Are You All In on Your Own Heart?

I love synchronicity. For instance, just the other day my young friend gave me some advice about social media. He told me that I needed to go all in on one specific platform. I asked him exactly what that meant in terms of that platform. He promptly showed me how to thoroughly and diligently follow up leads, search the #’s, and start connecting more significantly.
The synchronicity? As I read more of Vincent by himself, I realized that for the largest part of his short life, he didn’t go all in, and this created torment for Vincent (Van Gogh). Why does anyone not heed that still small voice of their heart? The more we listen, the louder it gets and the easier it gets, but why do so many, especially when the voice is insistent, try to rationalize around it? I have ideas, but Vincent knew. The appeal of religion to the ego, though, really did a number on Vincent, producing a life-long guilt and a fear and mistrust of his core Self.
He felt it, and somewhere, he knew it. He was an artist, but his ego fought it. The conflict was palpable: “…for even now, far from that land, I am often homesick for that land of pictures. …Well, what shall I say? Do our inner thoughts ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passersby see only a wisp of smoke coming through the chimney, and go along their way” (33). Vincent only lived to the age of 37, and he wrote this ten years before his death. It wasn’t until after his death that people were warmed from the great fire in his soul.
Ego always wants to be dependent on others and please others in order to help us fit in and protect us from disappointment. Problem is it makes us miserable because we are not able to live our life purpose. He compromised his heart message and made it subservient to the whole religious indoctrination, clearly seen when he equates a preacher he hears to an artist: “it’s as if he paints…high and noble art” (29). At the same time, he turns down going to an amazing art show for which his brother paid. Ego wins.
So many times Vincent kept getting closer, but ego held him back. During the last ten years of his life, he finally produced huge amounts of work, but he was never free from guilt or self-doubt. He came to recognize it — “If I repent anything, it is the time when mystical and theological notions induced me to lead too secluded a life” (39). However, the negative effects took different forms but remained with him.
When he heeded his heart, which desired to make his beautiful self known for the good of others, which would draw others to be warmed by the fire of his soul, he produced some of the most magnificent expressions of life ever captured — at least to me. For the last years of his life, Vincent went all in, revealing the sight given to him by his heart, revealing the energies of life, the vibrations of life on canvas with his knife, brush, and palette. It seems to me that he understood through art the very essence of quantum mechanics. Magnificent — when he was all in.
Vincent never seemed to fully trust himself, to believe that if he lived his heart and life purpose, he could be happy, joyful, fulfilled, and significant. The last known written words in a letter found on his body — after he presumably shot himself and died rather slowly from it — were these: “Well, my own work, I am risking my life for it and my reason has half foundered because of it…” (167). His reason, rationalizing ego — ugh! He just did not go all in on his own heart’s revelation.
However, I am so glad that he did for awhile, because Vincent’s work shows what a human can see of life, the power that is all around us, those vibrations energizing everything; they are there available for us to see, available for us to know because those are operative in us.
How much better to go all in on core Self and be like Ali: “I am the greatest.” And then keep working towards that, trusting self, no doubting, no hesitancy. Onward and Upward. And then others will be drawn to the heat of the fire of our souls. It’s wonderful, amazing, and oh, so right.