The Heart is Rising

So I don’t know if you have noticed or not, but lately there has been a lot of discussion about our feelings.  It seems everywhere I turn people are starting to talk about how powerful and important our emotions are.  It’s refreshing really.  After centuries of relying on our minds and discarding our hearts, it’s nice that we are finally coming around to what I believe is the best way to guide our lives… by listening to our hearts.

If you haven’t heard this kind of discussion, you can check out Ken Robinson, Dan Pink, Chip and Dan Heath, Dr. Emoto, Martin Seligman, and Mike Dooley just to start… everyone from spiritualists to psychologists to economists to scientists are all proving our emotions hold the power to guide us and ultimately create our world.

I just finished a month long experiment by Dr. Emoto… he is a Japanese scientist who has studies the effects words and thoughts have on water.  You can do this experiment at home- just cook three cups of rice and divide it into three separate jars.  On one jar write “You’re Beautiful, I love you” and on the other write “You’re ugly, I hate you” while the third one you write nothing- it’s the control.  For 1-3 months you will pick up each jar and recite the words on the outside.  The one with nothing on it is to be ignored.  Honestly, many days I just thought feelings towards the rice; I didn’t pick it up and speak the words, I just felt the words.  The emotion behind the words is what is so powerful, but even the words itself carry power.  You will be amazed with what you find- the one labeled beautiful remains pretty much the same, while the other two rot.  My pictures after three weeks are below.

There is also a great documentary called I AM and is directed by Tom Shadyac, the director of Ace Ventura.  He went around the world to ask wise people what’s wrong with the world and how can we fix it.  He ended up discovering how connected we all are to each other and how powerful emotions are- powerful enough to affect each other… he shows this by connecting a petri dish of yogurt (yogurt because of its live bacteria) up to an EKG machine… every time he would discuss something negative (he was sitting about 2-3 feet from the yogurt, but not touching it) the yogurt would “jump.”

Ken Robinson and Martin Seligman discuss how our emotions are what guide us towards our careers… Sir Robinson says in order for us to be happy in our work, we should be doing a job we are good at and we enjoy.  Dr. Seligman says for us to find “authentic happiness” we should be doing work where we can display our strengths because that is what makes us happy- doing what we are good at.  I think our children know this inherently- some children more than others challenge us to listen to our hearts and allow them to listen to theirs (ADD is the perfect example of a “condition” where a person’s heart is so loud they can almost listen to nothing else).

So, our emotions are powerful.  We have them for a reason- to guide our lives.  When we ignore them over and over again, our hearts start to “scream” at us.  This may start as a simple urge, but if ignored (or even hated) long enough, this ignoring and hatred will produce rot and decay in our bodies which will show up as some sort of ailment.

I do believe our world is changing… we are seeing this everywhere with the crumbling of old ways and the tumult of change on the horizon.  One of the ways we are changing is that we are tuning more into our emotions- our hearts will start to rise above our minds as the “new” way to guide ourselves.  Some of us will be excited by this change, while some will be terrified.  My suggestion is to just relax and listen to that still, small voice inside that is guiding you with love… that is your heart, and it’s trying to help you.  The more you listen, the happier you will be.  Truly.