It is my belief that the dragonfly is the most powerful metaphor for the transformation at hand for all of humanity. How, you might ask, can this winged insect be such a potent metaphor for us at this time? Before the dragonfly gets its wings to soar, it spends most of its life as a nymph under the water where it undergoes a series of molts, akin to shedding its skin. These molts are preparation for its metamorphosis from nymph to dragonfly. Like the dragonfly, we humans are born in water before we begin our lives in air. Our lives are meant to be a celebration like the dragonfly’s attainment of wings. But as humans, our journey into water is not over yet. We spend from birth to age seven unconsciously acquiring the emotional blueprint we will carry the rest of our life. We will not realize our emotional patterns until after the age of twenty-one when we move out into the world to create our life experiences. We will then make a connection, or not, to our emotional body awareness through the experiences life presents. In our society, we place more emphasis on the mental and physical bodies than on the emotional body. As a result, most people have little or no connection to their emotions, and the way of the heart. It is precisely this connection that is in need of healing.

Dragonfly is here to tell us we must return to the emotional waters to find our emotional healing of the heart. If this were not needed, we would be living in a very different world, a far better world, the one we now aspire to create. We cannot create this new world until we each find emotional freedom.

In my life personally, I have studied, followed, practiced and devoured many healing paths and modalities. By the time I was thirty years old, I had read every healing and spiritual book on the market. I have studied Energy and Chakra healing, Astrology, Numerology, Family Constellations, become certified in Reconnection healing, traveled through Peru with a shaman, purged myself in Native American sweat lodges, vision quests and ceremony, immersed myself in Jungian dream analysis and therapy, followed gurus, practiced rigorous Ashtanga yoga, fasted, meditated, surrendered, silenced, reprogrammed, retreated and devoured San Pancho, Ayahuasca, rainforest herbs, Acai, Frequensea, Monavie, raw foods and alkaline water. I should know myself, be fully at peace and walking on water by now.

Am I? No. I am being honest.These paths each gave me a small key that was valuable in the journey to know myself and heal parts of my being. But none of these gave me the big key I needed to unlock the door to the heart…my own heart.

Matters Of The Heart

We are all born with the Divine spark within us. When we were children, this spark was alive and well. Sadly, instead of this spark being ignited to burn bright throughout our lives, it is suffocated beneath the illusions of the mental and physical debris we call life. We enter the educational institution at age seven, and when we graduate at age twenty-one, we are fully programmed to cope with life based on our accumulated information and knowledge which will in turn allow us to obtain all our physical desires- the job, the car, the house, the marriage- to live the American dream. But the dream fails to come with a manual for the inevitable emotional dysfunctions by which we will be challenged. So we change jobs, work harder, get divorced, find someone new, have another baby, have another drink, take another trip, buy another car, relocate, self-medicate and maybe, wonder where that Divine spark went. Maybe we have a mid-life crisis that brings us to our knees, and we begin our search for peace.

What we seek is within us and always has been. It is the simple way of the heart, and attending to matters of the heart. We have forgotten how to feel, how to allow our feelings to guide our life experiences…like we did as children. Matters of the heart have been buried beneath mental mountains and physical distractions. We are even afraid to address the heart of the matter because we can no longer trust our emotional expression, and we are overwhelmed by the repressed emotions of fear, anger and grief. Yet, feeling is our healing.

The Path to Emotional Healing

Our emotional healing depends upon our ability to honor our feelings…first…before we engage the mental and physical. Otherwise, we are living backwards. Our emotional blueprint came first in our lives because our emotions hold the secret to creating the life experiences we desire. No amount of mental and physical effort can bring to us what only the heart can bring. The heart key we are looking for can only be found within. It does not require years of therapy, Prozac, vision quests, changing jobs, new partners, following gurus, fasting or hours of meditation. It simply requires feeling…feeling in our heart the life experience we desire, feeling it as though it already happened, then letting it go, trusting the heart knows. If we bombard this feeling with mental details and physical doings, we will bury the feeling and lose the emotional body awareness of what we desire. Our emotions need to be in-motion. We do not need to go back and analyze our emotional blueprint mentally. We only need to set our emotions free to move, and reconnect with the heart’s wisdom. When we lose connection to our emotional body, which contains our emotional blueprint, we are left with only two ways to express emotions: repression or reaction. These are our emotional shadows lurking beneath the water. When we restore and honor the way of the heart, the Divine essence of our emotional body, we no longer need to fear our repressed and reactive emotions. In setting them free to move under the conscious guidance of our heart, they will align to our heart’s desire…effortlessly. It is not about our doing. It is about our being. When we stop doing and allow our feelings to surface, we initiate our inevitable transformation towards emotional freedom.

Dragonfly says return to the dark, murky emotional waters and heal your heart. Molt away the layers of illusion created by our fear, anger and grief that keep us trapped in the past and the future. Dragonfly says we only have this moment, and only in the now can we discover the authenticity and healing power of our feelings. Trust in the heart-felt experience you desire for life. You already have the key to unlock the door to your forgotten heart. Love is your guide, your wings.