“It is the heart that gives birth to all knowledge” – this is a common trait that runs in many traditional cultures, ranging from Ancient Egypt to Islam.
Indeed, ancient cultures thought that the heart, instead of the brain, commanded the rest of the body. In Ancient Egypt the heart was the place from which understanding, will and emotions would come from.
The heart in the Bible is “being from within”. Whilst man sees with his eyes, God sees the heart (First Book of Samuel XVI, 7). In India, the heart is where Atman lies – he is the absolute in Mankind. In Islam, it is in the shrouded heart, protected by many veils, where spirituality and contemplation live.
In our current societies the heart no longer represents the center of being but merely the center of emotions.
Now you take the floor: what do you associate with the heart?
Sacred geometry.
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Christ and Atman (Allah, Om Sai Ram) are in my heart, which is the center of my intuition.
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Dear Pandora,
An wonderful story! Thanks for sharing it. Isn’t it amazing how children, led by their intuition alone, can often speak a truth so profound that it makes us catch our breath in wonder and awe. It is as though they can see right through us and our guises; the masks we wear are translucent to their new eyes.
Best,
Savita
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Paulo,
Maybe if we call it “soul” instead of heart. I can come to grips with that term. I believe the two reside together, and the soul encompasses the all. Somehow, despite all of the messages to the contrary, I am still not able to believe that in a muscle resides all of the emotions, powers, strengths, wills, desires, beliefs, etc that it has been credited.
Forgive me fellow seekers. I continue to listen and try to learn.
Jack
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The heart is where you get to the bottom of it!
like an Artichoke, a seed, roots. The life force.
Being open and connected to all around you.
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Wow Paulien, I agree with you, totally!
The heart is conscious, it goes alone, following the divine geometry created for all we!
Light
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For me the heart is compassion -love -hope -faith and truth ..and also our voice -passion and the heart reminds me of like a kite which can fly free in the wind or just stay on the ground ,it can rise up and fill u with love that wants to touch the sky ,and blow around on its string while seeing places and people from a heightened overview -and I guess when our hearts need to feel the emotions of life - it tugs at our heart strings ..pulls us and brings us back down to earth every now and then ,but I guess Paulo I could say we are all one heart -together …we all live in the heart of mother earth …and I can relate to that song Jessica :-) love it …blessings Tania
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rhythm & beat.
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I consider the Heart to be the house of the soul and the core of our being… If the soul would be a color, every individual in this world would have a different color. But if the Heart would be a geometric pattern, every individual would have the same pattern, but in a different color.
What I believe is as followed….
Humans are guided by the voice of their mind, the pushy and stressy kind that tells you that you MUST or certainly MUSN’T do something. But then there’s also the voice of the Heart, vain like an angel’s singing, but it’s outvoiced by the mind’s screaming.. If we learn to be at peace and calm out minds, we can hear out hearts singing to us… And what will it tell us?
Who we truly are. For the Heart is the house of the Soul, and every soul is its own individual and each soul has its own cravings, dreams and “legends”. The Heart contineously sings to us what we truly long for and what we truly deem best, but alas these notes are often blocked my the scream of the mind, and in an attempt to seeze these awful vocals, we just do what they wish. And then the voice of the Heart goes unheard…
Many people who are hurt in love and relations say “Maybe I should listen to my head instead of my heart, from now on”. And I very much daresay they had been listening to their heads the entire time, instead of the heart… Because the Heart does not hurt, it only gives love and compassoin…
Next to that, I’ll get back on the comparison of the Heart being like a geometric pattern… I believe everything and everyone in this world, and perhaps possible others as well, have the same hearts. All of ours hearts are designed with the same geometric pattern, with the same awesome powers of creation, the same love and other means of affection… And therefore I believe we are all connected. Because on the surface we communicate, whether loving or hating, with words and our body. But within we communicate, above all, with the Heart and Soul… And that way we communicate with everyone around us, with the Earth and even with the universe itself, even though we might not consciously do it or know it.. For example, the crop cirles: we have NO idea that they mean or where they come from, they are but patterns and marks to us (though geometricly and mathmatically perfect), but that’s because they’re a tongue that only our Heart, our full spirits, can interpreter… And it’s not something we can read with the mind. Our Heart sees them our Hearts recognize them and our Hearts take them in… And we can only feel their meaning, and their influence.. as long as we calm our minds and listen to our Hearts.
