I was walking with my dog up the short path from my back door to the gate, when I noticed a pink, shiny head cresting out of the earth. This is the same patch of ground I have passed thousands of times, yet somehow never noticed the rose quartz stone. But this day, it jumped out at me, so I started digging.
As I dug deeper and deeper, I realized that this baby was much bigger than I thought! Then two words came to me: hidden treasure. And that’s my inspiration for the week.
This morning, aforementioned doggie and I hiked in the woods behind my house where I consciously opened myself to hidden treasure. I found tiny white wildflowers I would not have noticed had I been caught up in my thoughts, miniature black bugs on the head of a dandelion, sap oozing way up high on a tree, something I thought was a rock, but turned out to be a mushroom, and the biggest wild turkey feather I have ever seen. Doggie’s take on hidden treasure were the bones of a dead deer, always startling to me, even though I know they are there.
And then there was the old, rusted, broken down bathtub that has been in the forest for years–something I generally regard as an eyesore. But today, I realized its value as it marked my path where the trail had overgrown.
All of this makes me think about the hidden treasures of the heart. What lies below the part we show to the world–tiny unseen things, surprises, or the seemingly unattractive? Coincidentally (or maybe not!) rose quartz is known as a heart stone. Metaphysically, it represents unconditional love, compassion and heart healing. Perhaps that stone rose up out of the earth to remind me that all of our hearts hold great treasure. What is buried there?
Last week, I unearthed something deeply submerged in my own heart. With the help of my dear friend Maria, who is a nature-based life coach (walkinginspiritus.com), I journeyed into my heart space and found anger hiding there. Held by a circle of trees on my land (another treasure I hadn’t noticed before), I danced with that anger. It flamed up like a fire, both terrifying me and revealing to me its gifts of passion, voice and boundaries. Standing face to face with the whole of my anger–the above ground part and the underground part–taught me that I don’t have to fear it because it comes bearing gifts.
We can extend this idea to others as well. We only ever see the parts of people’s hearts they want to show us, sometimes that’s the bright, shiny part and sometimes it’s the dark, dirty part. What we don’t see is the hidden treasure that lies below the surface. The part that makes them whole. This, of course, can lead to assumptions, misperceptions, misbeliefs. What if we took the time to dig more deeply, to truly listen and seek the complete picture? What if we also did that for ourselves?
Perhaps, like my rose quartz, we would discover that all of our hearts are bigger than we thought.
