Growing the Heart’s Intelligence

Tags

celebration, heart, heart matters, intelligence, sisters, spirituality

There was a confluence of events which occurred over the past week that reminded me of “the heart’s intelligence”. Two back-to-back lectures by a visiting monk from the “Vedanta society of Houston”, two pieces of mail that arrived on Thursday, and my stumbling on a few personal notes from a book that I had read a few years ago.

The Vedanta lectures address some important questions – Who am I? What is real? What is the truth? What is awareness? And more. My one takeaway was that the mind is not real. From the physical plane, the ‘mind’ is fed inputs by our senses, and creates reactions, which we then respond to as actions. So, what is real? Our awareness that ‘we exist’, even when we are asleep, is a reality. Where does this awareness register? It is in the ‘heart’ – not the physical heart, but the ‘heart’ of every cell of our body. That is the “heart’s intelligence” fed by our spiritual practices.

Fast forward to Thursday morning, when I was “celebrating all my sisters, then and now”, on the day of annual “brother sister festival” called Rakhi. Phone conversations with my sisters in India are a must on this day for me – I actually get to hear their heart’s, share my heart, and there is much laughter and good-nature’s ribbing. They both always ask the question – “did you get my ‘Rakhi’?”

In both cases, I had to reluctantly say – no, not yet. In both cases, I said with a confident heart – “but I am sure that it will come, right on time, in today’s mail”. It is a festival of the heart – and yes, each piece of mail, after traveling 7500 miles, arrived that afternoon. The heart’s intelligence grew a bit more, with two shiny threads from my sisters this week. They’ve been sending me love-filled threads for many decades. I am in awe of them and their hearts.

“The Heart’s Code” was a wonderful book that explained the multiple dimensions of the “heart” and its importance, as I started a focused meditation practice a few years ago. Sorting through my electronic notes this week (getting ready for my “book”), I stumbled on some treasures. First, there was this reminder, to take time to receive.

Take time every day to be open to the energy those you love give off; let your heart receive that energy, store it, and recall it as often as you can. Look, listen, smell, touch, and feel with your heart those you love as profoundly and deeply as you can while the physical manifestation of their energy is still yours for the feeling.

Then, there was this reference to the heart’s role as a ‘memory-keeping’ intelligence portal.

The brain is very busy with its own memory system. It is less sensitive than the heart to the more subtle energetic memories. By putting our heart into remembering those we love every day, we are recovering cellular memories…

And finally, this note spoke to a special propensity of my mine, and perhaps yours too…

When poets describe love as “giving our heart away,” they are cardio-energetically correct.

All the events of this week were designed to remind me that there is perhaps no better return on investment than in growing the heart’s intelligence. I am thus inspired to focus on tearing down my walls of intransigence and prejudice, so that I can heart-connect more often with more of my brothers and sisters across the world. Join me in growing the world’s HeartIQ, will you?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering of brothers and sisters in #SpiritChat on Sunday, Aug 18 at 9amET. I will bring some sweets – we shall grow our hearts. Namaste – @AjmaniK

The Heart’s Revival and Revitalization

Tags

family, friendship, healing, heart, revitalization, revival

The Amazing Race

Five airports, four flights, three airlines and two days later, the heart that began its journey on a pre-dawn, cold, rainy morning in NorthEast Ohio reached its destination in a sunny, warm, humid, sleepy hamlet of Kumarakom, south of the city of Kochi, in the southernmost state, Kerala, of India.

It felt like we had been in an episode of “The Amazing Race” over the past forty eight hours of traveling. Except that this was a one-team episode, and so we were the first to arrive at the destination…

The Hole in the Heart

It had been over two years, actually closer to three, that I had been back to India. The passing of my Mom in February 2016, the last of my two sets of parents (birth and sustenance), had created a small hole in my heart that had grown slowly bigger as the weeks turned to months, quarters and then years. After the two year mark, I had begun to wonder, when the road back home would open up to my heart again. The longer I stayed away, the weaker the pull to go back became.

My wife must have felt my fading away. In mid July, the visionary that she is of great intuition, made the decision. It was time to return. In a whirlwind of messages between close family and friends on WhatsApp, a location was found, advance deposits were made, plane tickets were bought, and seven families committed to two separate reunions. The stage was set for the heart.

