The
Secret and Science of Love
Heartbroken, Heart sick, Heart sore, Heart Felt,
Take it to Heart, Heart of the Matter, Remember by Heart Why are these so important?
“The
best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but
must be felt with the heart.” Helen Keller
“Keep
love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers
are dead.”Oscar Wilde
“The
only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give
enough of is love. Henry Miller
“You
yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and
affection.” The Buddha
“You
know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is
finally better than your dreams." Dr. Seuss
“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That
word is love.” Sophocles
Why do so many of us have a difficult
relationship with love? Perhaps it started with over reliance on thinking and reason; "I think therefore I
am". Perhaps it began with the Age of Reason sweeping Europe that was a
rebellion against rule by the Church and Monarchs. Science and skepticism
became favored over faith and servitude and reason became the primary source of
authority and legitimacy. Eventually this trend gave way to Romanticism in
Europe as art and beauty were needed to balance the rational mind.
It seems America is long overdue for a
similar reawakening as our true and loving self took a backseat to the
intellect and let it became the guiding force. This extended out to our world
as we became overly reliant on and reactive to external events. This created a
nation of rugged individualists ready and willing to pull themselves up by
their own bootstraps, but left many bewildered and alone.
These factors were ever more
exaggerated for those who grew up in dysfunctional families and environments as
we often lost touch with our heart, instinct, intuition, ground of being, and very
soul. The mind, brain, and thinking became all powerful and important.
Rationality and reasoning became God as we became addicted to thinking like an
alcoholic is to drinking, so for us "think is our drink". Yet the
love in our hearts, fire in our belly, and lightening in our veins never went
out completely.
Our separation and isolation can also
be said to have a biological basis as the mind receives information from two
eyes, two ears, and two nostrils to judge space, distance, and threats stereoscopically. The mind also
separates things to create inner and outer, here or there, and us or them
thinking. Conversely as the head separates the heart unifies, and makes all others, life, and creation one. Perhaps we can let the mind or the heart take the lead when prudent and necessary.
A happy heart affects our health many
ways. For instance happy people have one third less heart problems, live
longer, and have less risks of all kinds of illness. Intense anger makes a
person five times more vulnerable to heart attack and three times more
vulnerable to stroke. Intense grief at the death of a loved one makes us twenty
one times more vulnerable to heart attack for the first twenty four hours, and
six times higher for several weeks. Experiencing extremely stressful events (PTSD)
also significantly raises risks. Scientist have discovered the heart can also sense, fear, learn,
and remember, and heart rhythms affect the brain and body in many ways.
Heart specialist Dean Ornish states in
his 2004 TED talk that ninety nine percent of his heart disease study patients
improved significantly, and many dramatically after switching to a healthy
lifestyle of good diet, rest, moderate exercise, and supportive community.
Normally heart disease only gets worse. It didn't matter how old or sick they
were, as the determining factor was how much they were change, and the more
they did the more their health improved. The well being of these people
improved in many other areas as well.
Many of us have been living an
"out-of-body" experience for decades as our soul and spirit seemingly
moved into our heads and our "being" was overcome by seeking, doing,
and possessing. Our hearts passion became ego ambition endlessly seeking
possessions and pleasures to "complete" us and fill the emptiness we
felt as we ran from pain and discomfort and after our desires.
The brain tends to monopolize our
attention with its 86 billion neurons. Mind functions can be broken down three
ways if we acknowledge the triune/three
brain concept of the reptilian, mammalian (limbic), and higher order neocortex
brains. This adds a very powerful and interesting dimension as under stress we
default to the lower order functions of fight, flight, or freeze. Reptiles tend
to be more combative than cooperative so we are wise to find ways to avoid
stressing out and losing our minds and hearts to a lizard like existence.
One psychologist has patients sit in
one chair to speak from the heart, and another chair to speak from the mind.
Patients often find this exercise very enlightening and gives an interesting
representation of how we consider the heart and mind to have differing natures
and input to our lives. Although we often consider them separate entities, they
can be good partners working together for us as a whole. Some, perhaps wiser
cultures see no separation or contrast between heart and mind, as they find
them to work as a unified whole.
While we are looking at the head and
the heart it is worthwhile to consider the gut as well, as biologically this
was our first "heart" or home, as the gut is also how some of the
earliest and most basic life forms came about and still exist; like tiny
stomachs munching away at their environment like a Pac Man video game. Higher
functions came much later. The gut even has a "mind" of its own with
100 million neurons, and sends more signals to the brain than it receives. This
is also true of the heart with its 40,000 neurons.
Personally it was our first home as we
spent our first nine months in our mothers belly in the womb. We were even fed our life energy through the
umbilical cord to our gut. This physical connection also went from our mother
to hers, and hers, and hers, and so on, so as stunning as it seems, each of us
has a real and true life connection going back for millions of years.
Intuition is also in the gut as
"gut reactions". Perhaps this is why we say "go with your
gut", or "trust your gut". Eckhart Tolle teaches that if the
head and the gut feel differently about something, trust the gut as it somehow
knows intuitively what is right. This is also true of the heart. You may also
easily imagine Higher Power residing at a gut level as we do, as the wise and
powerful energy of intuition.
This emphasis on head over heart was a necessary evolutionary
cycle for us to survive and thrive but it has served its purpose and gone too
far. Like the prodigal child it is time for a homecoming. We now need to spend
at least as much time in our hearts as we do on our heads. Finding this center,
source, and essential home again brings a peace, joy, beauty, and uniting love
that is primordial and preverbal, so beyond description.
This is true power, true life, and true love manifesting through
our internal essential self and being, our True Self. This love is our
anchor and safe harbor, and the sound foundation upon which to build our lives. Hopefully this understanding will
help you feel the hands, heart, and wisdom of a deeply loving power in your gut,
heart, and mind, and carry it out to the world through your eyes, words, and
hands.