Perceiving from Heartfulness
“In the wisdom traditions of the Near East, the heart is not the seat of one’s personal emotional life, but an organ of spiritual perception. (…) The essential point is that the heart is primarily an instrument of sight—or insight, as the case may be (‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’). Its purpose is to navigate along the vertical axis and stay in alignment with ‘the Image of one’s true nature.’ Itself a vibrant resonant field, it functions like a homing beacon between the realms; and when it is strong and clear, it creates a synchronous resonance between them.”
~Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer
Awareness Training is too simple for Complex Minds
Your Mind – even a well-trained ‘mindful’ Mind – is simply not the organ to perceive Heartfulness any more than you could use your eyes to hear. It’s makes no difference that your vision is 20/20!
Now don’t get me wrong – I love a good strong mind as much as anyone. I really value my mind. I appreciate the ability to make a spreadsheet do cool things, to analyze deeply and determine gain or loss in the world, and to craft this blog post to communicate and hopefully make a difference. In the western world most of us have been conditioned to abdicate the sovereignty over our lives to the Mind – we have forgotten that we are more than our Minds. Your Mind insists it is the ALL of you. This deeply habituated assumption is often the first hurdle my clients face in Awareness Training.
The Mind gets frustrated with the simple prescriptions and practices of Awareness Training and instead probes for the secret ‘answer’ that must be hidden somewhere;
The Mind compares and contrasts ‘Heartfulness’ with other concepts read about or experienced in the past.
The Mind slices, dices, and judges at a furious pace; looking everywhere for the experience within the realm of Mind.
The Mind is designed to work by splitting the perceptual field - good/bad, high/low, soft/hard, me/you.
Heartfulness is the practice of perceiving the world from a state of attention that is softly focused an the all, rather than sharply focused a part.
The Heart perceives by sensing into the undivided whole of reality so that it can be used as a compass to guide one through an aligned life.
So here’s a loving Modern Myth for my beautiful clients with strong and dominant Minds:
Imagine you own an amazing sports car that really hugs the curves on twisty mountain roads. Let’s say that this fancy car also has an advanced auto pilot that autonomously drives the car from point A to point B, guided by complex software rules. That software is designed to react to the environment and is programmed and automatic. Advanced software may be capable of learning, so perhaps the program gets refined over time, but it is always figuring out HOW to get there. This amazing auto pilot is useful and brilliant at navigating the roads, but it never ponders ‘why point B?’ It was never designed to do that.
Figuring out WHY and WHERE to go is YOUR job as the Driver, of course. But what if the Driver falls asleep behind the wheel? The autopilot continues to take you safely from programmed point to programmed point, but to whom does the journey belong? The auto pilot or the Driver?
Unlike the auto pilot, your Mind continues to insist the only way forward is calculating and recalculating the old time-worn habitual equations. ‘Just one more software upgrade’ it pleads; ‘one more self-help book, one more well-reasoned argument, one more probing insightful question, and then we’ll figure this out.’ On and on it goes…
If you are reading this blog, it’s likely that you’ve devoted a lot of thought on how to live a more heart-connected life – and also wondering what that even means for you. If the Mind was the way forward, isn’t it likely that after all this time your capable and amazing Mind would have figured something out?
Perhaps the way forward is in an entirely different direction than your Mind assumes.
Perhaps the Driver could to wake up and take the wheel.
Love, David