Some thoughts on a path of the Heart and creating a heart based culture

If we want to strengthen our spiritual connection, it's helpful to realize that we already have a spiritual connection that we are not sufficiently utilizing. The problem is our habitual tendency to identify with the mind, with its divisive judgments and fears; and with the ego with its intrinsic sense of separation. To change this, we have to get out of our head and into the heart which connects to our self, to life and to spirit. We have to take the power back that we gave to the mind to establish what is true and give authority to the heart. We have to be able to freely express our selves from the heart without fear of the mind's condemnation. We have given the mind priority in our culture but it should be more of a tool or agent of the heart. The mind projects its ideas on to the present moment where we experience these. However, it is possible to reclaim our self and our being and live freely in the Now.

In psychotherapy we attempt to heal the emotional wounds and negative beliefs held in the mind. However, another approach is opening to the positive inflow of energy through the heart which automatically frees up and transforms old constricted patterns of identity, fears, outdated ideas and blocks. The mind thinks, but only the heart knows directly what is true, what we want and where we are going. As we open to the heart we may invoke inspiration, power and guidance from higher aspects of our being. Instead of looking for the answer in our minds and our thoughts and the outer institutions and activities these reflect, we must live the answer, forging a new path based on love.

In opening to love and a heartfelt connection with others, we will realize that we are part of the same life. If we deeply embrace our interconnection, we transform our idea of who we are. We move from being focused on personal needs and agendas to taking up our role in the collective life. As we live from that place and that intent, we find that we each have gifts that enrich the whole and in the process our personal needs are resolved. We stop having the questions and doubts of the mind as we openly share and have our needs met. If we do have a sense of need or lack, we make it conscious so that it may be resolved. The emphasis shifts from getting to sharing, from needing to having, from thinking to being, from separation to connection, and from fear to love.

We are part of a great movement on the planet now of awakening and liberation. We may step away from our limited personal dramas and pain, and claim our place and our role in bringing a new culture and civilization to earth. We can begin now by acknowledging together the reality of this call and by trusting ourselves and the impulses that come from this place of heart felt connection. We do not have to worry about how. We just have to be, to live from the heart and do as we are given to from this alignment, as everything will unfold in perfect order. Power lies in the heart, which is ours if we would live by it.

We have a choice - to continue to live as we have, as the vulnerable, flawed, unfulfilled, wounded, sad, lonely, weak, isolated people that we have been, or to embrace the power, beauty, inspiration, joy and connection that comes from claiming our role in bringing the age of the heart into full manifestation. Our personal problems are resolved when we embrace the larger life within and live for the greater good. Each one becomes their own authority, their own law giver and their own source as these are authentically experienced within. And as we open to deeper levels, we may invoke higher inflows of inspiration and life.

We live in the space age now, where humanity for the first time has been able to leave our home planet and venture beyond it into outer space. This historical development has a personal correspondence. It is now possible for us to leave our home reality, their personal identification with who they have thought they were as that exists in their brains, and open in the living moment to an energy field outside of their personal sphere. This one energy field surrounds and interpenetrates all things and carries the ever new energies of life. By opening to this space we instantly step outside our personal history and conditioned ideas about who we are and what is real. We become more aligned with the energies of nature as well as our higher spiritual selves and are more open to new inspiration and creative impulses.

In psychotherapy we address negative beliefs, painful memories, hurt emotions, dysfunctional behaviors, etc. and attempt to make these conscious, challenge, change and heal these. However, we can take the more radical approach of stepping out of our brains and our identification with its pattern of thoughts, emotions, memories, and assumptions about reality. By releasing our habitual attachment with our personal history and opening to the outer space of transcendental and transpersonal reality, we open to new awareness and positive energy that can then flow through, cleanse and realign our brain making it a better tool for the purposes of the higher self.

This attitude also corresponds to a new holistic understanding of nature and humanity's role on the planet. We have had an exploitive attitude to nature which we use and manipulate strictly for our benefit. Even a stewardship attitude, where we endeavor to maintain an ecological balance to avoid destroying the planet, does not go far enough. By connecting to the energy field of the planet , however, we soon come to appreciate the conscious divine life with the nature kingdoms. A deeper understanding of this relationship would see our role in fostering the divine potential within the particular creatures and processes of the natural world, rather than imposing our ideas and purposes. We would then develop a collaborative, cooperative approach based on trust, communion and shared life. 

We are similarly moving away from patriarchal attitudes and values that have characterized our civilization, and towards an embrace of the equal value and role of the feminine. A rational, materialistic, controlling, "power over" attitude to nature has also been reflected in society's attitudes to our bodies and women. Both have been seen as objects valued by judgments projected upon t hem by a paternalistic mindset. However, an expanded awareness centered in the energy field of life would not come from a place of separation but of connection, not from a fear based need to control but from a trust in the wisdom and goodness within life. As it would be life based, it would perforce be love based, honoring the creative role of women and the divine embodiment of the forms of life within the natural world.