Power of the human heart

The last 3 min of this 8 min video is very profound information on how the heart can release an enzyme to prolong cell life and longevity of the human body.

click link here below

 Power of the human heart

It Just Is!

In less then one week I observed two different funeral visitations. This one was on the death of a relative. She was 87 years old. I was watching a video display of her life and the photos flashed from young, to midlife, to old age in a random flow. I said to my wife 'Its all so sad, we live, we get old, and we die. She was also looking at the screen but her reaction was different . My sweet wife with much wisdom said  'That's life, that is just the way it is ....it just is' and she repeated it twice as she looked at me  'it just is!'.  She is a person of few words  and I knew when she said those words, it was truth. It just is!

We come and we go, we appear like a mist, for brief moment in time, and in the next moment it disappears just like it came. Birth and death are natural rhythms of the one life. All are manifestations of form that come and return to the formless and come and return over and over again. Each moment in the eternal now we observe phenomena, it comes into existence and then it is gone. Life is  a beautiful dance. We have the great opportunity to observe, to experience the great unknown, the mystery of life.

What is life?

It just is ! Live now, that is all there is .. just this moment , just this ......


103-2008- In The Fog- 20"x 24"  acrylic on muslin over panel


This is my foggy mist  painting based on my interpretation of a cold October morning at the harbor of Pilley's Island , Newfoundland. A moment in time.We, like this fog, are like a mist that appears for awhile and then it is gone.

Its Only A Game

I went to a funeral visitation yesterday for a coworker. Its a sad time, the man was relatively young at 61. As I looked at the photos which gave an account of his life, starting young and moving to the days before death, I was struck by the thought of how short a lifetime is. What is 60 or 90 years?, its gone in what seems like the blinking of an eye. I looked at the urn with his name on it, with his tattered favorite ball hat lovingly placed on top, and I thought ... that's it, this is what it comes down to ...ashes in a glorified can. We all have to hang up our hat for the last time. We are here for a very short time on this earth. My grandmother uses to always say a phrase from an old  hymn at her hearing about someones death...'Life at best is very brief , like the falling of a leaf'....

So, what is it all about, this short time we have on this planet?

Later after the visitation we went to a restaurant. I have come to expect synchronicities  and coincidence occurrences daily. Its all part of living in the mystery.  So, it was no surprise that as we were eating a man walked into my view, who I worked with 25 years ago. He looked the same as I had always known him. He was smiling with that broad grin, looking very pleasant and mannerly like always. I talked to this now 89 year old vibrant man very briefly, but during our conversation he said something which he always repeated when we worked together, especially when things looked complicated. He always said it with a laugh like he knew some great secret. He would end a conversation by looking  you in the eye and say 'Its only a game' or in a group 'its only a game boys' as he walked away. Years ago I laughed with him but I didn't recognize how profound this statement actually is. Could this be the key to his seemingly healthy outlook on life? He looked at life as a big game...I would always add  my own phrase to his  'we just have to play by the rules'. So, its only a game and we need to play by the rules.

If we look at life as a game, we can then see the impermanence in it all. We will know that...this too will pass. We can be less serious all the time. We can enjoy life with a totally different perspective. Living  'Now' becomes more important then our story, with its thoughts of past and future. Life becomes mystery. We have our role, we play a character in the game and yes there is a rule set. Life seems to go in a better flow, if we follow the rule set. We have a choice about what we do, what we consume and who we spend time with. We can live in love or we can survive in fear, its our choice.

This is my takeaway from yesterday. 'Its only a game' we are playing a character in a play, called the game of  life, live well, and play well because eventually the game and the play will be over. Then we will be able to remove the persona mask, bow out,  and walk off stage.

All our possessions, our social status, our career identity, our appearance to others, our special abilities, our belief systems, our nationality, our race, and all our other collective identifications ...none of this is the real you, it is all props, settings, masks and personality traits that the character in the play is identified with. It all appears in a temporary construct, in a type of multi dimensional virtual reality, with a false self, who is just a character in a game. This character is not who you are at your core; that eternal essence of who you are. We may not fully realize all this yet, but the  day will come when death is approaching, that it will all become clear and then we will know.

