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Welcome back to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Hope. What if the key to healing every kind of pain mental, emotional, spiritual wasn't something you had to search for, but something you've always had within you? Today, we're diving into the heart, not just the love you see in movies, but the raw, transformative power that lives at the core of who you are. Let's explore what it means to live from the heart, why so many of us have closed ours and how we can begin to gently open it again. And how we can begin to gently open it again. We've become almost blasé about the word love. Oh, my god, I love these shoes, I love having Fridays off, I love watching Netflix.

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Somewhere along the way, our understanding and appreciation for the power of love has been diluted. It's become casual, almost throwaway. But love, real love, is anything but. As one of my mentors, dr Paul Douglas, says, love is a verb. Love is divine expression in action. It is always present, always accessible. Even when we don't feel loving or loved, love is still there. Even when it feels impossible, love is possible. Love is your birthright. Love is the answer. Love heals the heart. Love is wiser than the brain. Gandhi once said may my actions arise from the wisdom of the heart, not may my brain be smart enough to figure things out. We can cultivate a heart that is ready for anything, not because we should be any certain way, but because this is our true nature. It's like chocolate. We don't need to be persuaded to take another piece, it's natural. It's already what we want Not everyone, but most of us. We often separate things heart from brain, forgiveness from compassion, presence from awareness but at their core they're not different. They're all facets of the same source. We ask what is presence? Is it awareness? Is it something sacred? We ask the same of love. Is it just a feeling, just an emotion? No, love is far more than that. It is sacred. It is the foundation of everything that matters.

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Brian McLaren, who is an author speaker. He's the Dean of the Faculty for Center for Action and Contemplation, which was founded by Father Richard Rohr. He says this of the many radical things said and done by Jesus, his unflinching emphasis on love was most radical of all. Love was the greatest commandment, his prime directive love for God, for self, for neighbor, for stranger, for alien, for outsider, for outcast and even for enemy, as he himself modeled. The new commandment of love meant that neither beliefs nor words, neither taboos, systems, structures nor the labels that enshrined them mattered most. Love decentered everything else. Love relativized everything else. Love relativized everything else. Love took priority over everything else, everything. This theme that love is the foundation of everything that truly matters echoes through philosophies, spiritual traditions and ideologies across time.

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Love gives us a power and strength that defies measure. There are different ways to access this power. One is through the process of unlearning, releasing the old programming and patterns you've inherited ways of seeking love, thinking, reacting, emoting. Letting go of these conditioned strategies brings you closer to the pure, unfiltered essence of the heart. Or you can go directly to the heart's essence by connecting with any of love's qualities.

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This is what I mean when I talk about the facets of the heart, expressions like acceptance, presence, invincibility, authenticity, gratitude, joy, presence, invincibility, authenticity, gratitude, joy, forgiveness and compassion. There are even more than that, but that's a start. You can't grow in this life without love. To wait for it, to passively hope it finds you, is one of our greatest mistakes. Plants don't wait for water, they seek it, they stretch roots towards it. In the same way, we must seek, cultivate and open ourselves to love, not just wait for it to happen, because love isn't something that lives in others, just like happiness doesn't come from others. We feel love when our heart opens to it, when it remembers that infinite unity and bliss that already lives inside us and within life itself. We feel love because we are in awe of another divine being. But make no mistake, being in love isn't because of the beloved. It's because love is your natural state. Let's take a closer look at some of the facets of the heart. This will not be a deep dive into each one. That will come later. For now we're painting in broad strokes.

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So, in no particular order, let's begin with acceptance. Acceptance is the gateway to non-resistance and freedom from suffering. It doesn't mean you have to like what's happening or pretend to be okay with it. It simply means allowing what is to be, without adding layers of judgment or denial. Even if you can't fully accept something yet, you can start by accepting that, accepting that you can't accept. When we begin to practice radical acceptance, we start to trust that there is a deeper order to life. Things aren't random and with this, the illusion of victimhood begins to dissolve. The truth is there are no victims. Life is for us. Often, our greatest challenges carry our greatest teachings calling us to strengthen the heart, restore balance or learn a soul lesson we came here for. That said, acceptance is not about bypassing pain or sugarcoating trauma. There's a difference between authentic spiritual insight and spiritual bypass. I'll explore this more deeply in the Chakra 7 week, because it's essential to acknowledge that acceptance requires nuance, care and deep compassion. It's an art.