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My 5 year old daughter once, not so long ago, said ” would you like me to listen to your heart?”, (she talks to various parts of her body and this is normal).
So I said OK, she placed her ear to my chest and then she said in an angry voice “Your heart is angry with you”, “Why?” I asked, I have high blood pressure so know that something is not quite right, but Anger?
She then said “Because you do not let it out!”
I obviously asked her how I do this, and she replied “I don’t know” and went back to playing.
She is right of course! And I am working on it …
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I think that the heart is the place where all emotions is being born.We can’t rule it so easy and sometimes our heart takes us to places we can only imagine and it can make us feel ‘things’ that can drive us to the sky.
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Dear lea fayad,
Great wisdom in your post. I never thought of it that way - that though the intellect and the repository of “worldly knowledge” that goes along with it may take decades to develop to “maturity,” the heart is ageless. It is fully developed, in a sense, from the time we are born. Out of the mouths of babes issues great wisdom, because children often speak from the heart - they let flow forth words of truth that the adult’s “fully developed” intellect would filter out.
I am also a great believer in children’s rights, and by “children’s rights” I don’t just mean their right to the basic necessities of life (which, of course, society as a whole owes to every child born into this world). What I mean is the right to be treated like a full human being, not an object devoid of volition, to be owned and “molded.” Children, even small children, like adults do indeed have a heart - a heart that guides them on their path of personal destiny.
Most people respond to this claim by declaring that children below a certain age are “too young to know what they want in life,” “too naive to know what is good for them,” “too crude to be in touch with the Divine which guides the steps of adult men and women.” All of these claims are false. Children do know. No one takes the time to listen to them. Their desires and ideas, their dreams and aspirations are discounted as the “foolishness of childhood.” It is believed that all children should be forced or otherwise coerced into learning a certain set of subjects, a predetermined “body of knowledge” deemed “essential” by adults who “know what is best for them.” Meanwhile having to ignore, and sometimes even hide their true dreams, children are forced to undergo years of often boring and tedious study of subjects in which they know they have no interest, memorizing information which, in reality, many of them will never use again for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, their real dreams, inside of them, are dying from lack of sunlight, from lack of attention, from sheer lack of validation by an adult world determined that children know nothing and only adults know what is best for them.
In our society, as it is organized, with it’s standardized compulsory education, children are not allowed to listen to their hearts. In fact, they are taught to ignore their hearts at all cost. They are expected to act like good little automatons until they reach some preordained “age of adulthood,” whereupon they are finally deemed old enough to know what they want. By this time, however, they too often have forgotten how to listen their hearts. They can’t even hear that “small still voice” inside anymore. They just do what they are told they are “supposed to do” in life. They live to fulfill the expectations that society as a whole has thrust upon them. They no longer know what they want or who they are - they no longer know the language of the heart, because it has been beaten out of them - therefore they have no sense of their personal legend and what that might entail. They are lost, lost because society has sought to guide them, to tell them what they “should do” and what they “should want” and what they “should become,” rather than encouraging them simply to listen to the voice within. Every individual has one, even the smallest child.
One very clear example of the way adults seek to impose their will upon children is religious education. Even when their is no formal mode of education, no official religious schooling, the adults still seek to impose their ideas of God and spirituality upon the children of their community. How often do you ever hear an adult ask a child what the child thinks God is? (And I mean without following up immediately with their own opinion and seeking to drive that version of truth down the child’s throat.) No one cares what children think God is or what spirituality is all about. The common perception is that children are born “ignorant” of such matters and remain so until “taught” The Truth. Many well known philosophers throughout the ages have even proposed that children are devoid of “the religious faculty,” as though they don’t really possess a fully developed soul until they reach a certain age. Nothing, in my estimation, could be further from the truth. Children do know God. Again, we just never listen to them. We never take the time to ask what they do know, because, as adults, we are generally too busy trying to shove our own version of God and spirituality at them and “make them” believe, even if we have to beat it into them.
