Dear Friend,
There was a time when my life was ruled by my head. It started innocently enough. Our culture trains us with its assumptions. The assumption that I found myself born into is that we humans are logical creatures, who make rational decisions based on the facts of life.
I find myself to be an emotional creature who also has, from time to time, the propensity to use logic. It feels like this life is being lived in my head. Like my head is the more important than the rest of the body where I make my home.
This temporary home. On this blue planet. In the vastness of space.
There’s some pretty important equipment encased in our skulls. Our ability to see and hear for instance. But our eyes don’t see. Our eyes are like windows that let in light. The vibration of the light is transformed into images by our brains. The images we ‘see’ are modified by our mental maps.
If something out there, does not fit our mental map, we are prone to blindness, we don’t see it. We don’t see the love that is here for us. We don’t see others as they are. We project our mental map onto them. We project our mental maps out onto the world.
We make our world from the inside out.
Every morning, when I awake I have a little ritual. The warmth of the bed is so seductive. We keep the heating off at night, it’s not on timer. The timer stopped working a while ago and somehow we’ve not got round to calling the heating engineer. It’s actually quite nice to wake up, the bed a warm nest in a cold house.
The dormouse in me wants to snuggle deeper into the covers. To hibernate seems like it would be bliss.
When we were kids we had one gas fire in the front room. I’d make letters in the ice on the inside of the windows before school. Mam used to warm our clothes in front of the fire and we’d run downstairs in our pyjamas, slip into the heat and comfort of them.
I’m coming to realise why writing has such an attraction.
These symbols that take us places.
My ritual now as an adult is, as I am emerging from sleep, to sink my attention down from my head and feel into the centre of me, into my heart. It’s like diving under the surface of a choppy wind blown body of water. Down here you can breathe. I notice my chest, the rhythm of my breath. It gets quiet. My heart is warm, alive.
Wise or foolish I prefer to be down here. In our hearts we experience love. All of the concerns and critiques of the voice in the head, the stuff we worry about, that we take care of, the promise is that we will feel this. The warmth of connection.
Our culture has trained us to look for what we need and want outside of ourselves. To accumulate things. To jostle and strive for status.
How would it be if we did our striving from down here? Peaceful hearted people, kind to ourselves, giving what peace we have, peace returning to us multiplied over and over with each giving.
The word courage comes from the French word for heart. Coeur.
The false self in the head, it doesn’t encourage us.
Our hearts do.
Hearts have a logic to them.
It helps to become familiar with life down here, below the madness of the world.
The warmth and the safety of our hearts.
I hope to meet you here.
Peace is now. All around us. Amid the chaos of the false self.
Diving for pearls.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey