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First, I share two experiences I had just a few days ago. Both happened during a session of body work, called Zero Balancing.
After the practitioner had worked for a while with the energy of the body, poking here and there, stretching and turning limbs, pressing, … she touched my heart area with the palm of her hand. She had informed me that some persons cry during a session. I never felt like crying, however, until she placed her hand over the heart chakra, or energy center, associated with the heart. What I felt happened was one implication of the frequent allusion “… touched my heart.” After that, when the session was coming to a close, I felt a profound lightness in my heart area and within my body an immense, pure love for the practitioner, which I verbalized to her, feeling more comfortable to do so because she and I have been friends for some time. Likewise, another person came to my mind, whom I had spoken with some days earlier, and I felt a blissful love for this man. If he had been present, I would have told him of that love for him, as I did for the practitioner.
During the session, I had the onset of a rapid heartbeat, which I had been having episodes of for many weeks. I thought about getting up. I informed the practitioner of what was happening, and she informed me to let her know what I would need in case of an episode. I decided to remain still and present, breathing mindfully into the muscles just above my stomach. Quickly, the pulse returned to normal, much quicker than usual. Then, I had an experience I had never had before. I was able to speak to my heart. When I spoke, I could sense the energy of the communication penetrate, compassionately, to my physical heart. I had, literally, touched my heart with compassion, even as the practitioner’s hand had touched it, earlier. I told my heart that all was well, all would be okay, and felt the intimacy between my whole body, including my brain, and the heart. I sensed a real “listening” of the heart, the actual, physical organ.
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Some days later, I came upon, I believe by the Providence of Wisdom, or synchronicity, the following writing, which confirmed my experience of speaking to my heart:
If you want to love, take the time to listen to your heart. In most ancient and wise cultures it is a regular practice for people to talk to their heart. There are rituals, stories, and meditative skills in every spiritual tradition that awaken the voice of the heart. To live wisely, this practice is essential, because our heart is the source of our connection to and intimacy with all of life. And life is love. This mysterious quality of love is all around us, as real as gravity… Yet how often we forget about love…. (Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart, emphasis mine)
In reading Alan Watts, in the classic The Wisdom of Insecurity, likewise a few days after the above experiences at the balancing session, he addressed the problem of the dualism of Western culture. His contention, and one I agree with, is that Western culture has, generally, suppressed the heart by over-reliance on the brain. Just observe how most will question anyone who speaks of understanding something or receiving guidance that did not arise from “logical thought.” Observe how much religion, both Eastern and Western is about “thought” and equates wisdom with “belief,” “dogma,” and “propositions.” Much of Christianity is, frankly, a propositional faith, even as many sermons are little more than dogmatic or psychological lectures, high on opinion and lacking feeling--By feeling I do not mean mere emotion, rather, I mean a sense of heart, I prefer not to try to define that, for it is utterly indefinable.
At best, most Westerners seem to believe in the “language of the heart,” but assume it is somewhat archaic and second-place to the “logic of the brain.” Even churches, it seems, are bewildered in a leader speaking of a discernment of the Spirit, wherein one seeks to notice the “nudging of the heart.” Most church business is a logical discussion of what should be done, with little attention to what ancients meant by wisdom, which was an embodied way of listening to the Spirit.
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