A Resurgence Story

After having read all the reports of the massive flooding which had happened in August, I had expected Kochi city and her surroundings to show signs of damage everywhere. I was to learn from the local cab drivers that the shiny, gleaming airport terminal we had arrived in had been three feet underwater, and had to be shut down for four weeks. Everywhere we went, whether by auto-rickshaw, car or boat – not a single person complained about what had befallen them. You could see and feel that they were happy that we were visiting and investing in their recovery.

As we took multiple boat trips through the backwaters and on the massive lake, more stories of overcoming and resurgence filtered through. I asked questions of everyone on the lake house that we were staying in – the cleaning lady Asha, the cooking lady Jinu, the manager Aarokya, the boat guides. I asked questions of a mix of Hindus, Muslims and Christians, for Kerala is a state where they all blend together.

All of them would speak of their beautiful families, how much they were grateful for what (little) they had, and of how the floods – and their subsequent recovery from them – had brought them closer as communities.

Family Foundation – Revival Begins

As the long languid days of sitting by the pool unfolded, entranced by the lake as boats of all shapes and sizes slowly slid by like a knife through slightly warmed butter, I felt a warm glow beginning to heal my heart’s hole. The heart started to feel a revival, an increase in functional and emotional capacity. The first reunion, with my brother and sister’s family, laid the foundation for the revival. The feelings of disconnection that had grown with time and distance after my Mother’s passing, were rearranged and reframed like the floating hyacinths that constantly reconfigure themselves on the lake surface.

The heart felt closure, it felt rooted and anchored again. It was a bit like the houseboats that anchor themselves overnight on the lake, and whose solitary lights could be seen like a string of pearls in the distance every night – an entourage of twinkling stars brought down from the heavens onto the waters.

Reunion with Friends – Heart Revival

And as if the revival with the family reunion wasn’t enough, what followed during the reunion with four friends from undergraduate engineering school (and their families) was an even greater closure of the heart’s hole. The five of us have a friendship, a kinship that goes back over thirty years. It has sustained the test of time and space, grown through our weddings, our children’s births, our travels across the world with our businesses and careers.

When you gather the energy of five families, in a five-bedroom lake house, where there is not much else to do but to sit around and swim in the energy of each other, a healing synergy surges through every heart. The five of us are like the five elements, and every time they come together, the limits to our creativity seem to be transcended.

For those of you who have read this far, I am grateful to you for coming along on this journey with me. I share with you with the intent that somewhere in this retelling of my personal revival, you find inspiration to be led to a heart’s revival of your own. I also hope, that when your heart’s hole does close, that you will share a bit of your revival journey with us.

For we shall all be grateful to draw inspiration from the resurgence of your submerged heart, your resilience, your heart’s revival.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter conversation with the #spiritchat community on twitter – Sunday, January 13th at 9amET / 730pm India. I will step up to host, and I look forward to hearing stories about your heart’s revival. I will bring the tea and the questions… your presence is much looked forward to 🙂 – Kumud

Permalink: https://spiritchat140.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/the-hearts-revival/

The Heart’s Intelligence

Tags

heart, intelligence, spirituality

Heart’s Intelligence (by Denna J. Shelton)

“If the 20 th Century has been the Century of the Brain …
then the 21 st century should be the Century of the Heart.”
~Gary. E.R. Schwartz, Ph.D., Author of The Living Energy Universe

One of the most astounding, exciting pieces of information I’ve ever received came while attending a lecture given by spiritualist/scientist Gregg Braden.  Every hair on my body stood on its end and I connected with it as deep truth. It validated from a scientific perspective what I already knew to be true. Gregg shared the findings from the Institute of Heart Math stating that “the heart, not the brain, is the most powerful neural-network within the human body.” I learned its electricity is 40-60% stronger than the brain’s and contains around 40,000 “brain-like cells” that literally communicate with the brain in every nanosecond of the day.

Coherence between our hearts and our brains is the ultimate state of being in experiencing overall emotional, physical, and mental health. “Unfortunately ego choices are overriding our heart’s intelligence,” states the Institute of Heart Math. Most of us already know this to be true and have no need for the science of it. Yet, do we really know how powerful our hearts are? Do we really know how powerful we are when heart-centered? Do we really know our impact on the planet by what lies within our individual heart?

The ultimate question may be… What old stories and beliefs are you holding in your heart that are governing your life and affecting the whole?

