Thursday, July 27, 2017

Matters of the Heart: Exploring the Heart's True Nature

As a young woman, as I found myself in conversation at cocktail parties, often with male engineers, when I tried to explain that I worked with the heart, I would often get rolled eyes in response.

"The heart is a mechanical pump. It goes pump, pump..." was a far too common response. My own heart would feel deflated at times like this, feeling like I was fighting an uphill battle where hearts can hear heads, but heads can't hear hearts.

The head-heart split that is so predominant in our culture, creates the "mechanical pump" mythology about the heart that betrays it's true nature. It is actually a gland, the first organ to form in the body, and an organizing factor in physical formation, including brain formation. There is actually a "heart-brain" and we have cardiac ganglia.

In this age of big pharma, we are often not aware that the heart can act as an internal pharmacy, dispensing and communicating what is needed where and when without unwanted side effects. The heart puts out its own balancing and regulating hormones, and instantaneously communicates electromagnetic and chemical information to the rest of the body and to other bodies near it. The heart's rhythm and pulse can entrain all of the body's rhythms and cycles into coherent harmony. Each person's EKP is as unique as their fingerprints.

The electromagnetic field generated by the heart is much more powerful than the brain's electromagnetic field. The electrical charge generated by the heart is 60 times that of the brain. The magnetic field generated by the heart is 5000 times that of the brain. Our cardiac field touches people within 8 - 10 feet of where we are located, and perhaps in more subtle ways at greater distances. One person's heart waves can be affect another person's brainwaves. Heart-brain synchronization can occur between two people when they interact.

These scientific facts about the heart help us recognize that the heart's power is literal and not just metaphorical. As Jacquelyn Small notes in her book "Awakening In Time," "The heart is too big to be understood by the analytical intellect. It is better known through sensation/body experience..."

The heart is a SPACE, not a THING....

The heart is that place in consciousness where our identities are not just ideas we THINK about who we are...our identities here are intuitively felt, and in this way we are KNOWN...

While the ego's intellect can study isolated facts without linking them, the heart just naturally links them, seeing the relationships among them all...

What remains a mystery to the intellect is NOT a mystery to the heart...

Where the mind's intellectual arguments divide us, the heart unites us. Almost any controversy can be solved through heart-felt communication...

When our thoughts and intuition cannot agree, we feel pulled by what the intellect thinks OUGHT to be and what the heart KNOWS as true

Emotional intelligence is rarely cultivated in schools, the workplace, or the media, yet it is such a critical capacity for us to be totally human and live healthy, happy lives. Truly understanding the heart brings together many foundational pieces in our lives, and gives us a pathway towards purpose, meaning and connection.