Death is a final stripping away of all that is temporal and false, all that which is not the true eternal essential self. Is it possible to diminish this false sense of self, as we play the game of life?  Have we become lost in the character and forgotten who we are? Can we observe ourselves by stepping back from the  temporary character in the play with all its drama?  If we 'die before we die' as the saying goes, we can enjoy the character role without total identification with it.  If we see beyond the illusion, we will find that death, no longer has its sting. We will realize that there is no fear of death, if we can see it as a new transformation toward life without the familiar form. This is the final liberation of  the real you, the you hidden behind the character with its persona masks.

This is the return home, back  into the great mystery, united again with the very essence of life.  This essence is the intelligence behind the creative forces of life, it is based on love and cooperation, not fear and competition . We came from this loving intelligent mystery, and its to it  that, we return.


 I believe the painting (photo below) that I did in 2007 called 'Passage in Time' relates well to this post.

#098-2007- Passage in Time - acrylic on panel

We will all hang up our hats for the last time some day. Grandfather left behind traces of his passage in his small fishing stage in Newfoundland . The items in this painting tell the story of his life. The hat was his favorite during the last years of his life. The kettle would have been used on an outing at the cabin . The buoy was from one of his traps . The matches would have been kept in a dry location. The cod jigger is the kind he used all his life. The snare was used to catch rabbits. The axe handle end is painted red so it would not get lost in the woods.

Science Of The Heart

What follows are copy and paste excerpts from a free online book called - Science of the Heart
available at Heartmath Institute

         Check this video     The Heart’s Intuitive Intelligence


The link to the book is is here       Science of the Heart

I did a quick read of this book and here are the direct quotes I found most interesting for myself.

New research shows the human heart is much more than an efficient pump that sustains life. Our research suggests the heart also is an access point to a source of wisdom and intelligence that we can call upon to live our lives with more balance, greater creativity and enhanced intuitive capacities. The heart has been considered the source of emotion, courage and wisdom for centuries.

In the early 1990s, we were among the first to conduct research that not only looked at how stressful emotions affect the activity in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the hormonal and immune systems, but also at the effects of emotions such as appreciation, compassion and care. It became clear that stressful or depleting emotions such as frustration and overwhelm lead to increased disorder in the higher-level brain centers and autonomic nervous system and which are reflected in the heart rhythms and adversely affects the functioning of virtually all bodily systems.We also observed that the heart acted as though it had a mind of its own and could significantly influence the way we perceive and respond in our daily interactions. In essence, it appeared that the heart could affect our awareness, perceptions and intelligence. Numerous studies have since shown that heart coherence is an optimal physiological state associated with increased cognitive function, self-regulatory capacity, emotional stability and resilience. The heart is, in fact, a highly complex information-processing center with its own functional brain, commonly called the heart brain, that communicates with and influences the cranial brain via the nervous system, hormonal system and other pathways.

