Keeping the Heart Light: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Souls; (Notes to self)

Whilst out walking the other day I was contemplating the old Egyptian mythological tale about the weighing of the heart from the book of the dead.

I’ll give you a brief description for those who don’t know the story. It goes along the lines of this; when a person dies their soul embarks on a journey to the hall of Ma’at. It is here where the deceased undergoes a process known as the weighing of the heart. The heart is placed on a weighing scale and is weighed against a feather, the feather represents Ma’at the goddess of truth, balance and cosmic order, the goal is for the heart to be lighter than or equal to the feather. If the heart is light then the soul of the deceased is worthy to enter the afterlife joining the gods in eternal peace in the field of reeds, a paradise like realm. If however, the heart is heavier, the soul gets devoured by a terrifying creature, Ammit, a monster that is part lion, part crocodile and part hippopotamus (What a combination!) I love thinking of these stories metaphorically. The basic gist of this one is, live a good virtuous life, and then when the time comes you will get into heaven as your heart is light and if your heart is heavy then your soul will be devoured and destroyed.

We could interpret the meaning here slightly differently, I wasn’t thinking of the story as a good person vs bad person scenario, but I was relating it more to what kind of things make our hearts heavy. Instead, we could think of this story in terms of what emotional weight do we carry, what feelings get stuck? anger when left can easily turn into resentment, sadness into self-pity, fear into anxiety and guilt in to shame. We are human and all experience difficult situations and painful feelings but when these stagnate, they can become heavy burdens to carry and when left can become “soul destroying”.

How can we keep our hearts light? How do we process our feelings in healthy ways allowing them to pass through us but not remain stuck?

I think the first step is to recognise and acknowledge what feelings might be lingering, often we are unaware of them, sometimes we think we are are ok, we carry on without realising that some of these emotions are laying dormant within us, not aware that some are actually weighing us down, then something or someone will trigger that emotion that was buried and bam, there it is more intense than ever before.

Having therapy and talking about things is a good way to work through these heavy feelings and its something that has worked for me, but of course, I will say that! However there are many different ways to process things and get those feelings moving. For some it could be, sport or exercise, for some yoga and meditation, others may use art, painting, drawing and some others may find writing a therapeutic form of expression, like journalling or poetry. Some wondrous things can be created when we allow things to move through and we can transform our pain into something beautiful. Talking about feelings is not for everyone, some things can be so complex we just cant find the words. The important thing is not holding on, carrying the burden of old pain in our hearts, like the story if we can help keep things flowing and our hearts light we may just find the peace we are looking for.

Wishing you well

Zoe