We spend a lot of time and energy looking for love, but there’s just one thing that everyone needs to know about love: love is our default emotion; our natural state of being.

Love is what happens when we stop defending ourselves against it and, conversely, when we stop trying so hard to find it. Love is what happens when you get to know your heart by showing up to meet it regularly. When we practice conscious heart awareness, we see love in everything. Life becomes transformed by love.

Last year my heart was broken open by the end of a relationship. It felt like my heart had been ripped out and I thought the pain would kill me. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. I’m still here and I’ve never felt more joyful, more loving or more loved.

In the past I’ve closed down my heart when I’ve been hurt, but this time I wanted to find a way to keep my heart open to the pain so that the pain could be transformed by love; so that I could be transformed by love. I developed a daily practice of consciously bringing my attention to my heart every time I felt the pain.

I would drop my awareness into the gaping hole where my heart used to be and feel my breath rise and fall in my chest; closing my eyes, focusing only on the breath moving gently in my heart space; sometimes placing my hand on my chest because I was reassured by the tenderness of touch. Not forcing myself to heal; simply becoming present in my heart.

Heart awareness has become my regular practice even though the heartbreak is now healed, because it has expanded my capacity for love more than I could have imagined.

My heart feels love-abundant and I’ve fallen in love with everyone and everything. All I can see is how beautiful everyone is; how beautiful the world is. Sometimes I cry because there is just so much love inside. I had no idea there was this much love until now. I’ve been opened up to love; tenderized by love; restored to my default setting of love. This simple practice will restore your heart to its default setting of love too, whether it is broken or not. And we can never feel too much love.

Love is always waiting quietly in our hearts with a gentle invitation to remember that it’s there for us. We just show up exactly as we are; we’re always on the guest list.

So I invite you to try this practice for yourself and notice how it transforms your life with the gentle power of love:

Consciously bring your attention to your heart throughout the day. Drop your awareness from your mind down into your heart space. Feel your breath rise and fall gently in your chest. Breathing in through your heart, breathing out through your heart. One breath. Three breaths. One hundred breaths. Whatever you need; whatever feels good.

Get familiar with how it feels to breathe through your heart so you can return there anytime you need to. It’s like learning any new journey: once the route into our hearts becomes familiar, we get there more quickly because we don’t get lost on the way.

When you need to make a decision, bring your awareness to your heart before you decide. When somebody asks you to do something, bring your awareness to your heart before answering. When somebody pushes a button in you, bring your awareness to your heart before you respond. When you feel fearful or doubtful or hurting, bring your awareness to your heart and let love be your salve. Returning home to your heart, every single time.

It’s the choice we can all make over and over in every moment, regardless of all previous choices. Each moment experienced anew through our hearts.

Something miraculous happens when we do this simple practice of heart awareness. Our heart space expands and we feel more love glowing inside us. We notice the heart in everyone we meet before we notice the parts of their personalities we would usually judge. We begin to realise that everyone is Love.

We’re not trying to make ourselves love people and ignore their flaws. We’re not trying to practice self-love by doing things to make us feel good about ourselves. None of this is effort-full; you’re simply meeting your heart as it is in every moment. We’re checking in with our heart centres, noticing what is there and letting love guide us home.

Love is not something you have to try to feel.

Love is what happens when you stop trying and stop resisting and simply meet the world through your heart.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Editorial Assistant: Christina Lorenzo/Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photos: Flickr/katerha; Flickr/qthomasbower