The day after our Thursday night lecture with Marla Mervis-Hartmann, I found myself choosing in terms of higher order “pleasure”—the kind of deep pleasure, as Marla described, that has almost nothing to do with short-term desires or what a distorted mind might perceive as a “need.” Higher Order Pleasure leads from the heart center and asks, what will make this radiant warm place in my chest sing? What will make my spirit truly, deeply happy?
Recently, I received an instruction from Emily Pompei–a gifted medical intuitive and very popular speaker for OMA–to go right to my heart whenever I thought my abdomen felt bloated or uncomfortable. I hadn’t told her, but she had intuited that I frequently had abdominal issues. “Totally ignore your stomach,” she said, and go straight into your heart. This practice is a way of reframing a myth I used to hold about illness in my body. It is also a way of leading with the heart in all things.
One can constantly lead with the heart’s question in order to clarify the brightest path through the day, to direct the day rather than passively allow false imprints, negative habits of mind, and fears that run on automatic loop to direct the day for us.
OMA founder Gail Hunter talks about the adult “you” and the child “you.” How old do you feel? she has often asked when I expressed fearful or unhappy thoughts about what was happening in my life. When I have chosen foods that send me into addictive brain chemistry—for me, high sugar or high caffeine foods especially—I have often felt like the five-year-old me who was profoundly neglected, alone, and scared. Like that five-year old trying to figure out how to survive in unbearable conditions, the adult me has run through what will happen and when and what I will do in a day to be happy; the adult me has operated from within a frenetic anxiety that, while appearing to be in control, is the total opposite of empowered. Running scared, I have picked at my skin; I have fretted over possibilities that weren’t even real; I have fled the present moment—which is to say, my body: the body is and houses the “us” that is present in the physical world. Today and for the rest of my life, I plan instead to check in with the heart that beats right here in this second on earth, and to ask the spirit who lives there: what will make me truly happy?
Marla mentioned feeling sad after eating high sugar foods she had obsessed about eating. I identify with that. My sadness is partly about the fact that eating on its own does not have the power to fulfill that deep desire for joy. Only we, and the intention we bring, have the power. We use our power by checking in with our actual needs and wishes. I felt a lot of joy around food today: I took the time to make hummus from scratch, stopping to slip the skins off the chickpeas I had cooked the night before (which frequent internet commentators say makes the best hummus). I luxuriously drizzled olive oil and bright paprika over the top. It wasn’t the food itself but the awareness and the attention to making something beautiful and nourishing that brought me such calm and sustaining joy. It was knowing that my body would feel loved after making and eating this food and knowing others would enjoy the food with me. It was realizing my power to cook rather than feeling dependent on someone else or some company to cook for me. It was taking the time that a worried me had said I “should” use differently. It was trusting that all would run better and more smoothly if I moved to my spirit’s own rhythm. As Marla suggested, this is not the American Dream many of us have been raised on. We have not been taught to be truly powerful, though some of us have been taught a distorted idea about desiring power over others or power to acquire money and objects. As Gail often says, real power to create the meaning of our lives is something we are all born innately knowing how to do, and we can remember this calling to be co-creators of heaven right here on earth.
We can tap into our own high vibration to help us see needs and desires for our spirit that our heads might not even be aware of. We will know when we’ve gotten the message when what we choose in a given moment sends momentum forward: sends us joy and energy long after the choice has completed. I invite you to join me today in leading from the heart center with that very grown up power.