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 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

On Intelligence and Spirituality

Tags

intellect, intelligence, spiritual, spirituality

The beautiful idea that we are “spiritual beings having human experiences” has been permeating the personal lives of some of us for a while. This inner permeation diffuses out to our families, our communities, and eventually to society at large. This permeation is perhaps how it becomes possible for the truly awakened and enlightened Ones, few as they may be in number, to eventually influence and affect the lives of many, nay thousands and eventually, millions.

The idea that our ‘spiritual being’, the one that has this human experience, acts with intelligence, with inputs from our ego, our mind, our emotions and our intellect, is worth exploring. We are all familiar with mental and even emotional intelligence, as measured by IQ and EQ respectively. Perhaps we are less familiar with Spiritual Intelligence, as denoted by Spiritual Quotient or SQ. But before we delve into the idea of SQ, it is perhaps worthwhile to examine the idea of intelligence itself. What is it anyway? Beyond the dictionary definition, Wikipedia defines intelligence as:

Intelligence has been defined in many different ways such as in terms of one’s capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem solving.

For the purpose of this brief reflection, I have chosen to extract a narrower definition of “spiritual intelligence” (SQ) from the above as “the capacity for self-awareness”. I like to include the word ‘capacity’ in my definition because it connotes the warm idea of potential, and the fact that regardless of how much SQ we started with (at birth) or how much SQ we may have now – we have the ability to change it if we so desire. I picked the word “self-awareness” from the broader definition, as it closely denotes the journey of those on the spiritual path, using their spiritual tools, within their spiritual practices.

Having defined spiritual intelligence, we can now ask some questions of it. What are some traits or characteristics that separate those with ‘higher’ SQ from those with ‘lower’ SQ? Some key traits may be the degree of expressed empathy, the extent of action(s) taken when inspired by kindness, the amount of inner-peace that one may carry with them, the comfort level that we may have with being in active stillness and silence, and so on.

Along similar lines, one may further inquire ~ how do mental (IQ) and emotion intelligence (EQ) contribute to spiritual intelligence (SQ)? Or do they? Mental intelligence is often measured by capacity for learning, memory and problem solving. Do these skills necessarily equate or relate to development of SQ? Emotional intelligence (EQ) is often indicated by capacity for emotional knowledge, sensitivity and discernment. It would seem that EQ is a better indicator of capacity for higher SQ, as compared to the correlation between IQ and SQ. What are your thoughts?

Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu monk from the late 1800s, had mentioned the concept of involution in one of his essays. My interpretation of the same is that he connected spiritual intelligence to involution to propose that we are born with a certain amount of SQ. We receive this SQ as we do our genetics, and then combine it with our family life, our society and our environment, our education and our experiences, to either grow it or diminish it. In addition, another luminous light that has inspired me, had this to say about the role and importance of SQ in our lives:

• For the transformation of Ignorance into integral Knowledge, the growth in us of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise it for all the parts of our nature is an intermediate necessity of great importance.
Sri Aurobindo (1872 – 1950) in: The Life Divine (1985)

I hope I have given you some seeds that you can plant in your spirit-garden, to water and nourish, so that they can grow into strong plants with beautiful flowers that reflect the involved spiritual intelligence of each seed…

Namaste,

Kumud

P.S. Please join me and the #SpiritChat community, Sunday February 22nd at 9amET/2pmUK/7:30pmIndia for a conversation about Spiritual Intelligence. Thank you for reading, your support, and your contributions. Much #gratitude!