.....the mobilizing part of the nervous system (sympathetic) energizes us for fight or flight, which is indicated by an increase in heart rate, and in more quiescent moments, the calming part of the nervous system (parasympathetic) calms us down and slows the heart rate. Cannon believed the autonomic nervous system ( ANS) and all of the related physiological responses moved in concert with the brain’s response to any given stimulus or challenge. Presumably, all of our inner systems are activated together when we are aroused and calm down together when we are at rest and the brain is in control of the entire process. A number of health problems can arise in part because of improper function of the ANS. Emotions can affect activity in both branches of the ANS. For example, anger causes increased sympathetic activity while many relaxation techniques increase parasympathetic activity. The heart was behaving as though it had a mind of its own. Furthermore, the heart appeared to be sending meaningful messages to the brain that the brain not only understood, but also obeyed. Even more intriguing was that it looked as though these messages could affect a person’s perceptions, behavior and performance. The Laceys identified a neural pathway and mechanism whereby input from the heart to the brain could inhibit or facilitate the brain’s electrical activity. The heart-brain, as it is commonly called, or intrinsic cardiac nervous system, is an intricate network of complex ganglia, neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells, the same as those of the brain in the head. The heart-brain’s neural circuitry enables it to act independently of the cranial brain to learn, remember, make decisions and even feel and sense. the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. The heart also communicates with the brain and body biochemically by way of the hormones it produces. Atrial peptide the balance hormone, plays an important role in fluid and electrolyte balance and helps regulate the blood vessels, kidneys, adrenal glands and many regulatory centers in the brain.[18] Increased atrial peptide inhibits the release of stress hormones,[19] reduces sympathetic outflow[20] and appears to interact with the immune system.[21] Even more intriguing, experiments suggest atrial peptide can influence motivation and behavior.[22]the heart contains cells that synthesize and release catecholamines (norepinephrine, epinephrine and dopamine), which are neurotransmitters once thought to be produced only by neurons in the brain and ganglia.[23] More recently, it was discovered the heart also manufactures and secretes oxytocin, which can act as a neurotransmitter and commonly is referred to as the love or socialbonding hormone.Unspecified negative emotional arousal, often described as stress, distress or upset, has been associated with a variety of pathological conditions, including hypertension,On the other hand, positive emotions and effective emotion self-regulation skills have been shown to prolong health and significantly reduce premature mortalityFrom a psychophysiological perspective, emotions are central to the experience of stress. It is the feelings of anxiety, irritation, frustration, lack of control, and hopelessness that are actually what we experience when we describe ourselves as stressed. In essence, stress is emotional unease, the experience of which ranges from low-grade feelings of emotional unrest to intense inner turmoil. Stressful emotions clearly can arise in response to external challenges or events, and also from ongoing internal dialogs and attitudes. Recurring feelings of worry, anxiety, anger, judgment, resentment, impatience, overwhelm and self-doubt often consume a large part of our energy and dull our day-to-day life experiences. Additionally, emotions, much more so than thoughts alone, activate the physiological changes comprising the stress response. Our research shows a purely mental activity such as cognitively recalling a past situation that provoked anger does not produce nearly as profound an effect on physiological processes as actually engaging the emotion associated with that memory. In other words, reexperiencing the feeling of anger provoked by the memory has a greater effect than thinking about it.[51, 52]

“We are coming to understand health not as the absence of disease, but rather as the process by which individuals maintain their sense of coherence (i.e. sense that life is comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful) and ability to function in the face of changes in themselves and their relationships with their environment.[57]”

Despite the importance of self-directed control, many people’s ability to self-regulate is far less than ideal. In fact, failures in self-regulation, especially of emotions and attitudes, arguably are central to the vast majority of personal and social problems that plague modern societies. For some, the lack of selfregulatory capacity can be attributed to immaturity or failure to acquire skills while for others it can be the result of trauma or impairment in the neural systems that underlie one’s ability to self-regulate.[58] Therefore, we submit the most important skill the majority of people need to learn is how to increase their capacity to self-regulate emotions, attitudes and behaviors. Self-regulation enables people to mature and meet the challenges and stresses of everyday life with resilience so they can make more intelligent decisions by aligning with their innate higher-order wisdom and expression of care and compassion, elements we often associate with living a more conscientious life.
Three 10-year studies concluded that emotional stress was more predictive of death from cancer and cardiovascular disease than from smoking; people who were unable to effectively manage their stress had a 40% higher death rate than nonstressed individuals.[74]
60% to 80% of primary care doctor visits are related to stress, yet only 3% of patients receive stress management help.[60-62]

...neural connections that transmit information from the emotional centers to the cognitive centers in the brain are stronger and more numerous than those that convey information from the cognitive to the emotional centers.
...intentional activation of positive emotions plays an important role in increasing cardiac coherence and thus self-regulatory capacity.[5] These findings expand on a large body of research into the ways positive emotional states can benefit physical, mental and emotional health.[44-49]

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) (Figure 1.1) is the part of the nervous system that controls the body’s internal functions, including heart rate, gastrointestinal tract and secretions of many glands. The ANS also controls many other vital activities such as respiration, and it interacts with immune and hormonal system functions. It is well known that mental and emotional states directly affect activity in the ANS. This system underlies one’s ability to self-regulate and calm oneself by inhibiting sympathetic outflow to targets like the heart and adrenal glands.



