It’s really quite simple, but it has taken me a long time to figure it out. Having an open-heart is not a conditional act. It is not a conditional state. There are no built-in guarantees. The openness is freely given with nothing expected in return. There is unconditional acceptance and an unconditional invitation. There is no bartering, no exchanges.
It is the natural way of the universe. Being open-hearted means nothing is expected in return. In contrast, humans have invented bartering. Humans have invented so many ways to get around this basic reality. Stepping out of a world in which everything was freely given, humans first bartered about goods and land. Then it was about one another. Relations with one another became conditional with promises about the future and with attempts to secure guarantees.
It was not the way of nature, not the natural way. Nature is open-hearted. Hearts are naturally open in an unconditional manner. Then expectations gradually creep in that things be different than they are. Open-heartedness unfortunately often becomes conditional.
I think it is appropriate to say “I would like……”. But that is a perilous move. A wish or desire is not an expectation, but the slope is very slippery. It is very hard to avoid expectations or conditional open-heartedness.
In my vocabulary, being open-hearted is another way of saying “I love”. But the notion of love have so many barnacles attached to it, so many external conditions, that the word is both misleading and deceiving. So I stay away from it.
I prefer to declare my open-heartedness, now that I am discovering what I think it is really about. In open-heartedness there is no reciprocity expected. It is an invitation freely given without any expectation of exchange. I want it to be my unconditional state and my way of living.