When we begin to close our hearts to others, it can set off a chain reaction.

One area of our life where we feel justified in showing intolerance or lack of compassion, can easily impact other areas of our life.

If we are not being mindful, we can soon become bitter and lose sight of our deeper truth.

By not acting consciously or with empathy and compassion for others, we could one day find ourselves becoming generally disgruntled and seemingly unhappy with our lives.

This may manifest itself in many ways – but constant complaints about those around us, how the world is run, how others live their lives (and so on) will lead us to becoming miserable.

As humans, we tend to want to justify our behaviours, however unreasonable, by blaming others or showing how their perceived bad behaviour has “made us” act in a certain way.

At this point, we are no longer grounded and are in danger of losing perspective entirely.

We may further try to justify our behaviour by becoming more entrenched in our thinking or more antagonistic in our interactions with others.

Before we realise it, we hardly recognise ourselves (if we have moments of clarity) or we start to lose our friends, fall out with our loved ones and suffer at work.

We must be always vigilant against closing our hearts to anyone, so that we do not head off down this path in the first place.

Empathy, compassion and love are our weapons against the encroaching darkness.

Mindfulness is the light that we shine to help us see the truth.