Thoughts and even subtle emotions influence the activity in the autonomic nervous system.
   
The ANS interacts with our digestive, cardiovascular, immune, hormonal and many other bodily systems.
   
Negative emotions/feelings create disorder in the brain’s regulatory systems and ANS.

Feelings such as appreciation create increased order in the brain’s regulatory systems and ANS, resulting in improved hormonal- and immune-system function and enhanced cognitive function
The feelings we label as positive actually reflect body states that are coherent, meaning "the regulation of life processes becomes efficient, or even optimal, free-flowing and easy,"[160] and the feelings we label as "negative," such as anger, anxiety and frustration are examples of incoherent states.

...studies have shown increases in parasympathetic activity (vagal tone),[133] reductions in cortisol and increases in DHEA,[116] decreases in blood pressure and stress measures in hypertensive populations,[113, 115] reduced health-care costs[112] and significant improvements in the functional capacity of patients with congestive heart failure.[192]
nonlocal intuition, which refers to the knowledge or sense of something that cannot be explained by past or forgotten knowledge or by sensing environmental signals. It has been suggested that the capacity to receive and process information about nonlocal events appears to be a property of all physical and biological organization and this likely is because of an inherent interconnectedness of everything in the universe.

....the physical heart also has communication channels connecting it with the energetic heart.[244] Nonlocal intuition, therefore, is transformational, and from our perspective, it contains the wisdom that streams from the soul’s higher information field down into the psychophysiological system via the energetic heart and can inform our moment-tomoment experiences and interactions. At HeartMath Institute, this is what we call heart intelligence.

Heart intelligence is the flow of higher awareness and the intuition we experience when the mind and emotions are brought into synchronistic alignment with the energetic heart.When we are heart-centered and coherent, we have a tighter coupling and closer alignment with our deeper source of intuitive intelligence. We are able to more intelligently self-regulate our thoughts and emotions and over time this lifts consciousness. In other words, there is an increased flow of intuitive information that is communicated via the emotional energetic system to the mind and brain systems, resulting in a stronger connection with our deeper inner voice.

As we learn to slow down our minds and attune to our deeper heart feelings, a natural intuitive connection can occur.Our intuitive insights often unfold more understanding of ourselves, others, issues and life than years of accumulated knowledge. It is especially helpful for eliminating unnecessary energy expenditures, which deplete our internal reserves, making it more difficult to self-regulate and be in charge of our attitudes, emotions and behaviors in ordinary day-to-day life situations. Intuition allows us to increase our ability to move beyond automatic reactions and perceptions. It helps us make more intelligent decisions from a deeper source of wisdom, intelligence and balanced discernment, in essence increasing our consciousness, happiness and the quality of our life experience. This increases synchronicities and enhances our creativity and ability to flow through life. It also increases our ability to handle awkward situations such as dealing with difficult people with more ease and it promotes harmonious interaction and connectivity with others.
The research discussed above suggests it’s possible to access intuitive intelligence more effectively by first getting into a coherent state, quieting mental chatter and emotional unrest and paying attention to shifts in our feelings, a process that brings intuitive signals to conscious awareness.


    “Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.”      -Hippocrates


An estimated 60% to 80% of primary-care doctor visits are related to stress.[60-62] HeartMath’s easily learned mental and emotion self-regulation techniques and practices can provide an effective strategy for stress reduction in many clinical contexts. As discussed earlier, these intentionally simple techniques allow people to quickly self-induce a physiological shift to a more coherent state that takes advantage of the concurrent change in afferent neuronal input to the brain, which is associated with increased self-regulatory capacity and thus, ability to more successfully handle the demands and challenges of life with more ease and composure. Consequently, there is a greater experience of connectedness, harmony, balance and physical, emotional and psychosocial well-being.