Science has proven what ancient wisdom has known all along. The heart is powerful and holds an intelligence all of its own – often referred to as the “master organ” and was revered and celebrated by the ancients. “It’s only in more recent history that the pendulum swung the other way in science and medicine in thinking of the heart as an isolated pump,” states Gregg Braden in his latest book, Resilience from the Heart.

Is now the time for the pendulum to swing back to the center balancing our hearts with our brains? Is now the time for us to access the wisdom our hearts hold? Surely now is the time to have a state of being which radiates love, joy, peace and harmony in a powerful way for our personal well-being and that of the worlds.

You’re cordially invited to join us for a global conversation to discuss the topic “Heart’s Intelligence.” This is a #SpiritChat community event taking place on the Twitter platform this Sunday, November 11 at 9am ET.

We look forward to having you join us!

Denna J. Shelton, CH, RMP

Heart’s Intelligence
A Global #SpiritChat Community Event on Twitter with Denna Shelton (@twentygems)
Sunday, November 11 @ 9a ET

Denna J. Shelton, CH, RMP has 30 years’ experience in whole wellness: mind, body, & spirit as a fitness instructor, consulting hypnotist, and Reiki Master Practitioner. Her strengths include her experience, knowledge, calming and soothing charisma, and passion for what she does. All of these characteristics, along with her pleasant voice, laid back and comfortable presence and ease of speaking contributes to her success in service to others.

Her unique approach to hypnosis and Reiki is in combing the two modalities. She thinks each stand effectively on their own, but the two together have proven to be a powerful combination for mind, body, and spirit. Denna believes the touchstone and balancer of all energies is love. Her role as the hypnotist/healer is to open your heart to love where transmutation and regeneration take place.

Denna’s belief: “Now is the time, more than ever, for us to embrace the Truth of who we truly are. It is time to align the quality of our thinking with the needs of our bodies and the desires of our hearts. To claim the power that is our birthright that leads to a life of joy, peace, love, and abundance in all ways.”

www.dennashelton.com

The Heart’s Graduations

Tags

commencement, graduation, heart, heart matters

The end of May and the beginning of June is ‘graduation season’ in the USA. With the end of the school year, and the beginning of ‘summer break’, it is a long-standing tradition that celebrates the accomplishment of students, a felicitation of their teachers, and the support of family and friends. From kindergarteneners to post-graduates, beaming students march across stages across America in the finest of caps, gowns, tassels and other finery, as they are handed rolled-up diplomas that proclaim them as ‘graduates’.

The first ever graduation that I attended for myself, was for my doctorate degree. I had somehow managed to skip (or avoid!) every single one before then. In this case, having graduated in the December of the previous year, I was already working full-time. My thesis advisor called, and jokingly suggested that I would not receive that piece of sheepskin (is it really made of that?) if I did not show up for the ceremony. I am glad that I went, because it was a wonderful celebration indeed. I do not remember who the commencement speaker was, or what they said, but I will never forget the look of joy in my advisor’s eyes when I came off the stage with degree in hand.

He was always Dr. Ng to me. A young superstar professor from MIT, Presidential Rank Young Professor awardee, often chosen Professor of the Year by his students, and much more. In that moment, all I could say to him was, Thank you, Dr. Ng. But that day, he immediately corrected me and said – you can call me “Wing” from now on. You earned that right. He must have seen the reluctance in my eyes at this suggestion. So he quickly added – it’s okay. I insist.

For some reason, with that simple statement, I realized that four years of an academic-centric relationship (that began with him being my Master’s degree advisor), had now graduated to a heart-centric relationship. His attendance at the graduation parties thrown by my friends, an invitation to his home to have a special dinner with his family, and many other small and not-so-small touches were proof of that. He knew that I did not have any family (other than my younger cousin) present that week, so he turned from mere advisor to filling the role of proud-parent.

Now that I think about those events of twenty-five years ago, I ask myself. How do we know when our heart has graduated from kindergarten to the next grade? How do we discern when a relationship has transformed from a business- or academic- or task-centric to a heart-centric one? How do we measure the heart’s progress on the ‘education’ ladder, or can we? What would a high-school graduation in the heart’s curriculum entail for us? How about an undergraduate or graduate degree, or even a ‘doctorate’ in heart-centric education?

