Things look different when I hold them in my heart instead of letting them roll and roll across the landscape of my mind. My worries, for example.
I worry about the state of the world, whether we are headed toward global conflicts that will engulf us; I worry about the economy and people’s jobs; I worry about the money in my IRA; I worry about my children’s future, will they fashion lives that make them happy; I weep for our democracy and wonder if we will come to blows in civil violence; I worry that our lives are already doomed by the spiraling climate; I wonder whether artificial intelligence will save the day, or run us into the ground.
I’m a mental person. My normal mode of operation is to think things through by turning them over in my mind. But the whole backdrop shifts when I settle into my heart. I literally allow my awareness to descend from my head to my chest. My heart becomes the center of gravity of my consciousness. Dropping into my heart doesn’t void my reasoning faculties (I don’t go into a trance), but my thinking mode is joined by other faculties, fresh channels of sensation and information. I start to feel my body, which I had forgotten entirely – its pulsing warmth, the pace and volume of my breath, the aliveness of the currents running through, from, and around my body. My heart is bigger than my head. Much bigger. Given room, the tired fragments spinning in my mind have a chance to come to rest.
Living from my heart is a paradox of beauty and terror. Beauty, because I sense a fullness of self when I am in my heart, occupying spaciousness, absorbed into the world, but not lost. More like I’ve found myself, actually – the true me. But also fear. Some days, I fight myself at the threshold, afraid to feel my body and the fires I am holding at a distance. It makes me think I’ve been using my mind as a safety valve, a place I retreat to avoid feeling what is painful. I am naturally impatient, so I like the illusion of quick answers my thinking mind provides. But when I drop into my heart, I know my thinking mind is a facade, a first layer with miles below it.
Problems don’t resolve there, but holding them in heart awareness reveals that they are but the tiny movements of a longer sweep with beginnings and endings I cannot see. I struggle with the word “acceptance” because it suggests acquiescence, maybe even complicity. But there is truth in accepting that much of the world (most? more than most?) is outside of my control. Holding the world in my heart lets me relate to events and problems with less worry. Worry makes things worse. It shrivels my vision and leaves me paralyzed.
Heart awareness is available but intentional. I have to choose to open. I find it helps to make an invitation, or ask permission. Invite or ask who? That’s a trick of my thinking mind, still fearful, pulling me back from the doorway. I am asking as an act of surrender, a giving over of myself, a shedding of the wall that shields me. The world accommodates when I make this gesture, and my heart inclines herself more freely. My invitation is sometimes silent, wordless, or it can take the form of prayer:
Dear Heart, let us open together
Help me see where I am closed
Show me what I am missing
In the asking, I sense companionship. I feel less afraid, less alone in the face of uncertainty. I encounter the world as it is, honest and ready.
Image by ciaorioris from Pixabay
Or, as Father Al Moser used to say: “And remember. You’re not God. Thank God!”
Amen.
Thank you for this, Steve. I’ve been following your work for a while. We seem to be on the same path. I’ve been wrestling with the mind/heart choice for a couple years now. It exploded into glaring pain in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in early October 2024. My community in the Western North Carolina mountains was almost cut off and without power for two weeks. We were very fortunate that no one was injured and no one’s home was destroyed by all the uprooted trees.
I don’t have a generator so I had to rely on my neighbors for water, to recharge batteries and refrigerate my food. I returned from one neighborhood trip where the feeling of fear was so palpable you could touch it. Would their propane run out? Could the truck get in here? Could they find enough gasoline?
I clearly remember standing in my kitchen and saying out loud to myself, “Marsha, you have a choice here: trust or fear. I choose trust.” It was at that moment that I decided to let my heart take the lead.
It hasn’t been easy at all. Just like you, I’m a mental person and it’s served me well in my life. Plus I have several overreactive protective “parts” from childhood that get too much space in my head. I’ve learned from experience that the worried scenarios my mind generates are never correct or close to reality and the intuition from my heart always is. I’m slowly learning to recognize those parts, thank them, reduce the volume and retire them.
During an equinox ritual the following spring at my springhead I received the message to open my heart, wide open, wide enough to take in the whole world. It surprised me, and honestly, frightened me. But that sense of spaciousness, when I can feel it, is a soothing balm. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was told later that I was a planetary consciousness in another lifetime. Still sitting with that one.
So thank you again for this sharing. I’m going to print it out and return to it when my mind explodes and I lose that heart/mind coherence that the world so desperately needs. Please keep writing.💚
Marsha, I was moved to read your heart-felt comment. I find life keeps breaking me open, just as you describe. I don’t always understand the information that comes through, but then, there is so much more to the cosmos than we can comprehend with our thinking mind. Stay open.