The Heart

Each of us are on a spiritual journey, whether we realize it or not .


"The journey of personal discovery... may lead us away from what’s been familiar in the past, and it may take our entire lifetime to complete, but, the distance of our trip is a very short one. It only covers about 18 inches. The distance from our brain to our heart.
But the short distance can be deceptive. Depending on the beliefs of our families, our communities, our religions, and what happens in our life experiences, it can take months, years, or a lifetime to learn how to make the shift from the logical thinking of the mind to the intuitive wisdom of the heart..."    - paraphrased  quotes  by Gregg Braden, scientist , author , and spiritual leader.


The last post called 'The Road To Discovery' was an updated one from earlier in 2018 . It was the story of my road to discovery and the personal journey I have been through over the past few years. In order to go down this road of spiritual discovery we often have to break free of the restraint of preconditioned thinking. There has to be an open mindedness and a moving beyond beliefs set in stone.This has become my new normal. I greet each day not knowing what life is going to teach me. It is a life of unknowing outcome, yet, it is a living filled with anticipation of  the mystery of life lived in the moment.


I spend months sometimes trying to understand  certain subjects . Last year my main theme of study and learning was that of the ego, dying to the false concept of self  and discovering what is often called the true self. For me its not about destroying the ego, I am not sure that is possible, but, rather a taming of it. The goal is to get the ego, the thinking mind, the monkey chatter mind, under control, by taming it to be transformed into a servant rather then master. The mind does make a good servant but it is a terrible master. When Ego is in charge there is chaos. Ego has many different definitions. But I think of it as a part of the thinking mind that has set itself up as master and controller of the human organism. It is based in a false sense of self. Ego does not have a true existence; it arises as a result of thought processes which believes itself separate  from our core inner wholeness. It survives by concentrating thought on past, future, and a focus on perceived lack and problems. It loves drama and being the victim. It keeps us constantly focused on doing rather then letting us fall into a contemplation on being. It cannot survive in the 'Now' and it loses its grip when it is observed.  Here is a a definition of the egoic mind : its the state of being identified with the ego, the power which seeks to defend and glorify the separate and separated self, works for separation, unhealthy self rule, or determined independence, and it works to obscure or destroy the Divine true self and prevent it from becoming master over the whole. Plato was credited with the quote, "An unexamined life is not worth living". I will take it a step further and say that the unexamined 'mind' makes life not worth living. I wrote about becoming the observer of thought and  getting the thinking mind under control in other posts, here is one Become the observer.
And another  here :  Can you coax your mind from its wandering 


Lately I have been learning all about the possibility of living life from the spiritual heart center rather then living from the mind dominated mode. This shift from  the logical thinking of the mind to the intuitive wisdom of the heart seems to be the next step in our conscious evolution. Spirituality in the west  seems to have been focusing on techniques to get the mind and body disciplined in order to live a balanced and stress free life. Egoic mind diminishing is a big part of that. When the mind becomes still then it will be able to communicate more clearly with the heart and the  rest of the bodies intelligence centers.This is what I realize so far; the communication network from the heart is not through spoken language as we speak, but it seems certain limited  words and the stirring of emotion can activate what is  more like messages of feelings coming from the heart region. I find that a mantra such as saying thank-you repeatedly toward the heart seems to work. Generating thoughts of love and kindness along with forgiveness seems to be the communication the heart works with. I experienced this today on my daily walk. I kept repeating thank you  and concentrating on the positive emotions love, joy, peace. I was thinking of loved ones as I walked and forgiving those who I was holding minor grudges toward. After 45 min of this ,I started to feel subtle feelings of love coming from the heart region. So, this is my first glimpse of a whole new realization. The spirit is full of mystery and we humans have only just begun to understand the potential fulfillment of this relationship with the divine.