Perhaps all these questions are moot, for they all point to a single answer. Perhaps there are no discrete graduations in the heart, for the flow within it is more of a continuum. Perhaps the heart is beyond space and time, for it is on its journey of continuous involution.

In closing, I have to say thank you. To my parents who supported my coming here for graduate studies. To the community of Virginia Tech who held me gently. To my friends and teachers who believed in me despite all my flaws. And to the thesis advisor who took a gamble on a ‘fresh-off-of-the-boat’ graduate student from India after a five minute conversation, and provided and protected for him with all the resources at his disposal to make sure that he stayed the course.

Thank you, Wing for being a shining-heart example of the spirit of Ut Prosim.

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. Please join us Sunday, June 3rd at 9amET on twitter in #SpiritChat – we will explore the topic of “The Heart’s Graduation”. I look forward to your sharing of some graduation thoughts with the community. Thank you!

The heart’s graduation perhaps happens in the willingness to cross bridges…

Heart Lessons by @DrThema

Tags

healing, heart, heartmonth, spirituality

I invite you to join our weekly #SpiritChat conversation on Sunday, February 26th 2017 at 9amET/2pmUTC with a special guest, Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis (@DrThema on twitter). Dr Thema will share with us as co-host, in our final chat in February to celebrate ‘heart month’. Dr Thema has shared some questions for us to reflect upon, and help us prepare to share our ‘Heart Lessons’ in different areas of our lives. – Kumud (@AjmaniK)

When we open our hearts to love, we learn. No matter how a circumstance turns out, it can enrich our hearts and minds. The gift is in being able to see the lesson that our heart journeys have brought us. Please share with our #spiritchat community your love lessons.

How do you determine if your heart is speaking or if fear is speaking?

What heart lesson(s) have you learned
– about loving yourself?
– from being in a loving relationship?
– from being in a toxic relationship?
– from seasons of solitude?
– about sacred or divine love?
– from being part of a loving community?
– about doing what you love as compared to doing what pays well?
– about surviving heart break?

What book or film opened you to or reminded you of a powerful heart lesson? What was the lesson.

Dr. Thema is a licensed psychologist, ordained minister, associate professor, and author of the ebook Tweets for the Soul: When life falls apart. Connect with her at www.drthema.com

The Heart’s Openness

Tags

closing, heart, opening, spirituality

The very act of being, human or otherwise, has a certain dynamic nature attached to it. In humans, the heart has evolved as the epicenter of this state of beingness. The four physical chambers of the human heart have four external openings – two for the input of blood and two for the output. This heart beats continuously from the time of its formation in the first few months after conception until the day we die… At an average of 72 beats per minute, our heart beats 103,000 times per day, 3.8 million times per year, 2.5 billion times in a 65 year life-span. It does its work, virtually non-stop. The physical heart is an astounding piece of ‘machinery’!

The closing and opening of the heart’s internal and external valves allows us to exist in our state of physical being. But what about our emotional and spiritual state of being? Are their different, separate ‘hearts’ for these states? While the physical heart may be centrally located in a specific space for all of us humans, the location of the ’emotional heart’ may be different for different people. The same may be true for the ‘spiritual heart’. And the mechanism of the ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ of these hearts may also be different for different folks, yes?

One key difference between our physical and emotional/spiritual hearts is that the the opening/closing of the latter is directly influenced by their connection(s) to others’ hearts. This is not to say that our physical heart’s workings are isolated from the states of our own emotional/spiritual hearts – they are only indirectly influenced by others’ physical hearts. The reason that this distinction is important is that it can help us develop the awareness that the health of our emotional/spiritual hearts influences the physical hearts of those that we are closely connected to. So, we may want to closely watch the health of our emotional and spiritual heatts, even more so than our physical heart!

Try as we may, the ‘heaviness’ or ‘lightness’ conveyed by our emotional heart impacts our physical heart. The ‘tightening of the chest’ while watching an intensely emotional (real or virtual) event is a physical response we may all have experienced. Our emotional/spiritual heart may actually close or even ‘shut down’ as a mechanism of self-protection and self-preservation. In extreme situations, this can even lead to a shutdown of the physical heart. How often have we heard of people having heart-attacks when their favorite team ends up losing a crucial game? Emotional heart closure due to shock. It is no secret that we live in a hyper-connected and ‘react-and-share-first, check-the-facts-later’ world. The emotional heart’s rapid or sequential closure can often occur in response to reactions to news items or social media posts construed by us as an overload of our emotional circuits.

