“Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.” James Dewar
By this they mean that an open heart receives with joy and gratitude the love that is offered to it. An open heart gives with warmth and honesty all the love a heart can bear.
When our heart is open, it can work in harmony with our head. Our mind is not the ruler of our heart, or vice versa. They must balance each other out, and this can only happen if our heart is open.
First of all, there is a door of the heart. What does it mean to have an “open heart”? Most people believe that they have an open heart, though in reality we are all protecting it from things we believe will hurt us emotionally. This is our natural defence mechanism, and it doesn’t mean that we are unkind or not loving. But to have an open heart means to un-learn this.
Fear-fear of rejection, fear of not being loved, fear of failure-makes us close our heart. If we fear all this-which we all do-we start to believe the fear we have is true. The reason why we protect ourselves is to simply make our world a safer place, by avoiding people who we believe will threaten or hurt us. It doesn’t make us bad; it-we believe- makes us feel safe.
An open mind is an understanding mind which will develop an appreciation for people. When you take the trouble to think of other people’s feelings, their viewpoints and their desires you are saying “people are important”. An open mind will accept other people unconditionally. When you do this you discipline your emotions and you allow people to be who they are with all their idiosyncrasies, differences and irritations. To do this, you need to let down your barriers and trust people, and open up to the world. Most importantly, we need to trust our instincts and believe that we will not get hurt.
People may have different opinions on what an open heart is, and that’s alright, because the further we look into our opinions it all turns out to