If you ever have the chance, stop and talk to a child about God and the universe, about the meaning of life in general. Pick a child, if you can find one, that has not been indoctrinated by the proponents of organized religion. The younger the better. And when you ask them to voice their own view of the Divine and their relation to it, don’t follow up with your own opinion. Keep silent; just listen. You might be surprised at what you will learn about God…and about yourself. Children - before their heart within them is silenced by society’s norms - are wise beyond all measure.
Love to all!
Savita
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The mind alone cannot create wisdom , the heart has a more important role. All wise people use both.
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The Heart…the Light inside…the Inner Source of Wisdom… and all these in a small part of unprotected flesh… It’s really a very difficult question!!!
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We have our physical heart with which our body is alive. And we have our heart chakra which is a central part of our spiritual anatomy.
Our heart-chakra is the carrier of our inner wisdom and is fundamental for the level of consciousness that we live our lives with. And for our awareness of love being the very fabric of all life, including ourselves. Learning to live with our hearts open we learn about who we truely can unfold to be - divine loving wisdom.
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i am only sixteen years old and i believe i understand the heart perfectly.What i know for sure is that the heart ,unlike the mind, is fully developed the day we are born. In contrast to the mind, it knows no time. My mind may not be as developed as my fathers or my teachers minds. But my heart is grown and mature,and it knows all the secrets that my brain does not. What facinates people is a newborns instant connection with the parents, a mothers instinct, a lovers sense. It is perhaps because there is no scientific proof of this that we underestimate the power of the heart. But the heart is truly the center of our being.
People tend to associate the heart with emotions, the most important of which is love.
In my opinion, life without these emotions in not worthwhile. It is not even life.For this reason, the heart, the center of these emotions is also the center of life, the center of who we are, the center of our being that gives birth to all knowledge.
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We can accept the fact that heart gives birth to all knowledge. But…First question: Why our heart gives often to all of us the wrong message? Sometimes we know that the message is wrong but we follow it with passion. Our passion from time to time lead us to the bad side of knowledge. Every time I have followed my heart, believing that it is correct, I finally discovered a lie. Learning from our mistakes. That’s the point. Our heart has an important role for all people. Heart guides everyone in a way (right or wrong it doesn’t matter)knowing what it will cost but, heart believes that we must learn to be strong. We must respect our heart!!! It’s important for our knowledge.
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A Compass , a Guide
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I believe that brain is the mental and heart is the spiritual control center in human body. What makes people happy, thoughts or emotions?
As it is said in Arab books: “Beware! In the body there is a flesh; if it is sound (good), the whole body is sound, and if it is corrupt (bad), the whole body is corrupt. And behold, it is the heart!”
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For better or worse I am a man of the heart. Everything it feels –I feel. It controls me more than my brain… which can be both good and bad. On the good side, I believe it grants me the ability to experience and enjoy life much more fully than those that only ‘feel’ with their brain and not through their heart. On the bad, I can’t play poker because it’s so easy to ‘read’ me:-).
Yet I still need to learn to better understand it because it controls me more than I control it. Whatever emotions are inside of me, are the same ones reflected on my exterior. Yes, people can always tell when I’m happy, sad, mad, etc… take my word for it; this is not always a good thing for many reasons, one being that they could think that my mood is the result of one thing when in fact it’s because of something totally unrelated.
In my humble opinion the heart was the ‘center’ of The Alchemist and having faith in, and striving, for your dream(s) was it’s blood.
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There is no reason to go into much depth in describing what I associate with the heart because it is easy to do. My heart is my soul, the passion I live every day with, it is what guides me in life, contains the wisdom learned and what holds my deepest secrets. The heart is not just a physical organ within the body, it is a metaphor for something within me that is much more than can ever be defined by physical limits.
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Estimado Don Paulo; Si bien la Mente es el Universo… El Corazon es la Llave…
Kokoro!
Atentamente Mauro
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Today it is snowing in my heart; because I miss my friend. My heart is where eveyone I love lives.
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Dear Thelma,
I enjoyed the video. Thanks!
It reminded me also of another song, a Hank Williams tune I grew up with, about what happens when we fail to listen to our heart:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sG1BIkmtQDk
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The heart? Could it be this little butterfly, the one that just lit on the tip of my finger? The one that looks like it might take flight at any moment. The one with wings of flame, yet so fragile that a single touch can render it unable to fly.
