heart to heart

I've been attending a group for a while where I have the option to share my thoughts if any come to mind. Whenever something comes up that I want to share, I get a rush of anxiety as my mind starts rehearsing. It's like the thoughts get backed up in my head, like some kind of verbal constipation. Rather than being expressed cleanly and effortlessly, they start gathering and jumbling and I get preoccupied with trying to lay it all out mentally before speaking out loud. This only ever has the opposite effect of making my words come out clumsily and disjointed, not to mention inhibiting my capacity to listen in the meantime.

Whatever I have to say starts out pure and perfect - I can feel it rise up from the heart. But rather than being expressed in its purity, it pools up in the head and turns into lifeless verbiage. Words without substance, without heart.

Those kinds of words don't really reach anyone. The best they can do is get added to another's mental database of thoughts and ideas. Only words spoken from the heart have the power to connect. The contents don't matter so much, it's the effect they have in drawing in and opening the heart of the listener. A deeper contact is made, heart to heart, as the essence of the speaker touches and stirs that of the listener. In those moments there is no division between speaker and listener. There's just a flow.