Writer and energy healer Joy Holland once posed the following reflective questions, to several other writers and I decided to participate by sharing my answers with you below. I invite you to take a moment after reading this perhaps, or some other opportune time this week, to give these reflections some time and formulate your own answers to these questions.

What is the defining moment that you opened your heart to Love so extraordinary, it transformed your life?

What did it feel like to you? What did you feel like as you processed it?

How has the miracle called Love touched your life and impacted your journey?

A Defining Opportunity of Love

In my life, I have had many small opportunities to open my heart to love and experience a transformation. In fact, these moments tend to happen on a weekly, if not daily basis. Every day, life presents us with moments, with opportunities, with experiences which give us the choice to open our hearts and to choose love. It all depends what we choose to see.

However, I have also had a few big moments in my life where going completely out of my comfort zone, and opening up myself wholly and fully with my heart and soul, I have experienced a most transformational shift. In fact, one such moment stands out in my heart and soul, and it will I have no doubt, forever be my defining moment of the power of love.

What is this moment? It was very powerful and moving, and has forever changed my life. However, I will choose not to talk about the specific example, because what I will share below applies across the board to so many examples where we are faced with a choice to open our heart and act with love, or not. And so I do not want to get caught up on the details of the story and limit it, but express the greater and very powerful lesson from it.

There was a time in my life a good few years back, where I was faced with a situation, one that seemed very difficult. I had attracted into my life something that I have longed for, for a very long time, however it came in a package, which was against my being at the time to accept.

So what was I to do? Here was something that I wanted so much, longed for so much, coming to me in a package that seemed so difficult to look past, to process, to accept.

I did in that defining moment, what perhaps most other people in my situation would have done. I closed my heart. I turned my back. I did not accept my gift.

Surely how could something that I had wanted so much, come in a package that seemed so impossible for me to accept it in? I was confused. I was angry. I was sad. But I made my choice, I refused it and thought it was best to walk away from it, leave it behind.

That was my mind talking. That was my Ego, influenced by years of conditioning, of other people’s thoughts and beliefs talking. That was my unconscious lower self being itself.

Opening My Heart to the Miracle of Love

I thought I made my choice. I thought everything was reasoned out and the only logical thing to do was to refuse my most longed for gift. And yet, my heart had other plans.

Within a few days of making my decision, my life started changing. Something wasn’t right. Something was terribly off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it…

And then a miracle happened, I opened my heart, I allowed it to finally speak, I allowed it to finally lead. I shut off my mind. I tuned out my Ego. I turned a deaf ear on what society and all the rules, regulations and limitations tried to remind me of. I began to listen to my heart.

It was scary at first, so very scary to walk into a completely new territory, to go against everything I have ever believed and stood for, and yet something about this felt so right.

As the days went on, my spirit shifted, my mood shifted, my energy soared. I was becoming someone new. My life was taking on a completely different turn. I revisited my gift, except this time, I saw it through the eyes of love, through my heart. And when I did, I thought to myself, what was I thinking?

And it is clearly that. Often times we get these amazing opportunities to act as the love that we are, to live with an open heart and instead of going forward into what can be our greatest moment of bliss, we let our fearful mind cripple us. We let the rules and limits of others dictate our actions. We paralyze our own happiness.

The day I made my decision with my heart, changed the rest of my life and more importantly it changed me. That day, I stepped into completely foreign territory, and while it was scary at first, I simply allowed my heart to guide me.

That day pushed me past so many blocks, so many limits, so many “no’s” and “can’ts” and “shouldn’ts”. That day was the first day of many more days where I would learn to follow my heart and lead with love.

Conclusion

I have never regretted my decision to accept my gift, and I know as much as the saying goes “never say never”, I never will. From that day on, living and approaching life with an open heart has only become easier and easier. It guides me. It sustains me. It is me.

That is the transformational power of love.

This holiday season, or at any other time of the year for that matter, may you find enough courage to be guided by your heart. May you too face the moments in your life, the gifts, the people, the places with an open heart. And may you too be blessed to experience the transformational power of love.