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Next, let's touch on invincibility. You have survived everything life has brought you thus far, every loss, every heartbreak, every turning point. You're still here, and if you resonate with the idea that energy cannot be created or destroyed, then perhaps you also understand. Mortality is an illusion. Life goes on, consciousness continues. This recognition is the key to deep, unshakable security. Now, what makes life feel easier? Unshakable security? Now, what makes life feel easier? Alignment or authenticity, the sense that your inner self and your outer life are in harmony. Alignment is the key to inner guidance and intuition. It dismantles the illusion that the mind must figure everything out, because the truth is the mind is a brilliant tool but a terrible master. To hear that inner guidance, though, you must be present. This is the key to what Eckhart Tolle calls the power of now.

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We've been conditioned to believe that innocence is naive that joy and love are things we'll find in the future, out there. But that's the illusion. There's only this moment. Anything you seek out there must be. That's the illusion. There's only this moment. Anything you seek out there must be touched in here first. Everything you long for in the future peace, joy, love can only be felt now, and perhaps nothing reveals the heart's wisdom more clearly than gratitude, the key to the power of attraction.

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When asked the secret to wealth, self-made billionaire Sir John Templeton simply said gratitude, because if you've got everything and you're not grateful, you're poor, and if you seemingly have nothing but you're grateful, even for the smallest things, then you're rich. Money won't make you rich, only gratitude will. Gratitude also opens the door to generosity, which is the key to meaningful relationships. You can't give what you don't have. And here's the deeper truth Everything you give to yourself, you give to others, and everything you give to others, you also give to yourself. This dispels the illusion that any kind of wealth material, emotional, spiritual comes from effort alone. No true wealth arises from gratitude and these facets of the heart. They don't exist in isolation. They overlap and illuminate each other.

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Brene Brown once said that the only difference between people who can fully embrace joy and those who can't is gratitude Just that and joy. Joy is the key to loving life. It dissolves the illusion that love, happiness or fulfillment can come from outside of ourselves. The truth, it all resides within us. Life becomes bliss when we choose to cultivate a blissful life. To do that, we need acceptance for all that challenges us. But we also need to remember our deep interconnectedness. We are not separate. We are all threads of the same tapestry and this is where forgiveness and compassion come in. Compassion is the key to unity consciousness. It dissolves the illusion of separateness and reconnects us to the truth. We are one. But sometimes, before we can access compassion, we need to begin with forgiveness. Forgiveness is the key to reclaiming our power and releasing judgment. It reveals the illusion that judgment is ours to make. The deeper truth is that what we judge we become. And where do we find all these spiritual tenets? In the heart. They are facets of love.

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For the first 35 years of my life, I had a real aversion to anything even remotely related to the heart, or whimsy, for that matter. Hearts on Valentine's Day or any day really. Ugh, mushy, gooey sentiment, gross Unicorns, butterflies, care bears, disgusting. It's not that I didn't want love. I did desperately. I even chased it blindly and at times recklessly. But anything that felt too vulnerable or soft, anything that hinted at tenderness or emotional openness, I saw as weakness. If you had told me back then that I'd one day teach something called heart-based meditation, I would never have believed you, because for me, love meant danger, love meant pain. Love meant opening myself up, only to have the person I trusted and needed most devastate me.

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I grew up with a mother who would say I love you more than anything in the world and five minutes later sob you are the root of all evil and all my sadness is because of you. Talk about mixed messages. It's no wonder I wasn't very good at loving others for a long time. It's no wonder I wasn't very good at loving others for a long time. I made very painful mistakes. I hurt people I cared about. It's why I'm on my third marriage. It's why I swore I would never have children, even though deep down I longed to be a mother.

