What Does it Really Mean to be Open-Hearted?

What does it actually mean to be open-hearted? It’s a phrase we hear often. It sounds beautiful, soft, even aspirational. But in my experience, being open-hearted is not always gentle or easy.

Sometimes it’s messy.

A writer I love, Sarah Blondin (you can read her Substack here: Sarah Blondin), reminded me of a teaching from Lao Tzu about a glass of muddy water. The question he asked in the Dao was: Who can make the muddy water clear? Most of us assume the answer is to leave it alone and let the mud settle.

But that’s not quite it.

In my own life, and through the guidance of one of my teachers, I’ve come to understand something different. The mud doesn’t just quietly disappear. It has to rise. It has to move. It has to come up to the surface before the water can truly become clear.

And when it rises, it clouds everything.

It gets murky before it gets clear. That’s the part we don’t like and the part we resist.

I remember being on day three of a seven-day silent meditation retreat. My legs were numb. My body was aching. I was gripping through the discomfort, thinking I was getting closer to some version of enlightenment. Instead, what I encountered was the mud, emotions, memories, and discomfort rising to the surface in a way I couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t pretty. It was raw.

And that was just the beginning. This pattern has shown up many times in my life, like when I lost a job unexpectedly, I didn’t allow myself to feel the grief or the fear. I went straight to blame. I told stories. I pushed the pain back down.

The mud settled, but it didn’t go away.

Years later, it would resurface in small ways, reminding me it was still there, waiting to be felt and released. Its energy, and that’s the thing about energy: 

It stores. It waits. It finds its way back if we don't face it the first time around. 

Being open-hearted means allowing ourselves to open to that process. It means letting the mud rise instead of forcing it down. It means feeling the discomfort, the sadness, the anger, the disappointment without trying to fix it, avoid it, or explain it away.

I’ve seen this recently in my own life and work with a project I poured hours into, energy, time, care… fell apart. Completely and unexpectedly. Was I disappointed? Hell yes! But the old version of me, the old pattern, would have been to push through, override the feeling, or make it mean something about me. Instead, I let it dissolve, and I gave myself permission - I  felt the disappointment, I let the energy move, and I allowed it to pass through rather than get stuck.

That is open-hearted living. Painful? Yes

I believe there is a misunderstanding with the muddy water teaching. It’s not about letting things settle and pretending everything is fine. It’s about allowing what is stuck to move.

My teacher of the last four years used to say to me, “Bronwyn, you don’t stir the mud. You pour in clean water and allow it to rise and clear.” He said this to me over and over as I relived this pain. 

At the time, I didn’t fully understand. Now I do.

The clean water is awareness, presence, truth, and compassion.

As we bring more of that into our lives, the old energy begins to move. And yes, it gets murky for a while. But that’s part of the clearing.

We are living in a time when a lot of mud is rising in the world.

Tension. Fear. Division. Uncertainty.

We can all feel it.

The question is not how to avoid it. The question is how we meet it.  Can we allow what is surfacing to be seen and felt? And can we bring in more clarity, more truth, more grounded energy instead of reacting from fear?

Because the energy we bring matters.

Being open-hearted is not about being soft or passive.

It’s about being willing to feel, which is incredibly brave, staying present, and allowing what is true to move through you instead of getting stuck inside you.

This is how things clear up and out.

This is how we lead.

This will be how we heal.

With heart,