THE DOOR IS OPEN Cindy would say loudly every time I knocked on a door she was behind.

In her 57 years there was not one time that she said anything different.  Her door was always open and I was always invited in.  Always.

The opening line of Dawna Markova’s poem Swing Wide is;

                Let us swing wide all the doors and windows

           of our hearts on their rusty hinges

          so we may learn how to open in love.

We are all born pure and innocent.  Our doors are wide open, and it happens right away in infancy. There is no getting around it.  No one can ever meet all of our needs when we need them to be met so we close a little bit.  At that point it’s easy to open the door again.  The more we practice closing the door and the longer the door stays closed the hinges become rusty and eventually the door becomes much harder to open.  The rust begins to form when we believe there is something wrong with us, when we internalize what someone else can not give us as being our fault or lack.

The essence of most of the work I do is to help others let go of self judgement and criticism and learn to hold themselves with loving kindness.  Though that is not spoken, it is the essence of the work. Holding our self with loving kindness is the antidote to almost all of our pain and suffering and the easiest way to allow the door to our hearts to ‘swing wide.’  When we hold our self with loving kindness we hold others with loving kindness.  It is a natural effect.  As within so without. 

Cindy, in her perpetual innocence knew how to keep her self open.  She lived openly and loved without condition.  When she looked in the mirror the image she saw reflected back at her was beautiful. She forgave constantly, she let go of every wrong and lived in every moment of her life in the present.  There was no holding on for Cindy and no holding back.  She was what she was, innocently and simply.   Her living revealed what it meant to live with openness, freedom and ease in the present moment.

We all have the opportunity to witness extraordinary acts of beauty.  Miracles are all around us when we open our eyes and our hearts to see them.  If we don’t risk opening to who we truly are our beauty will never be seen by others.   If we don’t open ourselves we will never know our beauty when it is reflected back to us by others.

Take a chance today and risk revealing your self to another.  Swing open the door, let your guard down and your walls soften.  Be seen for who you really are and witness what happens.  You can always close the door  For a moment, risk being seen for who you are and watch a miracle happen.

Open the door to love.