Awhile back my mom and I went stone carving at this woman’s property in a town near where I grew up.

This woman holds private carving lessons. And by private carving lessons, I mean she lets us come to her house and pick out a rock among a bunch of junk, shows us how to use the tools she has, and turns us loose on the rock.

Surrounding us were beautiful sculptures. Big and small. With soft round edges. Faces carved in stone. Intricate designs. And beautiful artistry.

As I held my rock in my hand, I thought, “how on Earth am I going to make something beautiful out of this rock…I mean, it’s a ROCK.”

Now, I’m not much of an artist, or a perfectionist. My skills for drawing or creating things from nothing are pretty minimal. But the one thing I knew I could do, and one of the only things I knew how to draw was a heart. Which seemed perfect since I’m building the Wild HEART Revolution.

So I picked up my slab of soapstone and I stared at it. Hmmmm…I thought. How am I going to make a heart appear out of this rock?

I figured that the first step was to draw a heart on it with a Sharpie. And then follow along the line of the heart with a tool, carving into the stone. Chips of stone flying everywhere, I felt good…it was starting to look like a heart.

But after I got about a quarter of an inch down to the outline of the heart, I realized that I didn’t want to carve a heart INTO the stone, but rather I wanted the heart to emerge FROM the stone. I wanted it to stick out. I wanted the rest of the rock to fall to the background, while the heart was the most prominent feature. And after a couple minutes of staring blankly at the rock it occurred to me. That my goal wasn’t to carve the heart out of the rock, but rather the goal was to remove everything AROUND the heart, in order for the heart to emerge. Brilliant, I thought.

And so that’s what I started to do. I chipped away at everything that surrounded the heart. I smoothed out the edges. I was careful to keep the same shape of the heart. And after about an hour of carving, the heart emerged. Beautiful. Subtle. Soft. Round.

And this reminded me of life. And of love. And of our own hearts.

So many times, when we seek love, we feel like we need to find it by doing something, by digging in. By dating better, going out to meet more people, reading books, obsessing about it. But in thinking about it, I realized that our hearts are just like this stone heart.

That in order to really find love, we need to remove all of the pieces of ourselves that we’ve built up to protect against love. We need to remove the armor we’ve created around our hearts. And just like these stones, we don’t need to dig into the heart, but rather we need to remove everything that is around it that prevents it from being seen.

 And apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way. A couple days ago I came across this quote:

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have build against it.” –Rumi

We don’t find love, we find our own hearts. And by doing that, love shows up. Our wounds our powerful. We learn to “protect” our hearts from being hurt by putting armor around them. By creating walls that no one will ever be able to climb so that we can’t get hurt. But one thing we as humans all have in common is that we all want to give and receive love. And by protecting our hearts, this simply cannot happen. So when in doubt, and when looking for love, look within. Find those parts of yourself that aren’t letting your heart be seen, and begin chipping away. So that your heart can emerge…beautiful, subtle, soft, and round.

And this is a Wildheart Life. A life of looking within. Letting your heart be seen.

What do you think of this concept? That we don’t find love, but rather that we find our hearts and allow love to come in? Where in your life do you find yourself needing to chip away at what’s around the heart. Leave a comment below.

Xo,

Sally