The danger of these frequent loading cycles is that we either ‘bury our heads in the sand’ or exert our emotional/spiritual hearts to the point of ‘irrecoverable’ fatigue. Or both. Either way, the health of our physical hearts is in turn bound to suffer. In the material sciences, a material that is subject to repeated cycles of loading and unloading will eventually undergo permanent deformation or fatigue. “Microscopic cracks” form in the internal structure of the material and failure occurs at much lighter loads than the material is originally meant to be able to withstand. Is there an analogy here to the current state of openness and corresponding level of fatigue our physical/emotional/spiritual hearts?

I don’t know about all of you, but in the past few weeks, I have found myself spending less and less time on ‘social’ media. Part of this action is driven by self-preservation of my emotional and spiritual states. “The first rule of self-defense is to get out of the way – Sensei Denniss” (my 8th degree black-belt Karate teacher). If my emotional/spiritual heart feels less open after I spend time on social media, it defeats the purpose of ‘social’, does it not? I want my spiritual heart’s state to remain open, and keep opening a bit more every day. Such a state is often achieved with a long walk admiring the grace and flux of nature, a meditation session that leaves me filled with light, a reading or writing exercise that lightens the spirit, an impromptu gathering and celebration with friends over a meal, and so on. I fill my heart’s reservoir with spiritual energy, and then expend it on actions that produce purposeful, meaningful and long-term growth.

I am convinced that the state of my spiritual heart affects every one of you who invest heart energy in the #SpiritChat conversations every week, and our community at large. The reverse is true too. The degree of openness of your spiritual heart affects all those that you engage with – particularly those that you have a strong heart-resonance with.

I encourage you to engage their spiritual heart with truth, intelligence, and joy. And watch your heart, and theirs, open a bit more everyday.

Namaste,

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. The weekly invitation – join us in #SpiritChat on twitter, Sunday February 12th at 9amET/2pmGMT to share the state of openness of your heart. We continue our celebration of #heartmonth in February… Namaste.

The Heart’s Openness – A nature-walk – photo by KA

The Heart’s Color Map

Tags

colormap, heart, heartmonth, spirituality

January seemed to go by really quickly this year. A bit quicker than usual… I don’t know about you, but I am glad that February is here. For one, we are another month closer to spring! February is also celebrated as the month where the focus shifts to the heart. Valentine’s Day and the American Heart Association’s focus on ‘heart health’ are two major events that happen in this month. Why not we celebrate the ‘spiritual heart’ along with the ‘physical heart’ this month? In this vein, all of February in #SpiritChat will be themed on the heart and its many manifestations and influences on our overall well-being.

As we step into this exploration of the heart and related matters, we can endeavor to first create a ‘road map’ to help keep us on track towards our goal of optimal heart-health. “If we don’t know where we are, and we don’t care where we are going, any road will get us there.” If we do know and we do care, we can activate the (spiritual) heart’s energy to guide us to our goal.

The use of color on our heart’s map can help our brain to make connections that would otherwise be difficult to make with the heart. Color can represent warm and cold states, and states of the heart in-between. When we say we are ‘feeling blue’, it is an expression to indicate our emotional state. So, blue can represent the ‘cold regions’ of our heart map. Red can represent the ‘warm regions’ where we feel a ‘rush of blood’ to the heart. The intermediate colors on the heart-map can represent the transition states. What color would represent a ‘happy space’ or a ‘balanced space’ on your heart’s map? Why? Reflect on it for a bit…

Once we have the heart-space mapped by colored regions, we can correlate them to our physical actions. What physical actions lead us into the ‘blue space’ and leave us there? What inner and outer interactions lead us into the ‘red space’? What kind of practices keep us in the innermediate ‘green’ or ‘yellow’ spaces?

Driving home from work one day during rush hour, I decided to do an exercise. I started tracking the number of times I got irritated (orange) and then angry (red), as a result of the actions of other drivers. I repeated this inner-tracking activity through the week, and I realized that after a few days, it became rare for me to be moved from a ‘calm’ green/yellow space to an ‘agitated’ orange/red space while driving. A simple yet power transformation brought about by simple observation.

