Chapter 4

Your Heart’s Wisdom

As wonderful as it is to be able to transform our feeling world at will, there is another quality that is an even more powerful and exciting gift of the spiritual heart. It stunned me when I realized I could access this additional unique quality of the spiritual heart. I call it wisdom. This quality, more than anything else I have ever worked with, has brought forth the meaning and positive potential of my life. It has also done so for many other people.

In my search to understand what it is that brings about the kind of transformation that I and many others have experienced, I came across researchers who were looking into human transformation scientifically. I began exploring their research. The people I encountered worked at The HeartMath® Institute, which I’ll just call HeartMath® . They talked about the “heart’s intelligence.” At that time, they were just beginning to publish information about this unique domain of intelligence. I certainly had never heard of it.

My education took place through the 1960s and 1970s in college and law school, as well as through focused spiritual studies. All dealt with intelligence, and never was the heart mentioned as a possible source of my intelligence. I began exploring this amazing idea with a large dose of skepticism.

What I have found from years of exploring this quality of the heart that HeartMath® calls “heart intelligence” has been profound. To me, the best term for this important quality of your spiritual heart is simply wisdom. What I can now tell you from my experience, and from what others have shared with me, is that your heart is wise. It is amazingly wise. Your physical heart is the doorway to a wisdom that is always there to guide you. It is a wisdom that is so powerful that it knows the answers to your every question. It is a wisdom so great that it knows your needs and helps you understand the needs of others. Its wisdom is greater than that of your brain. It is greater than what you have acquired from the schools you have attended and the books you have read.

This wisdom can instruct you. Plus, its power can lift you, heal you and carry you beyond the challenges in your life to a fulfillment beyond your wildest dreams. This wisdom has power to change the world around you, and to change you profoundly. This wisdom is your best friend. This wisdom is really your true self. It is the expression of who you really are at the core of your being. Before you were born into your body, this wisdom was guiding you, choosing a path for you, and setting your true goals upon your heart.

This wisdom is your spiritual heart. This wisdom is the power of your true heart, radiating through the wonderful doorway of your physical heart.

To understand the spiritual heart’s wisdom, I had to apply it in my own life. It was by personal experience that I began to realize this huge potential that I have been sharing with you.

My first test of this wisdom came when I was in a professional position that was very uncomfortable. A man was creating a conflict between himself and another leader that would cause a major problem for the organization I was responsible for. I knew that the problem would result in a painful conflict – and hurt feelings for a number of people important to the organization’s success – myself included.

I tried for some time to come up with a way of successfully handling this situation to avoid the negative impacts on everyone involved. This was a non-profit organization, and the people involved were volunteers. They all, including this man, cared about the organization. Something in this situation had triggered a level of this man’s condemnation toward the leader, which grew with every attempt to defuse it. I could not figure out any way to bring a resolution that would not cause a deep rift, affecting everyone.

One day, I was sitting at my desk, feeling anxious and worried about how to handle this situation. These are feelings I don’t like – and yet they seemed unavoidable at that moment.

Suddenly I remembered that I had learned how to stop stress. Well, that was what I was told when I had taken a training during my recent first visit to HeartMath® . They taught me some steps that they said engaged my heart, and that this had the power to stop the stress I was feeling. Even if I could not avoid or solve the problem, at least I could give myself a break from the stress of the worry and anxiety. Not only was that a worthwhile goal for me, I was also curious to see if the technique worked as they said it would.

I went through the set of steps that were designed to access my heart. In less than two minutes, I had completed the steps and was sitting there quietly. I was no longer feeling any stress. I felt no anxiety and I was not worrying. That was a relief. I actually felt good. That was more than just a relief. That was very, very good!

To accomplish this, I performed a simple set of steps that opened my heart, and its power transformed my feelings. That success was an exciting revelation to me. I had not known that my heart had the power to do that.

However, I had added on some additional steps that I had been told would help me access what they called the intelligence of my heart. It had just taken a short additional time, maybe thirty or forty-five seconds, right after the initial steps. As a result of those additional steps, as I was sitting at my desk, I experienced something I did not think was possible. I had a clear understanding of how to deal with this problem successfully.

I also “knew” that this way of responding to the problem would be effective. Not only was I not feeling stress, worry or anxiety, I now had an effective solution to the problem itself. I had accomplished this in only two minutes, by accessing what I would later discover was my spiritual heart. This solution was given to me by my heart’s wisdom. I followed this experience by acting on the direction given – and the problem resolved itself without the anticipated conflict.

At that point, my skepticism about “heart intelligence” began to disappear. Awareness of an effective way of handling a challenging problem in your life is to me the perfect definition of real intelligence. I received that direction not from my head, which had examined the problem many times, but from my heart. When I activated my spiritual heart and asked for guidance, what I received was wisdom that was practical, effective and empowering. Wow! That is a fantastic capability to have available to us – at any time, in any situation.

The people at HeartMath® , where I learned the technique, called the expanded awareness and effective insight “heart intelligence.” As I have worked with this response within myself and others, I have come to see it as coming through the physical heart from our spiritual self. To me, it is spiritual wisdom.

These two capacities – transforming your feeling world and accessing your profound wisdom – are available to you through your spiritual heart. What I did in those two minutes, you too can do. It was not hard, but it did take sincere intentional focus to move through those steps effectively. Sometimes I have had to take three minutes, even five or ten minutes. In some of the most difficult times in my life, I have been able to use my heart to transform my feelings – and make clear its wisdom – in less than thirty seconds.

That power and wisdom is within you, and finding it in those moments is so very meaningful. The more I used it, the more I learned aspects of its power and wisdom that I find tremendously exciting. These too I want to share with you, because they have made so much difference in my life. My heart says to me that they could also do that in yours. That would make my heart sing.