Sarah Blondin - Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love

We suffer when we become separated from our deepest, truest nature. Heart Minded offers us guidance on the sacred journey home... helping us to awaken from our busy, never satisfied minds to the heartspace where love is always and already right here.

Tara Brach author of Radical Acceptance

A relevant, practical guide, full of inspiration to help you clear the channel of your heart and follow your truth.

Elena Brower bestselling author of Practice You

Gentle and wise, Blondins approach is characterized by the bedside manner of devoted midwife to your healing process. Like her voice, it is a soothing poultice for the weary-but-spirited seeker. Heart Minded will crack you open down the middle from page one. It is all at once a centering meditation, a practice, and an olive branch extended into the depths of your soul.

Pixie Lighthorse author of Prayers of Honoring

There is so much that can be said about this collection of work. It embodies a bold truth that encourages self-reflection. Heart Minded unleashes the inner magic of unfolding to bloom.

Alexandra Elle author of Neon Soul, Words from a Wanderer, and Love in My Language

In a world fraught with separation, anxiety, and distraction, there can never be enough positive attention given, never enough prayer, never enough books about love. Heart Minded is the antidote, the great reminder, to be heart- and love-focused moment to precious moment. Raw, direct, and accessible, this book invites and instructs you, as Mary Oliver once advised, to love the soft animal of your body. Sarah Blondin, with equal softness of voice and heart, says, in effect, yes, its safe to step into the wisdom of your own sensitivity with heart wide open (listen up, fellow men, this is not a book for women alone!). Here you will find healing, creativity, and bright awakening beyond your wildest dreams.

Albert Flynn DeSilver author of Writing as a Path to Awakening

Seems the great 14th-century Persian mystic Hafiz may have written an endorsement for this book years ago. As a famous rendering of some of his verse by me goes:

How did the rose ever open its heart and give to the world

all of its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of lightof loveagainst its

being, otherwise one might remain too frightened.

The heart, even on its better days, can be just one wing needed to fly.

The other winglove from someone else, or from a beautiful creature,

or some synergy with a gorgeous mountain or skycan cause your

spirit to awake, unfurl, give thanks, and know joy.

Sarah Blondin and her love, and this beautiful book, can be a golden wing, I bet, to many. I hope this book helps the whole world to dance.

Daniel Ladinsky international bestselling poet and author

Sounds True
Boulder, CO 80306

2020 Sarah Blondin

Sounds True is a trademark of Sounds True, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author(s) and publisher.

Published 2020

Book design by Beth Skelley
Book composition by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

We Should Talk About This Problem and This Sky by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, from I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy. Translation copyright 1996, 2006 by Daniel Ladinsky. Reprinted by permission of Daniel Ladinsky.

Printed in the United States

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Blondin, Sarah, author.
Title: Heart minded : how to hold yourself and others in love / Sarah
Blondin.
Description: Boulder, CO : Sounds True, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019029165 (print) | LCCN 2019029166 (ebook) | ISBN
9781683643418 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781683644040 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Love. | Self-realization. | Meditation.
Classification: LCC BF575.L8 B5575 2020 (print) | LCC BF575.L8 (ebook) |
DDC 158dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029165
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029166

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my heart.

I am listening.

And, to my beloved, Derrick,

my witness and upholder.

With love and gratitude.

The moment you separated from your heart, the moment you closed, quieted, pushed away, turned from, disowned, lost sight of goodness, the exact moment you began to splinter from love, a part of you began doing everything in its power to bring you back.

Just as a mother who has lost her child will never tire of standing at the oceans edge calling out her beloveds name, sending prayers for survival, blessings in bottles out to sea, she, your heart, began to do the same once you were set adrift.

You are never lost, dear one, for the moment you divided, your heart began doing everything in its power to bring you home.

A Letter from the Universe

The material in this book may feel triggering or bring up difficult or frightening feelings. Please seek professional help if you feel you are in any danger of causing yourself or others harm. Furthermore, the advice contained in this book is based on the authors experiences and teachings and is not intended as a substitute for medical care. If you are in acute distress, please seek professional help.

For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.

Carl Sagan, Contact

We are all born as pure light, our very life sustained by the beating heart that is here to guide and inform us. But because life is imperfect, in our very first moments of being alive, we discovered that the needs of our hearts could not always be met. Pain and sorrow began to pool inside of us, and in our desperation not to feel this pain and to protect our tenderhearted nature, we abandoned the one place within us intended to be our safehold. We orphaned the part of us that flows with the current of life itself.

We turned away from our tender heart and entered the mind, neglecting to come back and care for this crucial and elemental aspect of our being. Imagine taking a wing off a monarch butterfly and expecting it to fly straight or removing the engine of a car and expecting it to run smoothly. We know neither of those things are possible, yet we expect ourselves to operate unimpaired without the engine that is our heart.

Without our heart to soothe, affirm, and comfort us, we become lost in tormented and twisted thoughts about who we are; we suffer from self-denial and aggressive internal criticism. Never satiated, always seeking, we scour the world outside of us for worth and meaning. Turning away from our heart was ultimately an act of violence against who we really are. In effect, we removed one of our wings.

The consequence of this is immense; this cutting off from our vital core, our compass and guide, our connection to source. When we detach from it, we are left with the persistent feeling of struggle. We feel like nomads, wandering through fields of fear and scarcity. Something within us feels lost, anesthetized, unable to find home, unable to rest. We may experience small doses of heartfelt joy and alignment, but we know there is something amiss. We know there is more to life.

I know this feeling well. I have been therein that variously numbed/lost/fearful/constricted place. And I have found my way back. My hope is that this book will crack you open to the magnificent powers of your heart, helping you rediscover the breath of love within you. As you learn to reopen to and live from your heart, you cant really help but fall deeply in love with this life, your life. Your fears quiet, your body softens, your shields drop and you open, curiosity awakens, and you recognize what a gift it is to be the wildly feeling, vital, and alive human being you are.