I will end this post with an article link that explains all this so much better than I could. This is all new to me and I will be focusing on this subject for a long time. As I learn more on this subject I may post more of my thoughts on it. The Heartmath institute at heartmath.org is the go to place for the science behind this subject but I will give the link to a site that takes this type of info and simplified it for us all to understand. click here:   Thinking with the Heart

Road to Discovery

This is an updated post with some added material at the end.

 

 

The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love.

— MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

 
 Road to Discovery ( a painting I did in 2004 acrylic on canvas)

At around age ten, I began pondering deep questions about life. One day I was alone on a hill top over looking our small home town in Newfoundland. I asked myself a question that would interest me all through life....who am I ?  This question and many other philosophical questions would seem to pop into my young inquiring mind often as a young man. I have always been this way for as long as I can remember.

For most of my adult life I followed a path, a belief system, that seemed to demand that I live a life that strived after some divine ideal. It created great fear, guilt and anxiety in my inner core. Because I always felt that I was not good enough. I was trying to meet unrealistic expectations that I had set for myself in order to meet a certain standard, to satisfy external expectations. Over a period of years this developed into conflicting assumptions and beliefs that produced a feeling of discomfort and stress, along with anxiety. This condition eventually lead to a need for a complete re-examination of these assumptions, and beliefs in order to restore a balance. This started me on a very rewarding spiritual journey down the road of discovery into what is truth. In my case the truth has set me free, but not in a way most people would think. To use a computer analogy ...Truth is like a re-programming of your entire operating system. A deleting of the old information program system and installing the new.

I have spent the past six years slowly dismantling this belief system that held my spirit in it's grip, for so long. It involved peeling back the multiple layers of assumptions to test each one for truth. Finding truth and freedom is a process of learning what is untrue and then detaching yourself from all false beliefs and illusions. Perhaps the greatest untruth is the idea that we are separate from others, nature and "God". This belief is so ingrained in our psyche and it is perhaps the single greatest root cause of our fear, guilt and anxiety. This belief, when it is looked at deeply, seems to be in complete opposition to the realization of the love based intelligence, foundational to the principles and laws observed in the universe. It has been said that fear is the opposite of love, but perhaps a more accurate statement is, fear appears when there is the absence of Love. Fear is rooted in the thinking mind, its a thought form. Love comes from the intuitive heart and is a product of divine energy. When I view God as the source of all life, love and universal intelligence, how can we be separate from this life, this love? Why would we fear life, love and this super intelligence all around us?  Would this intelligence be for us or against us? It seems to be a system based on cooperation rather then competition. Its more like oneness then it is  duality and it may not have the good vs evil division that we imagine.

I realized that it 's our own thoughts that creates the sense of separation. When we allow our egoic mind (false self) to control us we Edge God Out (EGO) and then we cause in ourselves a perception of separation. When we see the illusion of the false self , it will slowly dissolve and our true self once again becomes who we really are. When we live from the true self, who we really are, called many names .. Spirit, essence, the soul, the heart, the center, the core of our being, there is now no perception of separation from our creator, our source, nature and others. Today the answer to that question "who am I "  becomes more like a realization that we are all one and we share that oneness with all life. If we move on in the spiritual journey, away for the personal "I " , away from false fear based beliefs, into the acceptance of a love based reality, we begin to get a glimpse of what  Jesus called the kingdom of heaven :and get this, ..... he said it was within us. Now ponder that for awhile.

I end this post with some quotes from an article written by ANNELOES SMITSMAN

click link below

The Evolution of our Ego Consciousness

'Ego and its shadow dynamics can only operate where there is inner division; when we believe ourselves to be separate from Nature, the Universe and others.'

'Remember, our ego is our wisdom in reverse. Its purpose is to benefit this false self-perception, rather than the greater whole. It generates small mindedness rather than big-heartedness.'

'...ego does not have inherent existence; it arises as a result of stretching away from and denying our inner wholeness.'

Liberation isn't about breaking out of anything , it's a gentle melting into who we really are  -Marianne Williamson