Activating Inner Vision Through The Heart

‍"Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.”

~Mahatma Ghandi

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While logic is very important and intellect a necessary component of critical thinking skills, the inner vision that comes from an activated heart chakra is key to facing and transcending the challenges we’ll inevitably face in life, in our relationship with ourselves and our relationships with others. As the legendary peace activist and spiritual aspirant Ghandi so aptly put it, the “Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart”. What does it mean to activate the heart chakra to awaken one’s inner vision? How can we use that inner vision to see into the heart of a matter, so that we’ll speak and act in a way that creates optimal outcomes? These are relevant questions especially since the mind can run away with mind-noise which usually only intensifies tension and suffering.

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Activating the heart refers to letting ourselves feel the full scope of our feelings without needing the voice of logic to make meaning of the  discomfort or unhappiness we feel. When you can remember that you as a person are more than just your thoughts or your feelings and that both are fluctuations, you position yourself to let go of your attachments to your thoughts; or any convictions you might have, to make your judgments (connected to the feelings) the absolute truth. Sometimes, I’m so convinced my logical mind is correct, but when I am triggered, I am in touch with a protective element of the psyche and not the authentic pain existing beneath the animated triggered reaction. How do you get yourself out of the triggered emotional state and into your heart. The easiest and quickest practice is to breathe while reserving any and all judgment. If you don't, the inner dialog laced with judgment will keep you stuck in discomfort, dissatisfaction and blaming, which tends to breed more of discomfort and an overactivated solar plexus chakra. So, to activate your heart chakra, first commit to reserving judgment by breathing life force and energy into your body. Easy rhythmic breathing slows your nervous system down, recapturing attention away from the depleting activities of judging and into the necessary human experience of feeling. Closing your eyes while practicing this slows it down even more.

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In the space of the nervous system becoming more relaxed and less activated about the pain, we position ourselves to experience the pain differently, with less intensity and more objectivity. However, without moving our focus to the area of the front heart and back heart chakra, we are delaying relief and not transmuting it through the inner vision of an awakened heart. Wherever your focus goes, that is where energy flows, thus to activate and awaken your heart, simply let your awareness rest at the  front heart chakra as you breathe in a rhythmic timing, inhaling for a count of 6 and holding for a count of 3; and exhaling for a count of 6 and holding for a count of 3. After a few rhythmic cycles of breathing, intend to be standing in a flow of love energy (visualize pink light) entering your back heart and moving through your front heart out into your environment. Intend that the pink light saturates (blessing) all in your life.  Let yourself be in the flow of love energy by intending to be a channel for love into your immediate environment and into the lives of those you love or have conflict with. You are awakening the heart chakra for wisdom and discernment, outside the scope of the triggered reactions and the “blame-game”, and prepping yourself to see things through the perspective of an awakened heart.

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What are the characteristics of an awakened heart that gives us inner vision?

The heart chakra understands that all humans are basically beings of love, light and empowerment; that the shadow aspects of ourselves and others only represent degrees of learning we are each responsible to tending to. These shadow aspects are not the truth of who we Really Are, but instead are only shadows of who we think we are at any given moment. When we are awakening the heart chakra, we allow any shame or shaming tendencies to be disintegrated by the love moving through us, and thus give up our habits of self-judging or judging others. Feeling Love, Loved and Loving is what allows the shame and judgment to dissipate. 

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This first characteristic of an open heart (the feeling of self as Love and understanding Love is Self and all beings) is willingness to surrender, because an awakened heart can’t hold on tightly to the narratives made real by the mind.

With an awakened heart chakra, your system does not have to latch onto impulsive behavior which the mind’s narratives lead to in order to handle the tension experienced. The tendency to judge and move towards a quick-fast means to cope with our hurt feelings often comes at great cost. Such is usually impulsive and less than kind or thoughtful. For example, someone at work seems to be leaving you out of meetings or keeping you off email chains. If you took it personally and acted impulsively, you may be led to say passive aggressive comments, or leave them out of group emails. An awakened heart chakra allows you to honestly observe and witness (feelings) your emotions without needing to be merged or identified with it, because you have quieted the mind-noise, disconnected it from the feelings, so you can experience the feelings only. Resting in the awakening of the heart chakra, as you maintain your awareness while rhythmic breathing is the beginning of automatic reintegration; the thing that happens when we surrender into the feeling without the judgments, when we become willing to be channels of love moving through us. 

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The second characteristic of an awakened heart that allows us inner vision into any matter, is fearlessness; fearlessness in feeling painful feelings.

When we are attached to our judgments, very few perspectives are visible. We can tend to feel and believe that we have no options. However, when we step into fearlessness and allow ourselves to feel the full range of our feelings no matter how painful, (just the raw feelings) letting go of the narratives as we channel love, new options arise. How much stamina does your heart chakra have as it remains open? Sometimes hitting our limit is par for the course, but we can always return to awakening the inner vision by breathing love through the heart chakra to activate the Love always available deep within. At the intuitive level the heart knows we cannot get out of our suffering with mind-skill alone. 

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The heart chakra is what enables us to transmute painful feelings into a fluid river of emotions that flow through us. Feelings are not designed to stay trapped in our bodies at the cellular level by the resistant judgments that we keep circulating. Feelings are meant to be experienced by our bodies and minds but processed as fluid fluctuations flowing freely without the resistant judgments the mind tends to nurse. As we activate the heart chakra with fearlessness,  letting feelings be experienced and flowing through us, with each breath, more perspectives open up. The inner vision of the heart gets activated allowing us to consider the pain or discomfort of others; allowing us to move deeper into curiosity from a place of love, security and surrender. 

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Lastly, the third characteristic of an awakened heart is wonderment or curiosity.

Because Love-experienced, manifests as love in action, optional perspectives will arise, and move us into right action. One hypothetical example of a tense situation might involve a step parent with her step-daughter. When the daughter aggressively says to the step mother, “My mom used to do it this way” or “You're using the room that belonged to my mom”. The step parent can get triggered into any number of reactions, likely to add to the tension between them. 

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Because the reactions are triggering to the psyche of the step parent, her inner dialog is likely to contain narratives or judgments  (“She’s just being competitive with me” or “Why is she being so mean to me?” or “What a brat”). On awakening her heart through breathing and feeling into her own feelings about things without needing to make her judgments real, other perspectives and options open up. As she becomes able to consider and be curious, in wonderment the question arises, “What is this child needing me to know about her that she cannot express clearly?”. She may wonder whether the child might have some anger and pain about the divorce of her parents that she has no way of accessing or processing other than passive aggressive comments. Questions arise that she can use to invite new dialog; “Ok, so are you angry that I’m not doing it the way that your mother used to do it?” or “Yes, that room used to belong to your mom. Are you commenting, to let me know that you don’t like it, that you feel upset about it?”. Any honest inquiry is bound to touch the heart of another and reflect back to them valuable information about self and their disconnection from their own hearts. In those places are great opportunities to reconnect and build bridges of relational exchange instead of suffering and separation.  

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Yes, the heart chakra that is awakened to its inner vision through rhythmic breathing and sensing Self in the flow of love energy, allows you to let the culture of the mind be subservient to the heart, bringing in new perspectives and heightening your optionalities. If you need assistance in connecting to your heart chakra and calling in new perspectives to create improved outcomes, you can always find me via the Paradise Found online portal. I’m always happy to serve because one awakened heart tends to awaken others in the world.