Alice Walker quote heart ...so open that the wind blows through it...

this comment from Alice Walker and i liked the imagery, the consciousness of what she describes about heartbrokenness...She speaks of Heart in the sense of heartfulness. I love how resilient words are, how they can be used like an artist uses paints. I know the process she describes, as do most of us. hmmmmm

Alice's reference to Pema Chodron and the wind blowing through ones heart-that is the sensation that feels unavailable to me when i think of war. What i find is almost a constant opportunity lately to breathe, calm, connect and hold openness, stillness. I am getting insights into how the past few years' experiences have taught me what it is to feel the moment, rather than "other sensations" that are future/past/fear/control based.

Alice Walker(reply to an interviewer): You know, what are hearts for? Hearts are there to be broken, and I say that because that seems to be just part of what happens with hearts. I mean, mine has been broken so many times that I have lost count. But it just seems to be broken open more and more and more, and it just gets bigger. In fact, I was saying to my therapist not long ago, "You know, my heart by now feels open like a suitcase. It feels like it has just sort of dropped open, you know, like how a big suitcase just falls open. It feels like that."Instead of that feeling of having a thorn through your heart, that feeling Pema Chodron talks about in tonglen meditation, you have a sense of openness, as if the wind could blow through it. And that's the way I'm used to my heart feeling. The feeling of the heart being so open that the wind blows through it. I think that is the way it's supposed to feel when you're in balance. And when you get out of balance, you feel like there's no wind, there's no breeze, there's just this rock and it has a big thing sticking through it. I don't know how you get from one feeling to the other, except through meditation, often, but also activism, just seeing what needs to be done in the world, or in our families, and just start doing it.