part0013

Each day we process countless frequencies through our mind, brain and heart, such as thoughts, feelings and emotions. Most of us have heard someone say: “We just can’t communicate; we are on totally different frequencies!”, or “My brother’s vibes (vibrations) seem a little down today,” or “The negative vibes were so thick in that room you could trip over them.” Many people assume the terms frequency and vibration (vibes) are only metaphoric expressions; yet many others intuitively realize that our thoughts, feelings, emotions and intentions are energetic frequencies influenced by beliefs, memories, choices, environmental stimuli, and more. In this writing I’m using terms higher and lower frequency/vibrations (vibes) to describe the up and down shifts of our moods, attitudes, behaviors, disposition, etc. Sometimes we operate in a higher vibration sometimes a lower one. It varies throughout the day, week or month, depending on how well we manage our energy in response to our interactions with life, others, or within ourselves.

When our vibrations are up, our heart energy flows through our interactions. We naturally generate uplifting feelings from a more empowered demeanor: We are kinder, more gracious and we genuinely connect with others. We respond to stressful situations with soundness, resilience and clearer discernment. We are less vulnerable to frustration, impatience, anger, anxiety, and we feel more self-secure and less critical of others and of ourselves. We are drawn to notice nature, flowers and trees that we usually sleep-walk past, as our preoccupations rob us of this gift of conscious connection.

When our vibrations are down, we can experience separation from others due to judgments or blame, excessive worry and low self-security, along with empty care for others because of being too preoccupied with self and our story. We are quicker to become angry, impatient, frustrated—the list.

At times radical frequency shifts in our moods and perceptions cause us to feel like we are two different people in the same body. Our behaviors and responses can become significantly different depending on the frequency of our disposition—higher, lower, or bouncing in-between. In our higher vibration we don’t have to try to be positive because uplifting feelings and thoughts automatically flow through our system. Our heart energy is more present which increases our authentic connection with others. In a lower vibration we tend to allow negative thoughts and feelings the license to roam and feed from our life force. As we feed them life , they are inclined to run our life.

The good news is that we are not predestined victims of random frequency modulations. We can learn to consciously intervene and reset our vibration to a higher frequency throughout the day to engage more cost-effectively with whatever comes up. That’s the long way of saying that we have choice, and connecting with our intuitive heart’s choices is the new frontier .

More people are finding it harder to breathe-out and relax through a day without looking over their shoulder to see if everything is okay. That was one of my main challenges. For a long time I ran constant anxiety and even when life seemed great, I couldn’t be at peace or feel that everything was okay. I thought a steady current of anxiety was normal and didn’t bear any consequences, until my health started telling a different story. This led to a wake-up call and the realization it was my ego vanity that was creating performance-anxiety and glitchy peace. With my heart’s support, I did a reset and started appreciating the good in my life, rather than living in suspicion of what was not.

Continuous low grade anxiety can generate a streaming energy deficit, even if we are unconscious of it. Many of us have been trapped in this lower vibration and paid the price time and time again. Operating in a lower vibration (vibe) has a numbing effect and we fail to see the red flag drop; it becomes our perception of reality and we forget that we can change how we respond to the scenes of our life. We can’t prevent all unpleasant situations that come our way, but we are responsible for how we handle them. Yet, we get so acclimatized to lower emotional habits that they feel permissible and not accountable. These cumulative stress deficits are accountable and become catalysts for accelerated aging, health issues and spiritual dismay.

External stressors, such as financial and survival pressures, health problems, work-related challenges, relationship problems—these are some of the standard triggers that lure our thoughts and feelings into a lower vibration and ramp up the stress. When our vibes are low, our feelings become lackluster as does our connection with others. There are more mistakes and do-overs; we tend to make shortsighted choices in our personal and business life, along with experiencing low to high anxiety which fuels insecurities. This can eventuate into different degrees of depression, brain fog, and fading confidence. When we don’t choose to raise the vibration of our disposition, we can stay trapped for days or months in predictable stress-producing patterns that become our norm, not realizing that we are creating our own resistances. Being stuck in these patterns withers our quality of life while keeping us hamster-hiking on the same old “dread-mill”—and blaming others because it squeaks.

