The Psychology of the Heart

    The essence of our suffering as beings is seen in the pain of separation (rejection of our being) that cuts into this needed bond of total love. Something seems to go wrong as we approach life on earth, and this wrongness of feeling often begins in pregnancy. Our incarnating beings are supersensitive to the emotional environment so when a mother smokes or does drugs, for instance, or the child is unwanted and unplanned, there are emotional waves of disturbance that become very apparent to a being even though no mind is yet present or conscious. Today we see that emotions or emotional environments are very contagious and one person's bad mood can act like a virus and infect the people around them. On a being level we could say that we come to earth looking for pure and perfect love and don't find it. Yes a mother may offer pure love at the birth but the before and after is a river delta of complex problems, struggles and difficulties. If the love between the husband and the wife is not totally harmonious the emotional environment will not be that way for the inbound vulnerable being. And of course we have the medical community waiting, making our birth a problem; ripping the experience away from its natural and most beautiful state. And then we have had the pharmaceutical companies doing their best to drag us away from the breast and the nipple and mothers warmth and natural immune strengthening milk. Life on earth!

    Though there are many theories of incarnation, karma, destiny and having to learn our lessons the hard way, we can still look at this pure being that is born and is that nature that Christ said that we must get back to. The ground state or essence self is just a being that feels. But when we start to study "human" beings who live on this planet we need to begin to study the distortions and knots and convolutions of feeling and emotion that happen inside of us as we hit the stratosphere of uncaring and are forced to accept the status quo of separation, pain, hurt, and all to often, the deliberate abuse of our being.

    Scientific evidence does show that even very young children are capable of experiencing deep anguish and grief in response to trauma, loss, and personal rejection. Dr. Kyle Pruett, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale University Child Study Center, says "infants are highly attuned to mood even when in the womb making them susceptible to things like parental depression." The reality is that a 4-month-old can be clinically depressed for if they do not get the love and care they deserve and need they begin to withdraw. Our pure beings need and deserve pure love. Children are programmed to interact and the quality of that interaction is crucial for their emotional, physical and mental development. Thus warns Pruett "We need to help parents early on with things like maternal depression, marital conflict and violence in the home." These things do 'cause' suffering in the hearts and minds of the young.

    In infancy the flashes of pain that come from rejection are the same as the pains of misunderstandings that arise from poor communication with adults. In practice, because of the hurt we feel deep down, and our own separation from 'that which is hurt,' (separation from our own being nature) we tend to manifest our uncaring and insensitivity in many ways that hurts others and us. The most common way this manifests in daily life is seen in our inability and basic refusal to listen to others at any meaningful level of being. The walls of Jericho, in the bible, really were walls of separation and division which are other words for uncaring and the distancing of beings from each other and nothing shows off our separation more than our lack of listening and general fear of expression.

    This prose implies a great deal. It ties listening, suffering and change into a tight mathematical dictum. Looking deeply we can see that people can try to escape suffering by not listening. People who do just that are often champions of the smiley face while secretly they judge the emotions and feelings of others. Here in these pages we will learn that a great power comes to one who can cave dive into the silent depths of ones own inner being and truly learn to listen to that.

    HeartHealth starts with our self and tells us that if we can find a total love of what we feel; an honor, respect, honesty, and integrity with our feelings, especially with the painful ones, we will move into the domain of the heart, which will open new doors in our life. When we stop resisting our feelings and emotions and get in touch, in a conscious way, and let them flow and speak to us (inner listening), and then learn how to express them in a vulnerable way to others, we will find a deep happiness and release. HeartHealth is about becoming one with our own hearts, with our own feelings. As such HeartHealth provides ways to confront and weather the deepest pains and sufferings we as humans have to face. (For understanding of the word heart see chapters 4 - 7. Honestly it took me years to even begin to understand what the word really meant)

    Increased movements into the depths of heart felt feelings increases our capacity to care and to love, as well as improves our overall state of physical health and sense of well being. This book will introduce you to a new understanding of the heart and why you should pay more attention to what is going on inside of this very deep self. HeartHealth is a quest for total heart intelligence. It is about much more than the physical pump that beats so frequently inside of our chest. HeartHealth also offers a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of psychology for here we will see clearly that without heart health we will never find mental health.

    In the field of spirituality, HeartHealth creates a new divinity, a divinity of feelings. A new sense of holiness is bestowed onto a space we will call the vulnerability of being. 'The Heart is the Vulnerability of Being' and its feelings are absolutely precious. To adore and cherish and even worship the vulnerable heart is to acknowledge the cosmic intelligence that created the universal heart to feel and be a certain way. All the worship of spiritual hierarchies and divine beings of all sorts, sizes and shapes cannot equal the nature of the pure heart that thrills to listen to, care for, appreciate, and respond with full emotional and heart intelligence to the vulnerable inner world of another. This is true love.

    The essence of HeartHealth is for people who are interested in expanding their basic capacity for love and empathy and it is for people who want to move through their pain and grow. HeartHealth is a grow science. It is a psychological spirituality of the heart that transcends the universe of concepts and ideas and moves us directly into the realm of pure being.

    HeartHealth also has a deep social sense, it is calling all of us to go down into our own hearts and get in touch with more feelings thereby increasing our capacity for love and empathy. For the sake of our health, our love life, and for the sake of our race consciousness we need to shift away from the mind and drop deeply into the heart center that cares more. The call to feeling and caring is for all but some bear more responsibility than others in this regard. In the end can we expect the fringe ends of society to begin deeper healing if the middle and higher ends are lost in their way? So HeartHealth is offered as a basic text for psychologists and other healers and helpers who want to do good. To do good we have to be good and the old adage of physician know thy self is crystal clear to the heart. Penetration of the depths of heart intelligence opens up totally new vistas of understanding when dealing with clients and patients who are suffering illnesses of mind, body, emotion, and spirit.