To be heartful is to open our heart wide enough to embrace all that we love about ourselves along with all our mistakes, regrets, and perceived shortcomings.

To be heartful is to realize that all our experiences, good and bad, are woven into the tapestry that makes us unique. Rumi said that if he were to pay homage to everything that helped deliver him into God’s arms there would not be one experience, thought, feeling, or act that he would not bow to. Instead of trying to un-weave our unique tapestry, we should sit proudly on our self-made kaleidoscope and ride our magic carpet as an instrument the Universe can direct.

The Native Americans have a tradition of Spirit Otter, who invites us to jump into the spring of our heart and swim back to the Ocean of God’s Smile. This ocean lies within the space between the beats of our heart. That space is where we can hear the angels sing when our negative mind-chatter is silenced. This sacred space may well be the entrance to heaven. Jesus said the gates of heaven are open to the innocence of children. Young children have not yet learned to judge and criticize. They only know the joy of being present. They don’t judge other children by the color of their skin, religion, culture, or how much money they have. These are the traits of conditioned mind-consciousness.

As a society, we honor mind-consciousness to such an extreme that the heart is now calling us back to itself through the great changes that are taking place in the world – changes in the weather, changes in the economy, political unrest. We are challenged through the loss of jobs, the loss of our houses, stress in relationships, questioning our purpose – the meaning of our life.

Our journey through life’s challenges is the Hero’s Journey. Plato said the word hero is derived from the word eros, which is love. Eros, love, works through the Goddess Aphrodite as the spiritual love compared to the more Venus type of physical love – the love of passion, but also the love of possessions and worldly status. The good news, as Plato tells us, is the physical love leads us to the spiritual. 

The Hero’s Journey is the one told through the ages in what Joseph Campbell refers to as a monomyth. In the common plot outline, the hero faces dragons and daemons from the past that beat on the walls of the heart to such an extent they can no longer hear the angels sing. 

The Hopi Indians said we are a people of two hearts. The one heart is the lower heart of me-consciousness lost in reacting to reality through the fabric of our conditioned patterns and our conditioned responses. The other heart is the higher heart or heart-consciousness that responds to life as it really is, living each moment in harmony and with joy.

The portal that opens into the spiritual requires that we unite our two hearts into one heart; the reason Jesus said the gates of heaven are open to the innocence of children, who are of one heart.

When a child is in Nature, they look around with awe and excitement, chasing squirrels, and butterflies, smelling the flowers and as every parent knows, they are pulled by some mysterious force into the streams and lakes where they get their shoes and clothes wet and full of mud…. What joy!

When adults go into Nature they tend to think about how many lumber feet they can chop down, how many tons of minerals they can excavate. Children don’t think in these terms. They are happy to just be. They don’t judge other children by their clothes or possessions, how much money they make, how popular or famous they are, what title they have or profession they are esteemed by. These are the traits of mind-consciousness, not heart-consciousness.

Einstein said mind-consciousness is the servant of heart-consciousness; that heart-consciousness is the sacred gift. But we have created a society that worships the servant and has forgotten the gift. The result is a disconnection to each other and the planet.

The challenge for us today is the return of heart-consciousness.

When the lower heart gives way, when we hand the reigns from the servant of mind into the hands of the sacred gift, we step into the space that lies between the beats of our heart – into the Infinite where miracles are an everyday part of our lives. Then we can be free in the moment like the child that no longer judges life based on how we think it should be. Instead, we are free to play in the stream, with the butterflies, and the squirrels.

Scalar Heart Connection is not a religion, nor is it a spiritual practice. It is a method, a technique that helps us sort out the difference between mind-consciousness and heart-consciousness. Scalar Heart Connection helps us tap into heart-consciousness responses instead of reacting from mind-consciousness so we can have a genuine relationship with ourselves – genuine in the way children wave and smile to strangers. Genuine in the way we can live each moment in joy; trusting our magic carpet knows the way to God’s arms.

by Stephen Linsteadt