Heart Centric Intelligence and Presence
Humans are designed to navigate life’s stress and challenges through the heart’s knowing. The capacity to adapt quickly and calmly in the face of rapid change comes from the heart’s ability to coordinate all the other incredible intelligences of the body. Yet, our culture has erroneously assumed that intelligence arises solely in the brain, which is where most of us hold our attention. We are literally a brain centric culture. The greatest issues of our time (more below) have arisen in large part because of this brain centric approach and because we are failing to bring our attention to the heart. Presence (more below) is the name we often give to the quality of skillfully meeting life from the heart.
The Intelligence of the Heart –
Intelligence is no more or less that the ability to receive, process and communicate information.
While mainstream science has treated the brain as both the source and sole residence of intelligence, emerging research has identified the cells, the connective tissue, the gut, the autonomic nervous system, and the heart as other centers or dense fields of intelligence within a system that is inherently intelligent throughout.
Research has also identified the heart itself as having a singular and special role in the play of human intelligence – one which coordinates the various forms of human intelligences into an harmonic whole, thereby maximizing the performance of each part.
In a chaotic environment, it takes skill developed from practice to focus the attention in the heart and bring the heart itself to the state in which it directs the orchestra that creates the symphony of human intelligence. When that skill is applied, there is a cascade of benefits that flow: stress diminishes, contentment increases, performance is enhanced, positive emotions flow, and health outcomes improve.
What the heart knows is that we are ok despite the challenges and sorrows that life inevitably brings. The heart also knows that we have the capacity to live a life filled with joy and contentment – a life characterized by kindness to others and defined by service. Yet, to reconnect with a heart that has been overshadowed by a scientific and technological culture, we must learn first to pay attention, and second how to bring attention skillfully to that part of the heart that knows.
The Greatest Issues of our Time
The following are some of the consequences of our not using the greater potential that is offered by the heart’s intelligent coordination of our intelligences:
- Stress is epidemic, fueling a growing health crisis.
- Chronic health issues are rapidly on the rise among young children, including an epidemic of autism spectrum and learning disorders which reflect early onset health disorders that are not presently recognized as such.
- Chronic health issues are rapidly on the rise among younger adult populations, including obesity and diabetes, precursors for the traditional diseases that are associated with aging.
- The critical incubator we call “childhood” is disappearing.
- Family and community structures that provide stability for childhood development are disappearing.
- Schools are failing to educate, overwhelmed by the same challenges that are overwhelming children.
- The development and marketing of technology has outstripped our ability to know how to use it wisely.
- Technology has rapidly created new forms of addiction to which the brain is particularly susceptible.
- Medical and psychiatric professions rely primarily on pharmaceutical intervention – having absolutely untested effects upon children in particular – rather than on the body’s own healing capacities.
- There is a chronic absence of professionalism, which is dominated by linear thinking rather than a heart centric capacity for compassion and the ability to be present.
- Our cultural value system elevates thinking skills in the service of consumerism and wealth accumulation over compassion, connection, creativity and community.
- By off migrating from farms, we have separated ourselves from both our immediate source of food and the ability to know and grow it, giving rise to the invention of processed foods and a world food market that is plagued by pollution and bacterial risk.
- Patriarchy persists.
- Our consumer economy literally defines unsustainability.
- Our foreign policy is fear based.
- There is a general inability to know how to find meaning and purpose in our lives, and another huge consumer marketing industry has developed around that vacuum.
This list could go on. Many of these issues have been explored in the articles that appear on this website, and will continue to be explored in John'‘s blogs. Every item on this list can be related to the relative absence of heart centric intelligence and the pre-eminence over time of the linear thinking.
About Presence
When we have our attention anchored in the heart, we come to the experience of each moment with curiosity and a superb ability to listen deeply. This is because the heart knows that each moment brings a gift, and that the heart will be able to discern its secret.
When we bring presence to the people we encounter – our clients, our loved ones, strangers – we are able to evoke the gifts that they bring. Our presence allows them to unveil themselves in the space of our hearts. If we have a service that is appropriate to provide, it will become apparent in that moment as a function of the heart’s knowing. Many times, that service is simply to provide the opportunity for their unveiling within the space of their own awareness.
When we bring presence to the world around us – Nature, the commute, our work – we are similarly able to evoke the gifts that each of these moments bring. Our presence allows each moment to unveil itself in the space of our hearts. If there is an action that is necessary, it will become apparent in that moment as a function of our heart’s knowing.
That is the nature of presence. Presence is the evidence of the heart skill in action.
When we are present, stress is absent; we are able to use life’s gifts to reach our own potentials; we are able to serve in the way in which each of us is uniquely capable; our service is characterized by compassion and non-judgement
Being present is very simple. However, being present is not easy. Like any skill, it comes from learning and practice. That is what John teaches.
America is a
Brain Centric Culture
There is a common assumption in mainstream science that both consciousness and intelligence, together with emotions, arise from electrochemical reactions within the physical matter of the brain. Although this view is quickly becoming outmoded within the larger frame of emerging science, it still dominates how most of us commonly perceive thinking and intelligence.
This view has caused scientists to focus research on the brain, rather than giving equal attention to other information processing functions throughout and beyond the body. It has also relegated the heart to the simple function of a pump, rather than exploring the heart’s traditional role as the source of wisdom, knowing, intuition, and soul connection.
Our educational institutions deploy curricula that are designed around brain centric beliefs, including a primary importance accorded to linear – or critical – thinking. Our professions honor linear thinking over a heart centered presence – the simple but high order skill of being with another human being in a deeply open and compassionate way – a way that is neither judgmental nor controlling. As a consequence, we have not fostered the ability to process information in a non-linear, imaginative way – the way of the heart and the other intelligences of the body.
Science – the bastion of linear thinking – has become the measure of what is good and true, despite its patent failure to guide culture wisely. Yet, thinking is an amoral function. Without the wise knowing that is found in the heart mode of intelligence, the brain cannot distinguish what is ultimately right from wrong for an individual in all of the particular circumstances with which we are faced in a complex life.
While the brain is an important tool in the toolbox of human intelligence – perhaps a defining tool – it does not perform optimally in isolation of the intelligence of the heart. In the same way, a brain centric culture cannot long function without regaining its own heart ways.
In addition, the brain does not control the function of the gut, which is managed by its own “brain” – a distinct neurological density called the enteric nervous system. The cells also have their own information processing modalities, including the very interactive information base we call DNA. The connective tissue is emerging as an extremely important information processor on its own. In short, the human has many brains. The question is how to coordinate them. The brain in our heads is not, as it turns out, the best candidate for that complex task. That is the role of the heart.
And when the heart plays its part, all of the other brains perform at their best, creating a beautiful harmony of being and action that we know to be the best of being human.
HeartWorks, Heart Centric Intelligence, and Soul's Critical Path are tradenames and trademarks of HeartWorks Company, a New Mexico Corporation .
The Listening Program is a registered tradename of Advanced Brain Technologies, LLC.