me with this struggle that was taking place inside of me. So my asking was within.

It could probably best be described as a form of desperate, anguished prayer. I did not even know clearly what I was asking for, because no help seemed possible. It was mostly a deeply sincere plea from the heart for help. I understood that the help I was asking for was some form of relief from the conflicting, controlling emotional world that was within me. I knew intellectually that forgiveness would have to be a part of my relief, eventually. That was a part of my asking. However, at the core of my asking was the awareness that I needed to be the loving presence that my little daughter needed. That was what was really important .

The response to my anguished asking occurred sometime in the weeks that followed. It occurred in a moment when my spiritual heart opened, although I did not understand that at the time.

I was with my delightful Lisa. We were alone in the house, playing on the floor. Having grown uncomfortable on the floor, I pushed myself up and sat on the couch. I was feeling a caring warmth in my heart for her as I watched her play on the floor before me.

Suddenly, I felt my heart expanding. I experienced an amazing, ever-growing feeling of love. It seemed to fill me, becoming so powerful that it began to overwhelm my senses. It was a love so great that I lost all awareness of anything else. I lost awareness of my daughter, of the couch, of the room. The feelings of love I experienced in that moment were greater and more powerful than any feeling, any emotion – anything I had ever experienced before or since. It filled my mind, my heart and the cells of my body. It was blissful, ecstatically blissful. It lifted me into an ecstasy that I am still completely incapable of describing. All of my awareness was filled with this overwhelming, blissful love.

Years later, a friend describing her near-death experience used the phrase, “love to the millionth power.” I know she experienced what I had that day.

I have no sense of how long this experience of ecstatic love lasted. When I was able to focus my attention back on the reality of that room, Lisa was playing quietly, and I was filled with a deep, beautiful, glowing sense of peace.

In the days and weeks that followed, I discovered that the emotional conflict I had struggled with since Kathy’s death no longer existed within me. I did not have to struggle to not feel anger toward the gunman. I did not feel hatred. Those feelings no longer seemed to have attractiveness to me. The struggle I had gone through to not give into that bitter world no longer existed.

Later, when I reflected on this tragedy that had filled our lives, I understood at a deep, intuitive level that the person who had taken this precious life was as much the victim of violence that had touched his life as were my wife, our little child and myself. I felt forgiveness for him and for myself. I felt peace.

It is that feeling of that amazing love, that healing of my pain, that greater wisdom from which I could now view life, that has directed my life ever since. I have searched to understand what happened to me in those moments when I was freed from the call of anger, hatred and pain.

I know that the wisdom, love and healing power I experienced in that moment on my couch, with little Lisa, is present within every one of us. It is available within you just as it was within me. I came to understand it as a power that we are able to access through our hearts. It brought me great freedom and deep peace. It is my heartfelt prayer that you let it do the same for you.

I do not want to create a false impression that I no longer struggled with the feelings of loss. Although there was a great reduction in the intensity and control that those feelings exerted on my life, they continued to be present as I genuinely sought to understand the nature of love, my love for Kathy, our love of others and the experience of loss .

The forgiveness that I desired in my asking was completely and fully given, in that experience of ecstatic love. The tortured soul who did that cruel, violent act – whom I met with in the state mental facility at a later time – evokes only compassion from my heart.

Years later, as I worked with healing emotional trauma that came up in myself or in others, I would return often to examine this core experience. It was through this that I entered an inner peace that included profound forgiveness – and relief from my emotional pain.

I now understand that when love touches our pain, we heal. We heal to the extent that we let that love in to touch and transform that part of us that carries the emotional pain. The source of that love within us is the spiritual heart. It is the instrument of love. Love is not only its access code, love is its nature – and therefore, it is your nature and mine.