Your heart should always arrive before your head.
It’s an old Sufi saying, and I don’t know who actually said it. In fact, it’s such an obscure saying that a Google search results in cardiopulmonary results and nothing about Sufis at all. Sheesh.
But let that roll though your heart, and spin it on up to your head, and feel how that feels. Your heart should always arrive before your head. Yes. Send your love before you. Follow your love wherever you send it. Lead with love. Lead with what your heart tells you is right.
This has so many applications that the mind staggers a bit with the implications. Before you leave for a party, send your heart first, so you are ready to greet people with warmth and kindness and real affection. Before you leave for work, send your heart first, and soothe the savage beasts so your day goes better and you have more room for love. Before you head home for the evening, send your heart before you so you can be ready to meet your family with grace and patience, even if they are being pesky teenagers. It will help you remember that you love them and really don’t want to wring their little necks. Probably.
Send your heart before you go to a job interview, and see if you can get a little information. See what the atmosphere is like. Feel into the corporate culture. Feel into the vibe of the place. Prepare a space for yourself to feel confident and safe. It isn’t just love for other people; send your heart first to keep you comfortable.
If you offer people an opportunity to be their best around you, most of them will take it. Not all, of course, because some people are unreachable. But most of them will, and for some it will be the chance they need to break out of a hard pattern and start taking the journey to become who they will eventually be. For some, it will be the first time someone has ever honored the highest and truest parts of them, and they will never forget that.
You can also use it as an exercise to build your intuition.
- Feel into your destination before you go and get a sense of the energy, who is there, how things are going. Write down a few notes in a journal and see how close you got. There are things that are easy to verify, like who is there, or whether the mood is joyful, bored, rowdy, reverent, or depressed.
- Try to see what colors are dominating; that’s easy to verify. Again, make some notes. If you have a strong blue vibe and the dominant color is actually green or purple, well, blue is part of both of those colors, so no cigar, but it’s a start. Keep trying. You will have wild successes and abject failures, but the more you practice, the more successes you will have.
- Try casting your heart into the future a tiny bit as well as into the distance, and see if you can tap somebody on the shoulder. Send a little spark of your love and personality with it. When you get there, go up and tap that person on the shoulder and see if they felt if from before. They will tell you!
- When you send someone a card or a letter, send it with the intention that they will feel your presence before they even open the envelope, and your card will unfold like a warm hug. You’ll be surprised how many times people tell you, “Getting your card was like getting a hug from you, it was like you were right here!”
The more tuned in and loving we become, the more life opens up the cornucopia for us and says, “Take what you need.” When we lead with love, it’s much harder to drop into a place of hate. When we lead with love, we are more likely to see the best in everyone, and that can be quite an education. I’d say try it for a week, but really, let’s all try it for life.
