Felt with the Heart

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart."
-- Helen Keller


This has been an emotionally tumultuous month of transition for me, as I have been helping my older daughter prepare to move away to college. I have been surprised by feeling pangs of loss long before she goes, with an intensification of heartache the closer we come to the day she moves away. Even though I know that this move marks a natural passage of maturity for my daughter, it's astonishing to experience such deep feelings of love and impending loss as I feel how much I will miss her once she moves away. What is most surprising to me is how I feel my emotions in my entire body as all manner of unexpected physical sensations -- such as heart ache, butterflies in my stomach, and nervous restlessness. I am surprised that so much love could have been hiding dormant inside me, mostly unnoticed, all these years... until this time of imminent separation. The love I feel for my daughter is clearly so vast that it cannot possibly all fit in my heart, for it is affecting all of me.

Before going on my morning walk near the woods in the early morning summer fog today, I got a clear intuitive impression that I would see things I would like to photograph, and that it would therefore be a very good idea for me to bring my camera with me on my walk. With camera slung over my shoulder, and the family dog trotting happily at my side, I wondered what I might find. My thoughts turned to those I love, and how elusive the most beautiful things can be to capture on film, due to their fleeting, transitory nature... or the fact that their most beautiful essence can seldom be collapsed into two visual dimensions. With my mind wandering off in various directions, I completely forgot about taking pictures, as I admired nature's beauty all around me.

I looked up from my reverie as I walked along the forest, and was stunned to notice a stump that was very clearly heart-shaped. I had walked past it dozens of times before, yet today was the first time I had noticed the heart shape -- so I stopped and took a picture. As I continued my walk, I found dozens more hearts in the most unlikely places, and I snapped five more photos of heart-shaped ivy leaves, heart-shaped lichen growing on a rock, a heart-shaped string arranged perfectly in the road, a heart-shaped stone, and heart-shaped branches in an oak tree. Almost everywhere I looked, there was another heart looking back at me. Some of them were more obvious than others... and some of them, such as the heart-shaped-string, were impressionistic... mostly hinting at the essential form of a heart, as if making the statement, "You know what this is!"

Several people have recently shared stories with me for RealityShifters about how they find lucky pennies and four-leaf clovers in great profusion just about everywhere they go sometimes. These types of discoveries represent similar examples of coming across things we might not see at all unless we are in the right state of mind. Often, these reminders give us a sense of connectedness and love, when we might otherwise feel alone. When we find something that shows up as a sign repeatedly, again and again, the realityshifters perspective is these signs are part of our waking dream... that as our life can be seen as a lucid dream, these symbols have a message for us. I describe the concept of Living Lucidly in a Shifting Reality in much more detail in Chapter Eight of my book, Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World. The heart shape symbolizes love in all its many shapes and forms to me... and serves as a reminder that when I love someone or something with all my heart, love will always and ever be with me. Wherever I go, there is love.

The wonderful thing I felt as I found more hearts on one short walk than I usually notice in an entire week or month was that with each joyful discovery, I became more aware of how focusing on love is enough to bring showers of hearts to me in great profusion... giving me confirmation that simply by feeling so vulnerable and open to experiencing the vastness of love in my life, here it is, all around me. All I need do is recognize it when it shows up in its many forms and guises. And even through the heart ache of my daughter's impending move, I see that the beauty her love brings to my life will always be with me, however far away she may go.

Wishing you may discover just how good your life can get,
Cynthia Sue Larson
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You can read more articles by Cynthia Sue Larson and subscribe to her free ezine, RealityShifters News, at
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