There are numerous and diverse voices complaining these days about a broken government, a broken economy, and a “broken system.” The high divorce rate and rampant drug use among our children and young adults speaks of broken families. Rising levels of people with cancer and heart disease speak of broken bodies in need of integrated medical care within a broken health care model. Underneath all of this lies something very important for us to wake up and see. Radical fundamentalism, sensationalism, insecurity, anger, hate, fear, and egotistic double talk have reached a new level of fervor, and these energies are the underlying catalysts behind what is broken in our lives and in our world. If these are the catalysts for the breakdowns, what is the cause?
In order to fix our broken systems, we must simultaneously fix our broken hearts. We, as one people worldwide, are suffering from a broken heart.
Let’s get to the core of how we repeatedly break our hearts in daily life. We break our heart every time we ignore and suppress it. We have forgotten what the heart really is; we identify it only with emotions. We have judged the heart as inferior to reason—an overly sentimental thing that cannot be trusted. We have subjugated our hearts to the control and dictatorship of the analytical mind and the deceptive ego.
The holistic wisdom of the ancients teaches that the heart has a “mind of its own” and that knowledge of the heart supersedes all other knowledge, because the heart knows who we really are. The heart is the home of your inner wise woman/man. The heart is the home of your inner teacher (in-tuition). The heart knows in ways that the mind does not; the heart knows things that the mind cannot. The heart is to lead and the mind is to use all of its knowledge to fulfill the true will of the heart.
Cutting edge scientists at places like the Institute of HeartMath are finding conclusive evidence that the heart has neurological characteristics similar to the brain, and that the measurable energy field of the heart produces the dominant vibration in the whole body. When our heart pattern is coherent we are in balance; when our heart pattern is incoherent we are imbalanced. The native Hopi people have a prophecy that describes a world out of balance. They speak of the two hearts needing to become the One Heart. The healing of our world comes from making the long journey from our head to our heart, healing our hearts and the collective heart of our people.
HeartMath.org describes a simple heart coherence exercise summarized as follows:
1. Focus attention around the area of your heart.
2. Breathe deeply and feel as though your breath is coming through your heart area.
3. Maintain your heart focus and heart breathing; then activate a feeling of gratitude and allow yourself to fully experience it.
Once you have connected and centered yourself in the heart, stay true to it. By staying true to our hearts, we can ensure that our hearts and our world will never be “broken” again.