I once, as a child, caught a butterfly with a net my brother had given me. We had an empty rabbit hutch, with wire small enough to hold the creature, so I put it in that overnight. I felt I had all the world’s greatest treasure when I went to bed that night. The next morning I awoke to find it dead, still clinging to the wire of the cage. Since then, I prefer to look at butterflies from a safe distance: far enough that I do not become too entranced by their beauty, too obsessed, and far enough that there is no danger that an accidental touch from my hand will brush away the magic dust on their wings.
When I think of the heart I do not think of that shiny pink or red symbol we see imprinted on everything associated with Valentine’s Day - that neat, clean shape we learned as kids to cut out by folding a sheet of paper in half and tracing the shape of an ear with the scissors. When I think of the heart, I think of warmth, of blood pumping, of arteries and muscle and ventricles. I think of blue-black veins and red that stains. I think of the kind of heart that one might find in a Frida Kahlo painting - visceral, vibrantly real, disembodied yet still pumping.
For me the heart is akin to what most people refer to as the “soul.” It is the instrument that drives us when we let go - either in divine surrender or in moments of dire necessity - when we let go of everything we think we know. The heart, as I conceive of it, is in no sense related to the intellect and is, in fact, about as far removed from the seat of the intellectual knowledge as you can get. The heart is both the magnet that draws us toward our personal destiny and the compass that directs us along the way. In this life, it is the only truly reliable GPS we have.
If you feel it in your heart - even if your intellect screams “No!”, even if every fiber in your physical body trembles in fear at the thought - don’t hesitate, JUMP! Crawl if you have to, run! Just go for it! The heart is never wrong. (At least this is the principle by which I have navigated throughout most of my life so far.)
Love,
Savita
http://softiescentral.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/heart_pincushion_1.jpg
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A cupboard!
:))
One its side is opened to infinite with an axis of divine light, the other side I open it to the world of my affections…
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Paulo: Con todop respeto, lo lei, y me dejo impactada “los guerreros de la luz”. Soy argentina, vivo en la provincia de San Juan. He logrado ciertos recononicimiento a traves de la prensa, soy columnista del >Diario de Cuyo hace 19 años. Dicen por ahi….que poseo un don natural: Clarividemcia, desde loes tres años que siagnosticaron mi memoria prenatal. Me gustaria mucho conectarme con UD. muy pronto tendre mi sitio web. Creo en todas las palabras coherentes y equilibradas que expresa. La mayor de las espadas de la suerte! SONIA FANTON. DNI 13893424.
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for me the heart is the clock,the energy,the balance of my emotions.
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“Heart”. Here is one quote which my mind generated in less than few nano seconds. It says, “Heart is the place where “happiness” lies”.
As you mentioned Paulo, Heart is the corner stone for many religions.Yes it is ! If you see physically, the heart can be associated with some physical organ which lies in our body. I would suggest you one question.
Why do people associated “love” with the heart symbol ? Many book, many literature has tried to answer the question of love. Every body has their own story but I would say love is a simplest form of human need which desires happiness and nothing beyond.
Where there is happiness, there is love and where there is love there is happiness. Heart is the symbol for love. The place where no one decides through the virtue of one’s mind but just gives it away. Why do I say, give it away?
Heart is the place where we do not want to preseve anything but just give, When you give you will feel happiness. When you want to preserve and keep it on your own then, you are hiding something with not only yourself but with others around.
There is one common analogy in some religion. Here is that- “Soul is like a air, and human body is flesh”. When you have only flesh, it does not count but when you have flesh and the soul, it brings you to life.
Life is combination of soul and the body. Let me give you one example. You have a car, but you do not have a driver for the car. You do not know how to drive but you need urgently to reach for some work. Now what would you do ? Forget about the alternatives like taking taxi or not going or whatever but you just have to move or go. Imagine !
When you have to think of this situation what would be best approach ? How would you be able to tackle such problem, leave the problem. That is one thing but the point is that, the human body is like the car which is a body but do not have a driver, without heart.
When there is only human body or the car the car does not move but when there is driver inside the car then car does moves. The same principal can be applied with humans.
