“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match  your nature with Nature.”

– Joseph Campbell

What a great time of year for matching your heartbeat to the heartbeat of the universe!  Have you ever had that feeling — the one where you want to overflow with the sense of belonging to everything around you?

I have always been a fan of nature.  I remember when I was a very young child and I would wake up at dawn and sing songs to the birds.  It seemed like the natural thing to do, and I didn’t give it a second thought.  Then I began my education and learned that nature was something separate from me that I could study and learn about by dissecting it into minute parts.  I learned that nature sat outside of me and that I could visit it in order to understand the universe, which was my home, but not who I was.

How do you match your heartbeat to that of something intangible?  How do you match your heartbeat to that of the universe, when each creature that inhabits it has its own heart rate?  Can my heart beat with that of an insect and that of an elephant at the same time?

I think it has to do with love.  It is the heart of the Divine that creates with each beat that calls us to find harmony with all it has loved into existence.  It is in returning that love — in honoring every piece of the amazing universe — that we find we are in tune with all the many pieces that make up such a splendid creation.  I am off in a moment for my daily walk.  I will listen to the Heart that beat me into being.  I will feel my own heart beating and feel the way it sends my blood through my body and sustains my life.  I will send out the Love of Creation to each rock and tree and plant and animal that I meet.  I will feel the way that each of our hearts beat in harmony with the Heart of all that is.  I will feel the excitement as my heart skips a beat, just knowing that I am an integral part of it all.  It is then that I soar, with the light-hearted energy that all at once holds me close and sends me on to be exactly who I was created to be.  Listen to the heart of the universe — it is your heart, too.