POEM: Stop Worrying, Start Walking ❤️🔥

Accessing and abiding in the Sacred Heart

Photo by Ashley Hallmark @ Gathered & Found

(Note: reading is slightly different than final text, but I included it because some people like to listen!)

Stop Worrying, Start Walking
By Schuyler Brown
October 2024

1.
I don't know when 
I lost the key to my heart,
I suspect it happened gradually
then all of a sudden: 
CLOSED.
Maybe on the playground;
my first heartbreak; 
the first lie I told my parents; the first lie I told myself.
Maybe it was the accumulation 
of pain without holding 
or suffering without meaning
in this secular materialist paradigm. 

Is there a moment you can point to?
When your heart retreated?
When you shut it down?
A series of injustices--
too much to handle?
When did you lose your courage 
to love in the face of loss?

Sometimes, it takes losing something
to recognize its worth.
Getting lost,
I began to seek.
Numbing out,
I became determined to feel.
Closing off, 
I learned to open my heart again.

2.
Now, 
I have a secret
that wants to be shared--
I know HOW to open the heart.
I found the key.
Would you like to hear? 
We must all be still.
We must listen to each other 
like our lives depend on it;
like the breath is punctuation;
like our conspiracy might be detected:
Let's do it together!
Countless hearts entraining to one rhythm--
One, two, three, JUMP.

3. 
First, you must remember
that you forgot.
Recognize that you're not there
--in the heart--
for whatever reasons,
and to whatever degree.
You've fallen out of your center,
descended the throne
that is yours by right,
fallen out of Love,
and you've been wandering.
Forgive yourself.

It's OK. You're not alone.

The longing you feel 
to GIVE of yourself freely,
to RECEIVE recklessly,
to be LOVE for a world that needs it now,
to be of SERVICE...
is the way.

Selfless desire 
incinerates all distractions!

Follow the clues, breadcrumbs, signs
all placed in your path
by none other than YOU.
Your heart wants you to find the way.
You want you to find the way.
The whole Universe is waiting for your return--
so, pay attention.

4.
I saw the Sacred Heart.
I'd seen it thousands of times before, 
but this time, I really saw it.
It drew me in.
Jesus pulling back his garment to reveal 
a flaming, mystical, pulsing source of LOVE.
With a gaze so direct, he says,
"Look, and do not look away. 
You won't have many chances.
This is the destination.
I am showing you the way."

I looked and did not look away.
I contemplated the flame Western-style;
and meditated on it Eastern-style; 
and begged for answers human-style:
"What is this combustion;
this alchemical process;
in the body?
Show me the way home."

I felt the fire first--
in the center of my chest--
burning away the dross,
active and hot.
For months it burned and ached.
"Something must be wrong!" 
My fear raised it's suspicious head,
"Becoming LOVE shouldn't hurt so much."
Or maybe it does.

The flame is not pointing
to hellfire and damnation,
I realized...
but, to an elemental force.
I've felt the fire of kundalini. 
I know this heat in the channels.
Aha! It's the same...familiar glow.
Only now, it's lodged
in residence at the heart.
It's not complicated,
only subtle.
The pain is now pleasure.

5. 
I BURNED
until I was nothing but ash.
What phoenix would rise now?
I thought there was nothing left...
MERCY
handed me the key 
at the eleventh hour.
I heard a voice say, 

Stop worrying. Start walking.

I suddenly felt the shroud
preventing me from seeing;
and the wall of concepts
obstructing my view...
It all dropped like a robe and
NAKED,
I started to walk.
Without a promise of being met. 
Without a promise that the ground 
would be there to catch me if I fell...
I took a first intentional step.
Trust and surrender.

Now, I tasted the fruit.
An almost-accidental stumbling into,
by the grace of God, 
a chance encounter with,
a temporary, fleeting glimpse of... 
LIFE through the lens of the heart.
I felt myself in it,
I felt the world through it,
I found myself there in the union of opposites,
in the place beyond paradox,
in the TRUTH.

And I felt the resolution of duality 
into something multiform and singular all at once:
the earthly and the cosmic
the masculine and feminine
the above and below
the eternal and the now
inside me and everywhere.
And I felt the positive, negative, and neutral 
energies of creation
brewing a cosmic stew
for every beggar in the Universe to enjoy.

YAM. Yum.

6. 
At the same time
though I was out of time
Let's say, simultaneously--
I was hit with the suffering, too.
ALL OF IT.
I was in touch with the suffering of all beings
That's when I understood the thorns
piercing the flesh of the Sacred Heart:
It's not good.
It hurts.
Oh, humanity...
Oh, God!
And Ah! Ah! Ah! The ecstasy of it all.
Silent wonder,
profound awareness,
How do we hold all of it? 
Only the heart knows.
Only the heart knows.

7.
The greatest trick the dark forces play
is keeping us distracted
and confused about our Divine Heritage
and feeling unworthy of our Divine Inheritance.
You are...
A child of the Sun
A child of this Earth
A child of our ancestors
A unique expression of the One.

Let go of what you think you know
about Love and the Heart.
The idea, the dream, the memories,
even these words,
are all just signs.
They point the way, but the only way,
is to do it for yourself:
Stop worrying.
Start walking.
Stay.

~*~*~

Join my upcoming virtual course: Fierce Love to explore the fundamentals of the Sacred Heart and learn ways and practices for coming into the heart and abiding there. It’s happening Sundays at 12-2pm EST from Nov 3 to January 5, 2025. It will be a beautiful and rich container to see us through the winter. More information and registration here…