Try it. Let me know if you observe the same effect. It doesn’t have to be related to driving – it could be any activity that you do repeatedly or on a regular basis. Like attending office meetings or reading facebook posts or watching the news… How does your heart’s colormap change and how quickly in response to these external triggers? How can you modify your actions or your reactions to preserve and grow your heart’s color of equanimity?

Our heart’s color state is important. It reflects in our external persona. We may not be aware of it, but our internal energy – its frequency, amplitude (intensity) and wavelength (color) – affects those near and afar. This is simple physics. Newton’s law of gravitation. We can use the awareness of our heart’s colormap to affect the world in a positive, purposeful and peaceful way. Let us do it, shall we?

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. I invite all of you to join the #SpiritChat community to share your heart’s colors with us – all colors are welcome. All the way from one end of the spectrum to the other. Black and white included. Sunday, February 5th at 9amET/2pmGMT. Let us kickoff the #heartmonth celebration in style. Namaste.

The Heart’s Color Map… Artwork by AJA

Energy of the Heart – by Elisa @womenandbiz

Tags

energy, heart, spiritchat

Dear #SpiritChat Community,

This week we’ve been invited to have a conversation about the energy of the heart.

The heart is at the center point of all beings – Where the energies converge, where the 7 chakras meet, where you connect with self and one another.

We invite you to, in preparation for this Sunday’s chat, take a moment to breathe, connect with your heart space, focus on your heart and ask: how does it feel in this moment?

Does it feel full, energized, connected, filled with love? Does it feel depleted, drained, lonely, craving attention? This is a simple check in to feel the heart and connect for a moment. Then you could ask – what does it need?

It may simply need to have its presence acknowledged. It may need you to practice receiving the nurturing and love it is sending you. It may need you to send love to it, and to find ways to replenish its energies.

Whatever answers you get, be gentle, kind and compassionate towards your heart and towards yourself. If it resonates for you, repeat this exercise as needed, take a moment to listen to your heart’s wisdom, and respond accordingly.

Namaste,

Your #SpiritChat’s Heart Space.

(Letter written by Elisa Balabram @womenandbiz)

Bio: Elisa Balabram (@womenandbiz) is an Intuitive Business and Life Coach, a teacher, a writer, and the author of “Ask Others, Trust Yourself – The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Key to Success”. You can read her blog and learn more about her at www.askotherstrustyourself.com. Do connect with Elisa at her Facebook Page titled Intuitive Business and Life Coaching.

We continue the month of June with our #energy theme. I invite you to join my co-host in the spotlight, Elisa Balabram (@womenandbiz) and me (@AjmaniK) on twitter in hashtag #SpiritChat (or via the web at http://chat.spiritchat.org – Sunday June 12th 2016 at 9amET / 2pm UK / 6:30pm India, as we explore this topic of “Energy of the Heart” in the context of spirituality. Thank you. – Kumud.

Spirituality and Heart Matters

Tags

healing, health, heart, spiritchat, spirituality

Last week’s twitter chat in #SpiritChat titled I AM Choosing Love put the focus firmly and squarely on the aspect of choice in the matter of love. One of the key elements of making an informed choice is perhaps the state of our heart in the moment that we are making said choice. It is often when we find ourselves in the act of choosing anything but love, that we may feel compelled to examine the question – why does the heart matter? What matters to our heart? What is the true state of our heart?

I know that those three questions may seem like a play on words, and they are, but they are much more than that. As I was contemplating these questions this morning, my daughter came up to me this morning with a proposition – “Dad. Can we have a morning of parent-child Yoga?” It was an easy choice, for I was presented with an opportunity for me to learn about the middle question – what matters to our heart – hers and mine? With the help of a wonderful book, we explored stretching, guided relaxation techniques, core strengthening, mindful eating, metamorphosis, and more. The “yoga” hour brought balance to the physical and mental, and strengthened heart connection. Afterwards, I did a thought experiment – what if I had deferred the opportunity in favor of writing this blog post?

We often defer opportunity because we are unaware of the state of our heart. Perhaps, something is bothering our heart to the extent that we tend to close ourselves off when life extends and invitation to be open. Yes, we cannot be expected to be open all the time in response to the world and her invitations – we need time and space to rest and reflect. We have talked about the importance of being on spiritual retreat and creating our personal sanctuaries in the very recent past. Yes, we owe it to ourselves, to evaluate the state of our heart. What are we to do if are to find that the heart-state needs healing? Where do we begin? How will we find healing if our propensity is to stay closed?

