The Heart Chakra, the Father’s love, and what my daughters have taught me that no teacher ever could
Last week I told you about standing at a grave and making a vow.
This week is about what keeping that vow has actually required.
Because the vow was easy to make in that quiet cemetery. What came after was fatherhood — the ongoing practice of loving three people more than your own comfort, more than your own grief, more than your own idea of how things should go.
I have not always done that well.
But I have never stopped trying.
This week’s piece goes into the Heart Chakra through the lens of the Father — Anahata, the air element, the love that persists through rupture and distance and all the ways human beings inevitably fail each other.
It goes into the distinction that I believe is one of the most important edges for any father, any leader, any man who holds responsibility for others:
Protection creates safety. Control creates fear.
And it goes into the thing fatherhood has taught me that no ceremony, no retreat, no teacher in any country ever did — that sometimes love has absolutely nothing to do with being useful. That sometimes it is just presence. Just open. Just there.
The current chapter of this fatherhood story — the one still being written in real time — goes deeper for paid subscribers this week.
Next week is Father’s Day. The piece I have planned for that day is the one the whole month has been building toward.
Read the full piece →Still learning to open rather than close,
Shiva J