The Heart of the Matter - A-Z Challenge H - Heart

Heart

Is there more to the human heart that meets the eye?  Nestled within the heart is there  a brain or an eye that connects to a deeper part of ourselves?

 If you should look at the ways in which the word heart is used in our everyday language, you would find that it has a special place in our common usage and understanding that does not even have to be verbalized. It is something we just know that we know. Is it because the heart was present at our inception. We began our journey with a beating heart. It knows.

Often you would heart people say, “my heart was not into it”, “the heart of the matter is”, “have a heart”  “even though logic told me to do one thing my heart told me differently, ” “listen to your heart,” “follow your heart.”  What do we mean? What is the heart? Isn’t it just to pump blood throughout our body? What is the heart’s secret?  The following are some quotes by people we consider to be wise:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  Steve Job

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. Dalai Lama
All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired. Martin Luther

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.  Khalil Gibran

Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Helen Keller.

The heart knows intuitively and does not need proof, it seems when we listen to the heart, not the ego, but the heart, we cannot go wrong. The heart does not lie. When Helen Keller’s heart was connected to sign language, she became alive, light entered her world through her heart. “my heart leaped to the rapture of living”.

 

Faith, intuition, spiritual temple are attributes of the heart. When we work in the heart's sphere we do not even have to talk as the heart communicates directly with the entity we call God. It is the seat of love and divinity. It is beyond time and space, local and non-local at the same time. Within the language of the heart there is no untruth. We can trust our heart. But you have to know which message comes from the heart and which is just idle chatter.

I like how Rev. Daniel Kanter of the First Unitarian Church in Dallas describes the heart and I end with that :
A listening heart is four things.
1. A listening heart is always open: it is willing to hear bad news with respect and objectivity. Its first response is to let in the news and let it grow inside the heart rather than judge it at the door.
2. A listening heart is sensitive to the joy and pain of others: in other words it truly feels for others—it experiences the ups and downs of others lives not in thoughts but in feelings.
3. A listening heart offers a space within itself for the other to enter (generosity, welcoming, hospitality)—for one with a listening heart there is not fear of strangers, it has no allergy to the “other.”
4. A listening heart gives each person what he so badly needs-an affirmation of his/her place in the world. You know the listening heart because it makes you feel known, real, worthy and that you belong.

 BAW -A-Z Challenge - H

(c) 2014