“The fourth chakra, the heart, is one of the main human chakras. It is a very important energy center because the human species learns through the heart. Not a mental sort of learning, but an experiential type; this is how we become wise. The heart is a gateway into the higher levels of the Self, a pathway between the personality we live with every day and the higher, wiser part of us that only sometimes comes out. When the heart center is functioning well, we have continuous access to that wise part of ourselves.

The heart chakra has two aspects: the front, located in the middle of the chest close to the physical heart, and the back, between the shoulder blades. The front of the heart processes the consciousness of compassion, kindness, love and connectedness with all life. If this chakra is balanced and open, we feel connected to the whole world, we are able to love not just people close to us, but all humans, all animals, the planet, etc. An open heart allows us to feel the whole person, not just what is presented to us. Kind of like ‘seeing the good in people’, the heart shows us that there is a capacity for loving and kindness even in the most closed off, scared and acting mean/angry/rude person. The open heart also can tell you if something is not true, if someone is lying about their feelings. With an open heart we are able to love without the expectation of being loved back. We do not necessarily give love to others; we allow it to flow between us and them. The energy that this Universe is made of is unconditional; it is this pure unconditionality we humans call love. Universal energy equals Universal love, it is one and the same. Universal love energy can be twisted, diffused, pressured, or turned inside out, and we experience all these variations in different ways (as anger, hate, pleasure, joy, terror, cruelty, curiosity etc.), but before they were modified to make the diversity of expressions, they all were originally love. Since everything in this Universe is made of love, the heart chakra directs only this love energy towards someone; love cannot be separated into love and non-love, everything is love. The front of the heart chakra also transmutes the lower chakra’s frequencies into higher ones. It does so on every level, serving as a true gateway from the lower personality to the higher. This connects to the action of the physical heart, which we will go into later. But the energy of compassion is the main one running through the heart.

Here’s an example:

You are talking on the phone with your husband about your daughter’s summer camp, he barely listens for a few minutes and then says sharply ‘get to the point already’, you call him ‘insensitive bastard’ and slam down the phone … yet you know of the difficulties at his job lately and also your tendency to ramble. Feeling remorseful with a clogged heart chakra you call him back and, igniting compassion, tell him that you know what stress he is under and will discuss this issue later. Compassion is the energy of recognition of the Self and the other, and they coexist in love.

If the front of your heart is closed, you will have difficulty loving unconditionally, instead expecting something in return for the show of love. If someone experiences a lot of pain and the heart closes, it might make the person cruel and cold. This is only a defense from pain. If she faces what is in her heart, the chakra will open again, changing cruelty into kindness. A closed heart also makes it very hard to trust heart feelings, so one tends to expect the worst in people, relationships and situations. A person with a closed heart deals with life more by their chosen rules than by moment-to-moment experience. Since life is ever-changing, choosing rules once and then following them for one’s whole life is not going to work, and a person who does that will have to find other ways of experiencing love (it might be through accomplishment, or ego power, or even cruelty and control). This is one of the major causes of heart attack in the physical body—the heart chakra is saying ‘enough, we have to open up and run energy here’ and the physical heart has to compensate. If the change is too abrupt and the old patterns have to be broken, the physical heart may have a problem, hence the attack.

If the heart chakra is strong, but spins counterclockwise, a person will try to get the feeling of love from others by constantly giving love out. You finally got a short vacation for yourself and flew away into tropical paradise. You do not know anyone there, but it is good, because you wanted to ‘get away from it all’. Yet soon you find yourself agreeing to go to dinner with your hotel neighbors, people that you do not even really like. They invited you and you did not want to disappoint them by saying you would rather sit alone. You arrive at the dinner where you do not want to be and carry on a conversation, trying to be nice to everyone. You did not know that other people were invited, and everyone eventually gets into a heated discussion on a topic you do not really care about, but yet you find yourself calming and cheering everyone and even promising them that you will go somewhere tomorrow with each couple at the table. Before long your entire vacation week is filled with activities that are meaningless to you to please people you do not really care to know well. Your heart chakra is spinning backwards, pushing you into pleasing everyone around.

Another example:

You are at a business meeting with two other companies, attempting a joint venture. Everyone sits at a large table in the plain-looking conference room. You are part of a team of four people representing your company. In a short while conversation heats up, everyone is trying to show why their proposal is better, and they are interrupting each other and pushing their point. You emotionally withdraw from the room and wonder: ‘Why can’t we just all get along, be friends and love each other? Why do they have to be so mean?’ Your heart chakra is huge and spinning backwards, pulling you away from reality.

Pay attention, this is important, for all of you I-want-to-fix-the-world-through-loving-everyone and Why-can’t-we-all-just-love-each-other types. Listen up! ‘Everything will be ok if I only love enough’ is not going to work. If you have this belief system, it means your heart is spinning backwards, the chakra is too big and instead of ‘feeding’ you it tries to ‘feed’ the whole world! It is an enormous energy drain on your system, and it requires the use of other chakra’s energy or even their reserves, if nothing else is available. This overuse of the heart depletes you, creating emotional and physical imbalances. 