This simple approach justifies that without human heart human will be alive but they will never be happy. Here is one poem which could help to understand or give some meaning to explain “heart”.
With heart, I feel the pain.
With heart, I also feel the pleasure.
With you, I can climb the mountain
I can jump from the sky
Oh dear ! How can I survive when I feel alone
When there is darkness and no one near.
Is it my heart which is seeking love
Or is it my mind which is thinking a lot.
When would our journey come to peaceful end?
I wish I can sleep in your arms,
With ever lasting peace and silence…
My heart is for you and will always be with you.
When I wake up early in the morning
The first wish is with the God, to be with you.
I know time is passing like a steam of water
But Oh dear !, why am I left like without heart
and to ponder all around.
I see humans but they all make me think
I see object but they all make me sick
I am living and People look as if I am alive
Should I wait?, Just because both of our heart will find each other together.
I hope all your dreams and all your goals come to life.
I cannot wait to see pleasure in your eyes
When I can sleep in your arms and explain how I felt with every passing moment of my life
Is it because of our heart or should I think of your heart as mine ?
I do not know how long I can make the poem but I hope this explains a lot about what I associate “heart” with. You can always use the poem if you want but please give credit to the author. Because, this author is struggling to leave a mark on the heart of all those alive.
–Author of the book “Nature God”.
–http://www.kalwar.com.np
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I speak here knowing that I am the voice of the gadfly, or should I ay fly in the ointment, but I can not accept that the heart has anything to do with my emotions ore feelings. Oh yes when I feel love, nager, pain, loss, or other emotions my heart is afffected, but so are the other muscles in my body. That is because my “mind” tells them to feel these things. It is my mind that I hold sacred as the center of these feelings. It is the place where I concentrate all of my knowlwdge, all of my love, all of my experience, all of my anger at the worlds abuse at our fellows and our planet. Yes my heart shows the results of these thoughts 9I have had 4 heart attacks and am having checks for a 5th next Tuesday), but it is my mind that is and has caused the stress and tension (not to mention the tobacco I used for many years before getting a little sense and giving it up) each time, not my heart itself.
So while I use the word heart in my own writing and speach on many occasions, it is really my mind that is the real center of all thought reason, love, anger, and emotion in my life.
Paulo, please keep up the writing I learn so much and am forced to think in new directions so often.
Jack
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Heart: the eternal light of the Spirit, unconditional love, compassion, center, headquarters of the body, courage, determination, faith in God, yourself, the others, right conduct, perfection, pink shades.
When heart and mind are united in divine love, emotions and rationality become One = enlightment, balance, perfection
Heart can live without brain’s activity in a body, but when heart stops, there is no life anymore there, so heart is essential and it also means life, existence.
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For quite a long time, I’ve been avoiding my heart. I tend to believe that heart only brought me to pain. What ever the path I choose it’ll end up hurting me. Trusting my heart only made me blinded by feelings, and forgets about all the facts and realities.
So I choose to believe only to my brain. And let my brain do all the works. Do all the calculations of the steps I need to take. Prepare all the preventions for all obstacles that may come. Learn about all facts that will help me get though the journey.
And I made the right choice. My brain really helped me get through the journey. I enjoyed letting myself companied by my brain. Me .. myself .. and my brain.
But somehow, yet it still didn’t bring me certain satisfaction – the human part of me speaking; as satisfaction is what all human searching for in life. Another reality revealed in front of me. I felt lonely. Not just my heart telling me that. But my brain tuned on the same tune. This is hurting. Hurting myself .. hurting my brain .. and deeply hurting my heart. Reality do bites .
Then I started to share my self to my heart. My brain tried hard to tell me not to. But still, it is me that had to make the choice. Not my brain, nor my heart. Even though they both still continued their fights, I made my choice. I made up my mind. The mind that fills with thoughts of my brain, and the feelings of my heart.
So I continue the journey of my life. Me .. myself .. and my mind.
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For me…it’s all about living life ….’dil se’ (from the heart). Once you have discovered this way of life….no other way will suffice.