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I thought I had to shut off the deepest parts of my heart just to survive. Even being in the vicinity of my heart felt unsafe. Like so many people, I lived with a chronic sense of deficiency, feeling wrong, broken and not enough. And when that feeling gets reinforced again and again, whether by your childhood or the relationships you choose as an adult, it can seem like the only way to cope is to close your heart even tighter. But then I found Ayurveda and heart-based meditation and spiritual mentoring, and I began to see, little by little, that the walls I'd built around my heart weren't protecting me. They were imprisoning me. They were creating the very pain I was desperate to escape.

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With a lot of support and some brutally honest self-reflection, I started to open again. I began exploring the facets of the heart, not as lofty concepts but as lived experiences. I found compassion and forgiveness, first for my mother and then for others who had hurt me along the way, and finally for myself. I found true acceptance for myself and for my life exactly as it is. I discovered genuine gratitude for my path, not in spite of my pain, but because of how it shaped me. I let go of all the shoulds and began living a life deeply aligned with who I truly am, not who others expect me to be. And then joy came unexpectedly, powerfully and more real than I ever imagined possible. I realized I am invincible, not in a superhero kind of way, but in the deeply human way that knows we can thrive no matter what life throws at us. I am more present to my life than I ever thought I could be, more than I ever wanted to be back when presence felt dangerous. Now I love well, I'm a true partner to an incredible husband and I'm a mom a good one. I'm not perfect no one is but I've done the thing that matters most, which is break the cycle of abuse.

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My story is not unique. I share it so that you know you aren't the only one who has learned to close the heart in order to survive. And the first step back home to the heart is honoring exactly that. Honoring the very walls you built to protect yourself. Nothing in the wisdom of true creation is ever wasted, not even mistakes. One of my favorite necklaces reads beautiful mistakes led to the best version of her. Yes, mistakes can be beautiful. So can heartbreak. So can the walls we build to survive. If you've shut down your heart, if you've sworn, you'd never let yourself get hurt again. Honor that. There's wisdom in it, your heart is worth protecting and that protection has served a purpose. It's helped you survive. It's kept you safe when safety felt scarce. So thank it. That protective instinct was not wrong. It was intelligent, it was loving in its own way. Even when new insight starts to show you how closing your heart may have limited your life or your joy, still honor it because it came from a positive intention to keep you whole, to keep you safe.

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And this is where acceptance can become such a powerful starting point. What we resist persists. What we accept, we release. These are universal laws. The more you resist what's happening or what's happened, the more energy it drains. The more you accept it, the more space you create for healing, expansion and new choices. And here's something important Resistance is natural. It's not something to push against or judge. You can accept the resistance itself and that simple act of acceptance. That is a profound step out of suffering. The more you accept, the wider the opening for new energy to enter. And in that opening you begin to remember your true nature. You begin to come home to your heart, and as much as part of me still cringes and shakes my head in disbelief when I say it love heals all.

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Living from the heart, truly living from the heart, is the answer to every version of the question how do I heal from this? Whether it's mental pain, emotional wounds or spiritual emptiness, the heart knows the way home. So here's the invitation start small, choose just one facet acceptance, presence, forgiveness, gratitude and begin there. Let that be the door you walk through. You do not have to do it perfectly, you don't even have to fully believe it yet. Just be willing. And the beautiful thing is that all the facets are different legs on a table. Pull one and the others will come along.

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As you've been listening, did you notice a part of you tighten or pull away when I mentioned one of these facets? Did something inside you whisper that one's hard for me? Maybe it's forgiveness or acceptance, or simply staying present. Or maybe, like me, you've realized that somewhere along the way you shut your heart down to protect yourself. Tell me about it.

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What came up for you? I'd really like to hear. You can hit the message me button if you're listening on Spotify or email me at rootsoftherise at gmailcom. If today's episode spoke to you, please consider leaving a rating, a review or sharing it with a friend. It really helps spread the message. Consider leaving a rating, a review or sharing it with a friend. It really helps spread the message and stay tuned because on Monday we'll be diving into the fifth chakra, the seat of our programming around communication. Have a wonderful weekend and remember, know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be, the work to become who you want to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal and seek the support you need to thrive.