How to Live with a Soft Heart in a Hard World

When so much around us feels confusing, overwhelming, hurtful, or even threatening, we naturally want to protect ourselves.

Sooo…. what do we do? We harden our hearts.

We may get angry and lash out. Judge. Blame. Resent. We may dissolve into tears, shut down, give up, or feel powerless. We may begin to doubt our own insights, our abilities, our choices—even our sense of who we are!

We do these things because somewhere inside, we believe they will keep us safe and keep the hurt out.

And sometimes they do protect us. But there is a cost.

The heart we harden against another person, the news, our family, or the world is still our heart. And over time, that protection can become a barrier to the very qualities we want to grow within ourselves: wisdom, kindness, compassion, understanding, love, and peace.

So how do we keep a soft heart when life feels so hard?

That is what we’ll explore together in this three-hour workshop. Not by becoming passive. Not by pretending something doesn’t hurt. And certainly not by allowing someone to treat us badly. A soft heart is not a weak heart. It is a heart that has learned how to stay open without being destroyed by what comes toward it.

What if you could recognize your heart closing before you reacted? What if you could feel hurt, angry, or overwhelmed without shutting down, lashing out, or spending hours replaying what happened?

Meditation can teach you how to do that!

In this workshop, you’ll learn how to:

• Recognize when your heart is beginning to close, before your emotions and reactions take over.
• Make room for difficult feelings without shutting down, lashing out, or running away from them.
• Break the habit of replaying hurtful thoughts that keep your heart hardened long after something has happened.
• Experience what a soft heart actually feels like, through short meditations you’ll practice throughout our morning together.
• Keep your heart soft without becoming vulnerable to mistreatment, so you can see people clearly, protect yourself, and make wise choices.

And perhaps most importantly, you’ll discover how good and safe a soft heart can feel—and how to return to that feeling again and again.

This is a practice I know personally.

One of the great spiritual teachings I was given is that the ability to soften the hardened heart is itself a spiritual gift.

It has become one of the deepest practices of my own life. And along the way, I discovered something that changed everything:

The hardened heart I needed to soften was my own.

That doesn’t mean the world isn’t hard. Or that people don’t do hurtful things. They do. But I don’t want the hardness I encounter in the world to determine the quality of my heart. If you don’t either, I hope you’ll join me.

We can learn how to live in a hard world without allowing it to harden us.

Whether you’re new to meditation or have been practicing for years, there’s something here for you.

If you’re new, you’ll discover practical skills you may never have known were possible.

And if you’ve been meditating for years, you’ll have the opportunity to notice increasingly subtle ways your heart closes and deepen the skills that help you keep it open. Because no matter how long you’ve been meditating, there’s always more to notice, more to discover, and more to practice.

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We will also send the zoom link about one hour before the workshop begins.