Our thoughts and feelings influence the chemistry that regulates much of our health—how we feel, for better or worse. We can begin to turn these energy deficits around as we realize that our thoughts, feelings, emotions and attitudes are just frequencies that can be changed—once we put our heart into our intention. From kids through adulthood we’ve been told to “put your heart into it” when pursuing matters important to us. This is because at subjective levels we instinctively know that the power of our heart’s commitment can often defy odds and triumph in seemingly unachievable situations.

We often hear that we only use a small percent of our brain. Wait until science realizes what a small percentage of our heart’s potential we utilize. One of the aims of HeartMath research is to help verify this, along with facilitating easier ways to access the endless benefits of our heart’s intelligent guidance. The good news is that we don’t have to wait for the blessing of science before we can draw unlimited benefits from our intuitive heart’s guidance.

Old, unwanted habit patterns change more gracefully as our heart and mind partner in supporting our commitments. For most of us, deeper emotional imprints from the past are harder to change. Sometimes it’s helpful to address them a little at a time, in segments. Stuck emotional patterns can be similar to rusted bolts that require being soaked in solvent to dissolve the resistance. Accepting our difficulties gracefully is a powerful solvent which frees up our heart’s intuitive insight for helping us handle more effectively whatever challenges life brings.

Making peace with our resistances gets easier as we learn that much of our lack of peace comes from the unmanaged significance we assign to issues. For example: It’s increased significance that turns a simple concern into obsessive worry, or turns a little anxiety into pressing fear. Unbridled significance over-swells the size of our challenges, especially emotional challenges. Excessive significance and drama create doubt in our capacity to cope, which sparks low grade or high intensity anxiety. We can learn to consciously reduce the significance we feed lower thought frequencies and stop this piracy of our personal vitality and peace. Practicing self-compassion (not self-pity) creates a soaking effect that reduces the emotional significance that blocks clear assessment for better options. As we reduce significance, we are quickly rewarded because it doesn’t take long to see the payoff.

We often make high-spirited commitments for behavior changes and then get stuck from not having the patience, self-acceptance and self-compassion to support our process of change. We forget to use these transformational heart qualities right at the time they would benefit us the most. Don’t feel awkward about giving yourself care and compassion; there’s enough to go around—you can have your cake and eat it too in this situation. At the core level we are caring beings, regardless of the veneer and cloaking behaviors we’ve picked up along the way. The collective heart awakening on the planet is nudging us to remove our mask and start showing up more as who we are .

Rushed, impatient energy diffuses our capacity for favorable outcomes when we’re involved in sensitive discernments regarding choices. When we push energy, this cancels the experience of flow and creates hiccups in our intentions. Patience and ease actually create the energetic environment for flow to take place in our communications, choice selections and actions. It’s our mind that tends to rush energy; our heart chooses balance, rhythm and flow. When cooperating together they increase outcomes that fit the need of the situation.

The partnership between our mind and heart expands our capacity to experience life’s interactions with more rhythm and flow. Rhythm has to do with the timing and sensitivity in our engagements. (It’s similar to the way physical rhythm helps minimize the clunks in our dance steps.) In high school I remember pushing energy trying to learn complex dance steps in the Irish Jig, and the more I pushed the more I was fussed at by my teacher. The more I was fussed at, the harder I pushed, and the more I clunked until I was put on the second-string dance team. The teacher explained that I was pushing so hard from the mind to learn the steps that it blocked me from learning a most important part–the rhythm.

As I grew up, I saw this play out in many life situations where people trip over themselves from pushing energy against flow (like swimming upstream). The magic from applying balance, rhythm and flow is that it prevents and dissolves stress and resistances while on the move. This becomes an advantage leap once we understand the importance of internal energy economy.

We’re all aware that certain attitudes or tendencies can be tougher to shift. But the process becomes easier once our mind agrees to cooperate more harmoniously with our heart’s intuitive feelings. More people are intuitively sensing that they have the capacity to re-write depleting emotional behavior patterns. When our mind’s perception aligns with our heart’s intuitive assessment, then a bigger picture is seen and new possibilities emerge .

Attitudes and perceptions are like pre-set frequencies that we store and activate at times, depending on how we feel or if we are in a higher or lower vibration. Most all of us have practiced maintaining an uplifting attitude as this allows more access to the “flow” in our interactions. Often, when we are challenged by a decision, someone tells us, “Relax, you have choices.” However, when we are operating in our lower frequency attitude, we filter out our most effective choices and perceptions. We tend to only see inferior choices and we go with them, time and time again repeating the same lessons unlearned. We often have to repeat our lessons before we attain the take-home value. When tired of learning the same lessons, we can connect with our heart and take responsibility, bypass the drama and blame, and move forward with what we’ve learned. Sometimes this flows smoothly, and sometimes the moving parts grind a little through the transition .

