771st Week: Kindness, Kindness, Kindness
A post on Facebook had a picture of Mr. Rogers describing what creates success and there were three sentences all ending in “kindness”. This got me to thinking, yet again, of the importance of kindness as a primary stance in moving through daily life. In the present state of our collective interpersonal life, adding in more kindness seems an important and useful antidote (at least in all the small ways kindness can make a tangible difference).
Thinking about kindness also got me to thinking about the relationship between heart intelligence and perception and kindness, as it feels to me that kindness arises and emerges from the heart. I recently read an article about what is now considered by science as the real possibility of a “heart brain”. Stories of people who have received heart transplants attest to the fact that the heart is more than merely a physical pump.
Here’s a link to the article and also a link to a YouTube video on the same subject:
The article is entitled Second Brain Found in Heart Neurons: Trust Your Gut Feelings:
https://hubpages.com/education/your-second-brain-is-in-your-heart;
Here’s the video – YouTube – 2nd Brain Found in the Heart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LelkiUDS0yM&t=153s
For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to again focus even more actively than you may have already on orienting your awareness to your heart’s quality of perception and intelligence. Then, notice how you experience and think about yourself and the world around you from that perspective. Notice the presence of kindness as part of your heart’s natural orientation.
As you move through the week ahead, notice what happens when you make the conscious choice to orient to kindness even more than you do already and see how that affects the quality of both your inner and outer experiences. This is similar to doing lovingkindness practice, where you offer lovingkindness even to people you may not like or know. Notice what happens when you offer kind thoughts to people you pass on the street, kind responses to people you engage when you are at a store, on a bus, in a parking lot, or wherever you find yourself in the course of your daily activities.
As with all these practices, there’s no “right way” to do this one. Instead, it’s another opportunity to explore how you move through the world, how the quality of your inner life qualifies the quality of your outer life, and how each moment offers a new choice.
Please remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion and to pat gently on the head any judgments that may arise, allowing them to move on through…
