748th Week: Coming Back to Heart Intelligence
As I thought about what to write for this week’s practice in conscious living, my mind drifted to the importance of remembering to include our heart’s intelligence and perceptions as we move through daily life and, especially, as we move through challenging times. And, these are challenging times, indeed, all around the planet.
From a spiritual perspective, I experience our current national and world situation to be an expression of our need to mature as a species. On all sides, I see examples of people and countries making choices between recognizing and acting on our inevitable interdependence—our underlying oneness—versus grasping onto individual satisfaction and gain at the expense of others and the environment.
One of the ways I help myself return to an awareness of my relatedness to, and dependence on, all the life around me is to orient to my heart’s intelligence and perception. To support this perspective and direct experience, I regularly tap into sources of inspiration offered by people who live within an awareness of oneness, with the recognition that all life on this planet has the same mother/source, has inherent value, and has a right to be as free from suffering as possible.
Also, because I believe in collective consciousness, that we all participate in fields of collective awareness, creativity, wisdom, and—yes—pain, anxiety, anger, and fear, my sense is that whenever any one of us reaches for deeper understanding or a more expanded sense of connection to the world around us, we immediately and inevitably contribute that deepening to the collective. I’ve written before about how this has helped me work with trauma all these years because of my sense that even small moments of healing contribute to the potential healing for so many other people who may just be at the beginning of their healing journey.
At times like these, where so many people are in distress all around the planet, each time any one of us is able to orient to, and express from, our heart space, or stabilize ourselves within our underlying steadiness, we contribute to the potential for others to perhaps rediscover their own internal stability and centeredness a bit more easily. For me, even a small shift in attitude, a small expression of compassion, a small moment of feeling connected to a sense of relatedness to the planet, to all the life with whom we share this home of ours—even these small shifts contribute to our collective good.
For this week’s practice, I invite you to orient to your heart’s intelligence and perception and explore your relationship with a sense of oneness, interdependence, and inevitable kinship with everything you encounter. I’ve described various kinds of practices in earlier postings and there’s always the HeartMath Institute with its array of practices and research articles.
Here’s a link to an interview with Anna Breytenbach on Buddha at the Gas Pump. Anna is the South African woman who is a particularly skilled animal communicator and her interview focuses on her experience of connection with, and the value of, all the life forms she encounters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7oEAmp20B0
I encourage you to look for sources of inspiration that resonate with your particular worldview and ways of being, whatever supports your ability to remember to check in with your heart space as you move through your daily life. And, as with all these practices, there’s no right way to do this one. Rather, it’s an invitation to explore how your internal focus of awareness affects your quality of life. Please bring curiosity along as your constant companion and gently pat on the head any judgments that may arise, allowing them to simply move on through without your needing to do anything with or about them.
