SEEING THROUGH THE LENS OF THE HEART: The Case for Heart Centric Intelligence/A series/Blog.1/AN INVITATION

By Kindred On Apr 30, 2010

About a week into my recent and first trip to India, I found myself standing on a street corner in Aurangabad, a city of perhaps 900,000 people not far east of Mumbai.

Located near remarkable temples carved from solid rock – called the Ellore caves – Arangabad is accustomed to tourists.

Within the last ten minutes, I had been approached by at least a dozen rickshaw and taxi drivers, from whom I had escaped to the shade of a tree to stare at my Lonely Planet map of the city, in hopes of locating an ATM.

A man on a motorbike stopped to ask if I needed help. Indians – as I continued to experience on this trip – are generally friendly and helpful. He introduced himself as Ekbote, and explained that he was in the tourist business.

Although Ekbote was not pressuring me, I suspected a more subtle pitch would be coming.

“All I want,” I said with a little exasperation in my voice, “is to exchange some money, and then to find a quiet café where I can get some coffee, use the internet and do a little writing.”

Ekbote pointed to the ATM about thirty yards back along the route I had just walked, but also pointed out that it was Sunday and it might be closed.

Then he said, “Come to my house. We’ll have coffee, you can use my internet, and then I’ll drop you off at a nice restaurant where you can do your writing. I’ll call my money exchanger, and he will meet us there.”

My mind went into hyperdrive, starting to weigh the considerations. But I knew better. The mind couldn’t answer Ekbote’s invitation, except to say, “I don’t know . . .”.

I moved my attention from the racing thoughts of my mind, and literally dropped it into my heart. Taking a breath, I felt into the offer, and into Ekbote.

The heart said yes. I nodded to Ekbote, and he motioned to the seat of his bike. I got on, and we headed down the street.

Ekbote turned off this main thoroughfare, and headed into a neighborhood, which shortly turned into a relative slum, with a smell mixed with smoke that was almost choking. My mind was racing.

The mind’s narrative was predictable, along the lines of ransom, dead body and so on.

I listened to a bit of that, then turned my attention back to the heart. Still ok. That recognition brought a smile and let my attention focus on the route as we continued on beyond the slum, onto a highway, then into an apartment complex in what was essentially a suburb of Arangabad. I’m sure my mind’s narrative might have continued on too, but without my attention there, no one was present to hear it.

Dropping our shoes at the apartment door, Ekbote brought me into his home and introduced me to his wife Vandana and grown children Pratik and Anuja.

We had coffee and visited a bit before Ekbote took me into a bedroom in this small apartment and sat me at his computer. As I finished that work, Ekbote asked if I would stay for lunch.

As we visited more, Ekbote leaned toward me and quietly said, “You know, I read energies. I read yours before I knew that it was safe to invite you into my home.”

I laughed – noting the irony to myself – and told him that I had done the same. Within a day, Ekbote could make his more subtle pitch, and I had agreed to travel across southern India with him in his car, a trip lightly planned in which we “felt” our way. The journal of that delightful trip is on my website.

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This is the first in a series of blogs devoted to the notion of heart centric intelligence.

As the blog unfolds, I’ll talk about how America is a brain centric culture and how that accounts in good part for most of the tremendous challenges facing our culture – including among others the epidemic of autism spectrum and learning disorders in children, the epidemic increase in chronic disease among increasingly younger populations, the failure of educational institutions, the persistence of patriarchy, the epidemic of stress, the disappearance of childhood, the out of control evolution of technology, the absence of professionalism, and the medicalization of everything.

The short of it is that key elements of our culture – science, technology and the myopic preference for linear thinking – have captured and even addicted our immature attentions to the brain’s linear processing mode, with serious consequences.

For several years, I’ve been teaching a fundamental attention skill. The essential parts of that skill involve finding our attention, de-enmeshing it from what it has attached itself to, giving it strength with practice, anchoring it into the heart space, and repeating a simple heart centered practice that allows the heart to coordinate and harmonize the various concentrations of intelligence in the body.

Science is beginning to recognize how those concentrations of intelligence seem greatly optimized by a heart centric coordination. There appears to be a harmony of intelligent cooperation when the attention is managed in this way. When this happens, we are better able to manage our stress, and our health outcomes are improved.

Those other centers of intelligence in the body are many and operate on many scales. Science is only really now beginning to identify them and start the process of gaining a better understanding. Certainly, there are centers of intelligence in addition to that of the brain, and they include the gut, the connective tissue, and various other groupings down to the individual cells and their respective contents and processes.

Intelligence is no more than the ability to receive, process, and communicate information, and no less than the nature of who we are.

One center of intelligence that science has not addressed, and probably can’t in any direct way, is what is often called the soul – that inherent pattern that underwrites our individuality, and the reservoir of energy that becomes a passion of purpose when we are able to bring our attention to it.

A heart centric intelligence is what orchestrates this whole-human intelligence. At the center is what we have always called the heart – perhaps only metaphorically – and it is a primary organ of perception that we have neglected to our great peril.

I hope you’ll follow along as I elaborate on this macrocosmic view of intelligence and its microcosmic implications for our daily lives.