We invest a lot of effort, and rightly so, in keeping the physical heart in good shape, in good health. The physical heart is an amazing piece of machinery – the engine that keeps us going, 70-90 beats per minute, 5000 beats per hour, 120,000 beats per day, and so on. It hums without intervention from us, as long as we keep it “well tuned”. So, it is readily apparent that the health of the physical heart matters. Some believe that the location of our spiritual and emotional hearts is congruent with the physical heart. This may well be so, for a heart-ache or a heart-joy is often felt in the physical heart. With its central location, the physical heart serves as a wonderful metaphor for the center of our spiritual well-being. The hub and spoke metaphor comes to mind. As the Upanishad says,

One hundred and one are the veins of the heart / and one rises upwards to the crown… – Upanishad

I hope that I have made the case that we are well served – physically, emotionally and spiritually – by paying attention to the center, the core, the heart. The heart matters. And matters of the heart deserve attention, if we are to choose love. What’s your take? Have you taken stock of the state of your heart lately? What protocols do you follow to maintain the health of your spiritual heart?

Kumud @AjmaniK

This post was written for our weekly twitter chat in #SpiritChat – February 14th 2016 (9amET/2pmUTC).

Risk and Reason in Spirituality

Tags

heart, intuition, reason, risk, spirituality

A few weeks ago, we had a conversation about the role of intuition in our lives, and how it can inform our short- and long-term decisions. One theme that we did not address in that conversation was the interplay of intuition (guided by our feelings) with the role of reason (guided by our mind, our thoughts). How do we balance intuition and reason, and what are the risks that we undertake when we favor one over the other?

As a ‘schooled’ engineer and practicing scientist, one who swims with numbers and equations and spreadsheets and contour plots every single day, the realm of reason is very familiar to me. The scientific process of the design of experiments uses the cornerstone of reason on which to lay its foundations. All new analyses and observations have to pass through the gates of reason before they are deemed to have validated the hypothesis for which the experiment was conducted in the first place! But what does all this have to do with risk and reason in spirituality?

In order to explore the connection, we need to transition from pure science into the realm of technology, into the realm of the discovery and invention of ‘things’ that make our lives better. The technologist often cannot wait for science and reason to give them all the answers, and learns to rely upon empiricism (a close cousin of inutition) to do their work. One powerful example is that of the invention of the aircraft engines by technologists. A hundred or so years ago, the Wright Brothers were seized by the idea that it had become necessary for humans to fly. They began by putting all the reasons of ‘why it could be done’ aside.

What did it take to succeed? It was good, old fashioned, risk. They used a combination of a ‘flying’ concept, added ingenuity and experimentation, followed by ‘tweaking’ of their design based upon ‘direct observation’ and ‘intuition’ – to achieve their first successful flight. Would we be flying the advanced aircraft of today if they would have waited for reason-based science to verify all the principles of flight before beginning to build and test their flying craft? We don’t know the answer to that speculative question. What we do know is that a combination of risk, feeling based intuition, empiricism and observation overcame the perfection of reason.

As it turns out, there is direct application of empiricism and risk adoption in spiritual practice(s). If we tow the line of reason, and wait for all that we feel and observe to be explained by the reasoning mind, we will either remain ‘stuck in place’ or simply go around in circles with our mental gymnastics. It is when we respect reason but take action to answer the calling that we feel in our heart and spirit, to serve and keep serving when reason seems to indicate otherwise, to keep listening for the whispers of stillness even when reason nudges us to do otherwise… Reason asks us to stop when love and the feelings that it creates gently lead us by the heart.

Risk leads us back to the knowing that reason, like the mind, is limited by cause and effect. Risk leads us back to the river that flows in the land beyond cause and effect. Risk leads us over the bridge, which we may have never walked before, to the garden of the infinite. The choice is ours to make – will we move beyond pure reason, or at least bring love into reason?

What are some of your thoughts on risk and reason? I invite you to share in our weekly twitter conversation with hashtag #SpiritChat – Sunday, October 11th at 9amET/1pmUTC. Yes, you will invest some of your time in participating, but it is a low-risk investment – and, we will give you plenty of reason to return week after week to visit with the new risk-taking friends that you will meet along the way.

Thank you for reading, share in the comments if you will, and Namaste!

Kumud