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