Dear Reader,

It’s been ten days now since the earthquake struck Venezuela, my home country. My family is safe, and I want to thank so many of you for the beautiful comments you left last week when I shared how tender it all made me feel.

More than a week later, I’m still watching the news more than I normally would. I’m sleeping very little. I’ve watched people walk out of the rubble alive after ten days underground, which still feels like a miracle every time. And I’ve also read about entire families lost, children who didn’t make it, and children who survived only to become vulnerable to trafficking once they had nowhere left to turn.

After a few days of carrying all of that at once, the joy, the grief, and the uncertainty, I noticed something happening in me. I started to feel numb. And that’s exactly when a subscriber wrote to me describing the same thing: a heart that feels blocked, a connection that won’t come no matter how hard they try. I’ve been teaching about the heart for nearly twenty years, and there I was, living the very thing this person was asking me how to move through. That’s what inspired me to make this week’s video.

Your Heart Isn't Broken | The Real Reason You Can't Feel It

"I've tried meditating, focused on the heart, but I'm unable to feel a connection with my heart. With all the other centers I can visualize it, but with my heart there seems to be a block. I feel so defeated. I really want my heart to open. I'm tired of living like this."

If any part of that sounds like you, this video is my answer to it. In it, I share four things:

• Why the heart closes in the first place
• Why you cannot force it open
• The truth about heart awakening
• A simple seven-day practice to help you return to your heart

By the end, you’ll have a concrete practice you can start today.

How I Deal With My Emotional Numbness

This week, for the first time in a long time, I felt hatred. Underneath the grief I’ve been carrying, there has been real anger. Anger at twenty-seven years of a government that hollowed out the institutions that should have protected people from a disaster like this. Anger at the negligence, the corruption, the indifference. Because it didn’t have to be this severe.

As a spiritual teacher, it’s uncomfortable to admit that. There’s a part of me that wants to soften the word, to make it sound more loving, more evolved, more acceptable. But this week I’ve had to hold what was actually here: grief, anger, helplessness, and yes, moments of hatred, without letting them harden me. I’ve had to find a way to stay in a loving, compassionate place while also being honest that some of what I’m feeling isn’t gentle at all.

And at the very same time, I’ve felt real awe. Watching strangers give everything they have for people they’ve never met. Watching people dig, carry, cook, organize, pray, search, comfort, and keep showing up. Watching a whole country refuse to stop searching. Both of those things are true in me right now: the rage and the awe, the grief and the love. Neither one cancels the other out.

Maybe that is one of the things I am learning again: the heart has room for all of it. For grief and gratitude. For rage and awe. For hatred and love. For the full range of emotions that are part of being human. And maybe our work is not to rise above these feelings too quickly, or to make ourselves wrong for having them, but to allow them to be felt fully, honestly, and safely. Because what we refuse to feel cannot be transformed. It can only be transcended when it has first been embraced and deeply allowed.

What I’ve learned, again, this week, is that going numb isn’t a failure of my practice or my years of teaching. It’s simply what happens when a heart is overwhelmed and asked to hold more than it can process in real time. The way back isn’t to force myself to feel, or to judge myself for feeling anger or hatred, or for not feeling anything at all. It’s to create the conditions where feeling safe enough to feel again becomes possible, and then let the heart do what it already knows how to do.

So let me ask you the same thing I had to ask myself this week: is there a situation in your life right now where you’ve gone numb, not because you don’t care, but because you care so much your heart hasn’t yet found a safe way to feel it all? What helps you find your way back?

This Weekend's Practice: Heart Beating, Breathing, and Being

Here is the practice I’d like to invite you into this weekend. You don’t need any equipment, just your hand and your attention.

1. Place your hand over your heart. Gently place your hand on the center of your chest and become still enough to notice your heartbeat. If you can’t feel it right away, stay a little longer. It’s there.

2. Breathe with your heartbeat. Once you can feel the beat, breathe in for four or five heartbeats, however feels natural, and breathe out the same way. Let the rhythm of your own heart guide the breath.

3. Let go of trying to feel something. Don’t try to create love, peace, gratitude, or any particular emotion. Your only job is to breathe and feel exactly as much as you’re able to right now.

4. Include whatever is here. If numbness is what you find, let numbness be part of what you’re breathing with. If sadness, anger, grief, or tenderness is there, let that be included too. None of it is a failure. It’s simply where you are. Be with it.

Stay with it for as long as feels right. There’s no version of this you can get wrong.

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One Last Thing...

Today is the Fourth of July for so many of you reading this, a weekend built around the idea of freedom. Two hundred and fifty years of independence is no small thing to honor. And underneath the fireworks, the flags, and the celebrations, I keep thinking about what freedom actually means.

I don’t think emotional freedom means never feeling numb, never feeling rage, or never feeling afraid. I think it means learning how to fully welcome whatever is here, including the numbness, until it has run its course. Real freedom is being able to surrender into that vast, infinite loving space that lives behind each feeling, the Sacred Heart beneath the heart, and trusting that it can hold whatever you bring to it.

Thank you for your comments, your care, and your patience with me as I’ve processed this in real time alongside you.

Wherever you are today, whether you are celebrating, grieving, resting, or simply trying to find your way back to yourself, I hope you find a moment to be fully present in it. Heart breathing. Heart feeling. Heart being.

Wishing you a really beautiful weekend.

From my heart to yours,

—Gabriel

PS. When you're ready, here are several ways I can support you on your journey.
PPS. One last thing… If someone shared this newsletter with you, you can always subscribe to the newsletter here.