Listening to the heart?
Thoughts are so convincing, they have our own voice, we trust them despite appearing out of nothingness and just because some of them are right, does not mean everyone of them are true. They commentate on what is occurring in front of you, they state the facts of what you see which you confirm as being correct as you can compare it to what is in front of you, it is when they add a judgement on top that you have to watch out for their validity. What they say might be true but the best lie is the one closest to the truth, and you can filter it in through a slight distortion that changes the meaning of the facts to the opposite of what was meant, a present can become an emotional bomb, a favour can turn into an unwanted obligations and a compliment can transform into a passive aggressive insult. Thoughts are our greatest servants and worse masters, the only way to discriminate between the two is by listening to our hearts.
It is a difficult task to try to outthink our thoughts, it is exhausting as looking for a bug in computer code, as there is no alternative to going through each line of logic and checking the validity of each statement but at least with code you know if you have fixed it if the program does what it is suppose to in the end. With the mind there is no test to perform to check it is all working except whether you are happy, but that is susceptible to false positives, you could just be happy because you are eating a donut rather than being in perfect mental health and order. The problem with any complex series of thoughts is that it only takes one wrong thought at the start to collapse your entire line of thinking and conclusions, and the more complex the problem the greater the chance of poor logic slipping into the chain, and life is the most complicated of problems.
The world is a place of incomplete information and choice paralysis in not a good strategy, we have to make decisions and judgement or we would never get anything done, that is why stoicism has guides to making choices, do I have control over this? Is it in alignment with virtue or the right action? What would Taylor Swift or Gandhi do (depending upon your preferred role model)? What advice would I give my friends in the same situation? However important it is to have system to think about your thoughts there is no getting away from the fact that it is not always a good idea to fight fire with fire, and having a top down approach where your conscious mind guards against your subconscious means you are always outnumbered (there are dozens of them, all silent and moody). What is need is an entirely separate way of checking the validity of what you are thinking.
That is where the heart comes in, the Vikings would never make a decision until it had been considered when drunk and sober, and however much fun that sounds it is time consuming and expensive in terms of liver damage, though it certainly gave them time for reflection and when we are drunk we are more likely to listen to the heart. Even if that leads to it's own problems, it is better to listen to your heart when sober, it's message will be clear as long as you stop listening to your mind and start using it to ask questions or even better one question at a time and you repeat it until you get an answer that is from the heart. Sometimes that answer comes in the form of a feeling, if the idea of doing something makes you feel sick or uneasy that is a clear sign that that it is not for you, and if it fills you with joy, no matter how impractical or difficult that is something worth pursuing.
However not all choices are binary, a feeling is not enough information for complex problems, that is when you need to really listen, you ask the question and then wait, the mind will still throw up it's own thoughts, it definitely minds a gap in consciousness and if it does you ask again, wait and listen. As the mind and the heart uses two different ways of speaking, the mind is “I”, I want, I need, whereas the heart is objective, it speak to the whole of a thing, it speaks with wisdom that surprises you, it has the feeling of being external, greater than yourself, it is generous in spirit, it is the best version of you, the one you like and want to be in the company of, it is the voice of a friend who loves you. If you have not listened to it before, once you are aware that you have these two quite different voices and once you hear the difference in tone, there is no mistaking the difference, it is quite possible to go a lifetime without realising that there are these two distinct tones in your thinking and that they are coming from two sources rather than just the thinking mind.
The heart voice is quieter, gentle, has less to say, sometimes nothing if you are not asking questions that require an answer from it, and the thinking mind is so much louder and quicker to answer, you have to listen deeply, and it can help to focus on your heart whilst listening. That is the spiritual heart that is in the centre of your chest not the mechanical valve one that pumps your blood, it has a sense of being very internal and yet completely external and greater at the same time. It can feels like it is the store of all wisdom of all people across the whole of time, ancient, wise and shared between us all, a single oneness that is our greatest inheritance, a timeless store of knowledge, just waiting for us to ask and listen instead of thinking we have all the answers. It is remarkable how this simple act of humbleness can lead to such a beautiful hidden treasure.
If you accept the idea that we are beings of growing consciousness, that it contains our purpose, meaning and self-worth, it opens up the door to the idea that there is a collective being of growing consciousness that is the whole of humanity, and that the universe itself is the sum total of our consciousness over the entire course of time. It is said that we give the universe meaning, but perhaps we are the way we are so that the universe can give meaning to itself, but the answers to that question is above my pay grade and yours too, we only have a part of the puzzle which is ourselves and to get greater answers we have to listen to our hearts and the heart does not provide complete answers or show it's working.
However too many people have asked the same grand questions of their hearts and have only found the simple answer that we should grow as people, that we should experience joy in the moment, the answers are personal, as if the greater mission only requires us to do as much as we can, that our part in the great plan is to open our hearts, eyes and ears to drink in the beauty of the world, our relationships and to appreciatate our unique point of view. It asks only that we listen to our broad awareness (especially joy) and bring our stable attention to those things that are important to us and that attention will in turn bring us closer to love and contentment. To reach these goals the heart is your guide like a compass in a dark night, the mind is there for tactics and to enable elegant, compassionate and skilful action in the moment, but it is the heart that guides and lead the way, and to find your way stop thinking and wait, because the heart has a lot to say, you just have to decide to start listening.
