A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
Thomas Carlyle
There is a lot of talk these days about living from the heart, speaking from the heart and following one's heart. Self-help gurus have written volumes on the subject and the internet is chock full of blogs on similar subjects. Oprah has had whole series on opening the heart so as to live a happier life. I just couldn't resist jumping into the topic with both feet for a lot of reasons. (So I'm going to be spending the next few posts on the subject in one way or another). For me, the idea of living from the heart is like coming home to these rolling hills and autumn colors.
In the first place, something I learned in grad school that is closely related to this idea has stayed with me a long time...in fact, I can still quotes sections of my thesis having to do with just how the heart plays into the concept of living well and living right and I'll share that first today. But beyond that, I'm a big fan of social researcher Brené Brown and have heard her speak a number of times about the importance of wholeheartedness in having a happy life regardless of circumstances. And then I belong to a group of women who get together at least once a month to talk about alternative spirituality - living our lives not so much in accordance with traditional religious practices but guided by what seems to us to be something bigger, broader and more inclusive than that. Such conversations have led inevitably to talk about the role our heart plays versus the role of the mind.
I don't think my group is unique - I think that millions of people around the world are seeking what in Eastern thought is called "enlightenment" - awakening to the idea that we are all so much more than just brains and minds sitting on top of a physical body designed to just carry it around. People are studying about energy centers, chakras, learning to "breathe into the heart," to get their minds out of the way or to silence it in order to hear what the heart has to say and feel the difference between heart energy and mind energy.
As I said, this whole subject has been of great interest to me for most of my adult life and remains an active focus of my own spiritual practice. I find that the more I learn of this, the more I truly understand what my traditional religious upbringing should have taught me, what authentic religious practice ought to look like and feel like. It started with a simple statement in a theology book that I was using as a reference for a section of my thesis in grad school. The section was called "knowledge of God" and referred to a passage in Hosea 4:6 that reads, "My people perish (or are destroyed) for lack of knowledge..." Reading further, I discovered that in the Hebrew faith, one can only know something, but especially can only know God, from the heart. The heart is the center of knowing. That's it...one "knows" only from the heart - not from the mind. If you only comprehend something with your mind, you actually don't know it at all.
Remembering this lesson many years later, when I took up the pen to write poetry again, and embarking on a relationship that many people cautioned me against, I wrote this poem, entitled "Heart Knowing."
Heart Knowing
The heart has a language of its own.
Though
I must silence my mind to hear it,
it
thinks better than my head and remembers too;
this
perfect center of my self-knowing,
is an
ever faithful guardian of my truth.
The
heart listens, hears a voice in the silence,
attending
its ear to a word no other hears.
Attending
its sight to a vision no other sees,
at the
farthest edge of my hermetic solitude,
the
darkest shadows of the moonless nights,
my
trusting heart is lighted from within
with
the incandescent flame of love.
My
heart knows what my logical mind
cannot
begin to even contemplate,
recognizes
the sublime where my eyes
see
too often a world both stark and cold
or the
desolate dry expanse of the desert.
Only
the graceful heart can truly know
another
shining soul with loving intimacy.
It was
my heart that knew you first,
a love
my head could not have known,
and my
heart that felt your inner beauty
pass
through my very being like sunrise
through
stained glass windows facing dawn.
My
heart it was that named you Beloved,
Anam
Cara, soul companion of my life,
my
heart that takes its comfort, its very purpose
from
the hopeful dreams of exquisite longing
for
your heart, your body opening to mine.
This
heart I offer you, my love, this mystical portal
through
which we might together enter heaven’s gate;
is my
simple gift of joyful, true “heart knowing”
after
a graced and lifelong apprenticeship of love.
According to Jennifer Hoffman, author of the blog "Enlightening Life," The potential of your life exists within the knowing of your heart and soul. Yet you use your mind to determine what is possible and its limitations prevent the highest potential from being available to you."
I cannot help but agree that the mind can be an obstacle to the kind of knowing we need if we are to live "wholeheartedly." I won't say that listening to my heart, knowing something in my heart, led immediately to happily ever after or that such knowing can't and won't ultimately "break" your heart (but that is a subject for another post). But I will say, quoting diplomat and poet Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, "A good heart is better than all the heads in the world."
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