The back aspect of the heart chakra is positive will, or the will to act. It is like a large propeller behind our back that moves you forward in life. Free will is the ability to choose action. We really only have two choices: to act or not to act. How we act is secondary to having the freedom of choice. The will center of the heart allows us to feel the power of that freedom. Any accomplishment requires the use of will, otherwise we do not have enough discipline to follow through. If the will center is closed, you feel like you have no choice, you are at the mercy of circumstances, other people, God. Usually this happens when the front of the heart is overactive and draws all the energy into itself. We feel like we have no choice but to try to please and love the whole world with our energy.

When we face a decision and have to act, especially in circumstances requiring bravery (from entering a burning building to finally telling your mother you do not want her to call ten times per day), the back aspect of the heart can get very large. This is a normal occurrence. This is why when a person finally decides to act, s/he tends to straighten the spine and pull the shoulders back—we are creating space for the will center to open. But once the action is on the way, it usually does not require such a massive amount of energy and the will chakra shrinks back to its normal size. Problems arise when the will chakra stays too large all the time—it overrides the heart. A person with a chakra like that will be afraid of his feelings and want strength through the mental and conceptual levels, dishonoring his emotional/feeling side. He will perceive feelings as a weakness and attempt to override them with intellect.

Ideally, divine will (Soul’s will) and our personal will are the same. This happens when the will center is active and balanced with the front of the heart. Then life (divine will) seems to align with what we want, what we choose is accomplished with ease, help is available and so on. If the back of the heart is too large and also spins counterclockwise, an overactive will is projected out. That chakra takes energy away from the front of the heart first, making the heart center small and the will center large. This depletes the rest of the energy system. A person with this configuration sees divine will in opposition to personal will, and life seems to be against her. In this situation accomplishment is only possible through overriding others, that is, through control. She wants to own life, control others and even her own feelings.

Here’s an example:

Hank arrives at his son’s football game. In the parking lot he has a problem with the way others are parking, thinking they are ‘idiots’ and ‘need to take parking lessons’. The game begins and in the first quarter Hank disagrees with the coach, who pulls a particular boy off the field. Hank believes the coach is an ‘idiot, who has no idea what he is doing’ and that ‘the coach is trying to sabotage the team’, when he, on the other hand, is the team’s only hope and he knows that that boy had to stay in play for the team to win the game. The coach has to calm Hank down and ask him to sit back on the benches. But just a little into the second quarter Hank disagrees with the referee and almost runs onto the field yelling at him. The referee is, of course, also an ‘idiot and knows nothing about the game’; instead he is there ‘to get Hank and their team’. The game is interrupted again, Hank’s son is embarrassed about his father’s behavior and hides behind the benches. Hank continues loudly insulting the coach and the referee, eventually yelling that ‘his son is better than this game’ and that ‘he will find a better coach for his son’. He grabs his scared and embarrassed son and proudly walks back to the car, the whole drive back yelling out loud about the unfairness of the situation and the stupidity of the coaches. Hank’s will chakra is spinning backwards, huge, taking energy from every other place it can. Because of it other chakras do not have enough charge and Hank does not have enough consciousness there to help him see what is happening. How can he fix this? Hank can take a deep breath and focus on the needs of his son, this will bring more energy into the front of his heart and begin to correct the imbalance.

How can you open your heart? For the front of the chakra you can tune into someone or something that brings feelings of love to you—your pet, your garden, your child, the beautiful sky. If you find it hard to see the good in a difficult situation, allow your heart to open more by lying on a yoga ball or anything that helps you to bend backwards. To help your will open up, lift your arms to your shoulder level and move them towards your heart, then with a force back, pushing your shoulder blades together. Repeat this a few times, this brings more charge to your will. You can also balance the heart aspects by moving energy from the larger one to the smaller one. If you feel you are too controlling in a situation, your will is too big. Focus on the back of your heart, then imagine the energy moving through your body into the front of your heart, you can place your hand there. Allow some time for the flow to occur, and you will begin to feel more trusting of the situation. Or if you are trying to help everyone and missing yourself in the process, the front of your heart is too big. Tune into it, then imagine energy moving through your body to the other side, also move your arm as in the previous exercise to open the will. Energy will flow to the will center and the heart will get smaller as a result. If you want to use color, there are a few appropriate ones. If you are too far in your will and need to open the heart, use rosy pinkish energy. If you have difficulty loving the Self, bring kindness to yourself by using pine tree green.”

From the “Human Energy Field Anatomy, Part 2: Chakras” chapter.

There much more information about this in my book “Mission Alpha” – check it out HERE.