Heart Intelligence: Growing Instead Of Improving

Our mind helps us makes decisions when we use it to compare, measure, adjust, categorize, and analyze.

When we apply our rational thinking mind, it naturally advises us on how we can improve. We listen and try to measure up, even if it means harming our self in the process.

The Heart Seeks Wholeness

Our thinking mind is just doing what it is designed to do when it prompts us to measure up or fit in. The problem may be that living things are not meant to improve but to grow, and growth requires heart intelligence.

Heart intelligence is the force or impulse behind cooperation and compassion. It is powerful, relentless, and though not always sweet it is inherently loving. It urges us to feed and water our potential as a gift to our self and others.

While our thinking mind naturally takes things apart and compares, the heart’s wisdom is bent on the flourishing of the whole body. However, it is wrong to assume this wisdom is only warm and fuzzy. It can be that, but is also diligent, fierce, persistent and passionate.
We have grown up in a world where the thinking and judgmental mind is the boss, but we can balance this tendency by allowing our awareness (consciousness, attention, mind, perception) to drift down and settle at heart level.

Just Be There

When the depths of depression or the drive to be thinner control our thoughts and behavior, we cannot fly.

When first docking our mind at the heart station our attention is frequently pulled back to what it knows best, thinking and judging. This is normal, but by repeatedly visiting the quiet rumblings of the heart our awareness becomes more and more comfortable and will stay longer.

Although it does not think as the mind does, the heart is a great place to contemplate wholeness, beauty, and nature’s cycle of growth, decay, and renewal.

Photo credit: Michael E. / flickr creative commons