Thank you Paulo : )
Living life from the heart ; )
PSX
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hi paulo & everyone!
the Bible tells us that the mouth speaketh out of what the heart is fulleth..to me, the heart can be associated by what the person truly is, composed of the past and his precepts for the future..ajit mentioned about the soul which in your book mentions love as it is language..i can find a very close association of the heart with the soul–that guarded aspect of a human being..i had this privilege of talking to someone whose had no idea that while he was talking to me, i was noticing a sensibly essential part of his being..that i wasn’t only listening but seeing him as well.. i guess this is what the heart can show. in the same way, paulo, when i read your books..i could see the heart in your words and your work is deeply appreciated as it became an essential part of my becoming.
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http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=05ZgyoZvhgI
Wooden Heart!
Love,
Thelma
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The Heart. ‘Sacre Coeur’! Jesus Heart. Our transformation through love.
I used to live at the ‘Sacre Coeur Studentinnenheim’ as a piano-student in Vienna at the age of 16. Sweet and .. sour experience!
The heart is the centre of our earthly existence. It is the battle-field of good and evil! It is the place we experience divine presence and it is the zero point, the centre of LOVE. It is the tenderest spot of our sentimental world, my Achilles’ heel!!
The colour of our Love, the centre of the Heart, in our Aura is .. pink! When we visualize someone in a pink colour, we are sending love. We must visualize ourselves and our loved ones in White, that keeps us healthy and protects us.
Whenever we want to describe someone very hard, we say a heartless creature or a heart made of .. stone!
Our heart is the ‘conductor’ of the orchestra of the body and the …percussionist’s interference- Paul’s from Austria - is its … sound: boom, boom! It is the ..sound of life, the clock of our life and also our .. thermometer! Warmth! It makes us ‘taste’ the ..feelings. The sweetest feeling is love.
Love,
Thelma
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Veil and revelations, stress and relaxation, flow and so. Knowledge, the real. It’s that thing, that unbelievable treasure that belongs to everyone but few value. It’s that thing that makes me wonder, by my lifetime. Makes me who I am. The moment it stop, that’s it. Sweet.
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Hello,
I am so happy that we start talking between us. This was my main intention. I consider heart the headquarter of the soul, but not the phizical part of the heart. The etheric dimension.
I hope you will understand my intervention. Also, sometimes challenges in someone’s regular speach make him stop and re-think the subject also from other perspective or from more perspectives. Or challenges may help someone’s faith to become stronger.
This is a really small example of how to see the full part of a glass and how we learn from the obstacles existing on our way.
I call myself an open person. Ready to learn, ready to listen, ready to follow great life examples.
(It was just a challenge.And your faith proved to be strong. Thank you I am not alone…:)
Adina :)
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il cuore, un sogno, i desideri. li senti lontani, a volte impossibili, preghi, hiedi e ottieni. e quando ottieni, ti rendi conto che ottieni nek modo in cui solo Dio sa essere quello giusto. per le circostanze, per il tuo carattere e ti stupisci. il cuore, quando tace, nel silenzio, sa parlare a Dio. sono i pensieri, nostri, confusi, insicuri, che c allontanano dalle risposte.
caro Paolo non sai quanto somiglianze, tra me e te. Ed ora che la mia vita si sta ribaltando, è incredibile che devo abituarmi alla felicità. anche il dolore può essere abitudine e scudo.
Strana cosa la vita. Abbiamo sempre qualcosa da chiederle, dimenticandoci che è lei che ci chiede, semplicemente, di essere vissuta. Ciao e buon lavoro.
Baby
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the heart is what connects every living soul to the universe. i guess that’s how i’d decribe it
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life, fragility… I’m amazed this muscle can go on beating so many times during a whole life…
The old chinese sign on the dragon bones and in the bronzescriptures actually shows the heart sonewhat what it really looks like - showing the chambers inside.
When a new life starts growing…
when I lay my head to my beloveds chest and hear his heart beating strong and reassuring… safety?
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Heart is where faith is. We often try to dogmatize and simplify things, when we say that some ppl let their brain rule their heart and some let their heart rule over their brain. Neither is what moves us and controls us, for what does that is the soul. The mind is where the heart’s ideas materialize and present themselves; it the the point from which we are able to define ourselves and just be, without thinking and contemplating.
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