Change of Heart

I’ve been thinking a lot lately and wondering if that’s such a good idea. The mind is a cunning suitor. It makes me feel brilliant, informs me that I’m important and right about ohhh so many things. I’m lucky. Mine is exceptionally agile, negotiates curves well, and convincingly constructs the life I expect for myself. When you have a strong mind, it makes you believe you need to do something big with it.

But it’s cold and holds no respect for my dreams. This restless bully keeps me awake at night, nagging over something I should have done, or did wrong. It complains about the way I look. It whines that I don’t have enough. It’s never satisfied. The mind can be smug and loud and blaming. Then, just when I’m ready to give up on it, my mind does something miraculous that makes me fall in love with it all over again. I’ve seen it perform great feats of magic. It’s given me the right words to say at the proper time. I’ve harvested diamonds of knowledge from its fertile quarry that I didn’t know were there. Still, I give it way too much power over me.

I’m not alone. I see many people’s minds choking their spirits. I witness the worry, the fear, the callous lies it whispers to them on street corners and in supermarkets. The mind summons our deepest fears, then sends these newborn disciples out into the world to build monuments to it. All the suffering in the world is created by our mind.

Waiting patiently for me to notice through all of this self-absorbed chatter is my knowing heart. I wish I had the courage to spend more time with this sage and listen to its soft beat of wisdom. My heart knows that I’m perfect. It loves even the cruelest stranger on a rainy winter night. It is happy all of the time. It wants for nothing because it understands I have everything. And unlike my racing mind, it is content in stillness and the quiet truth within. It never hates. It only loves.

The mind constantly conspires against the heart because it recognizes its death in it. It makes us believe our heart can’t be trusted, that our worth resides only in its own polished intellect. But experience has taught me otherwise. My heart has given me the courage to make bold leaps across treacherous canyons of fear. It is in these uncertain leaps that I am given back to myself. I’ve always been happiest following my heart.

There are seasons for both, I guess; but more than ever, it is the compassion, courage, kindness and vision of the heart that the world hungers for. I like my mind, there’s not another one like it on the planet. And I’m fascinated by other dancing minds for that same reason. But it’s a raucous child, grasping, intent on staying within the narrow walls of its inexperience. My heart is the gifted elder, quietly revealing the possibilities waiting beyond those walls.

Our collective mind with all its information and knowledge has taken us as far as we are going to go. We have entered the season of the heart. We must find ways to allow it to be heard, to speak, and to decide our future. I simply don’t see any other way out of this.