At times random negative thoughts stream through us all. Many of these thoughts and feelings can pass quickly if we reduce the drama and significance we assign to them. We are not bad for having negative thoughts, but we can refuse to become a yoyo-bot of their stressful creations. There are many energy leaks that lower our vibration and performance, such as irritation, impatience, frustration, etc. These assumed small energy leaks, such as impatience for example, often turn into blockbuster energy deficits over time if we don’t reset and transform them into a higher vibration—like patience, resilience and flow. These addictive low vibrational habits restrict our flow of spirit, which eventually creates glitches in our major operating systems—mental, emotional, physical (nervous system and more). This increases our vulnerability to the standard health problems experienced from constant overload in our emotional system.

As we genuinely desire it, our heart’s intuitive prompter will begin to signal us when our vibration is low and we are spiraling into a stress deficit from energy drain. The signal from our heart’s intuitive prompter becomes clearer as we use it. It alerts us when we are seduced back into old patterns that are not who we choose to be, and supports us in re-firing our healthy commitments and attitudes. Most of us are connected with our heart’s prompter to some degree. This connection progressively opens the door for receiving our inner guidance. Some of us know from experience that intuition is more likely to jam up when approached from a desperate mind, but is more accessible in the stillness of a calm and open heart.

It’s helpful to remember that small children often use their imagination to quickly transform their feelings from anger and frustration into elation and happiness. We have this capacity as adults too, but we accumulate so many handed down mind-driven programs, that it creates a decline in the direct heart connection and emotional resilience we had as kids. As adults we usually have to practice with commitment to reawaken this direct connection to our heart’s intelligence, and then integrate it into our interactions. This creates more balanced decisions and a straighter path to our best outcomes.

Practice shifting small unwanted feelings and eventually you’ll find yourself replacing stronger feelings, habits and mindsets. The door to the hidden power of our heart can be opened, but sometimes we have to jiggle the handle a few times to loosen up the old habit of resistance.

Re-connecting with heart feelings throughout the day, such as gratitude, kindness, compassion, patience and flow, keeps our vibration up while preventing and eliminating many merry-go-round energy deficits. These heart qualities serve to facilitate our overall health and wellbeing.

Another effective way to raise our frequency pitch/vibration is to take a few days and appreciate connections and friendships that we have adapted to or unintentionally taken for granted. Adapting creeps into our relationships in a stealthy, hard-to-recognize, fashion. Then it quietly reduces the warmth and the “zing” in our connections. Take a heart stand not to let caring relationships wilt from adapting! As we make appreciation and gratitude a way of life , this offsets adapting and keeps the spirit within our connections alive and self-replenishing. Gratitude and kindness are two of love’s most magnetic expressions which draw to us the highest best that life has to offer.

The higher vibration of our true self naturally generates the textures of kindness and respect and other qualities which are core heart frequencies that harmonize our life’s exchanges. Heart textures such as gratitude and compassion naturally radiate from us when our heart is engaged in our connections and communication. Humanity is evolving past pilot-light care ( low heart warmth), which only produces surface level interactions that are missing the regenerative benefits of authentic connection.

In general, our hearts are warmer to our family, pets and our circle of friends. As we spiritually mature, our heart warmth expands to include more people in its care; our respect for nature increases. We begin to desire being part of something that makes a difference—something that serves the greater whole of humanity. From there our love matures into unconditional love, without borders. In this vibration we are more directly connected with our heart’s intuitive guidance for creating joy and fulfillment while supporting others to do the same. We can shorten the time this takes by learning to connect with our heart’s intelligent guidance.

Many books and articles have been written on the efficacy of practicing the core qualities of the heart. These primary attributes not only raise our personal vibration, they help to lift the environmental vibration as well. We spiritually prosper each time we refresh these natural transforming heart qualities. Don’t think of your practice as a discipline; see it as a free pass to your own high-end health spa with guaranteed beneficial results.

One of the major subjective values of heart-connected prayers or meditations is that they often leave us with a feeling of warmth and confirmation. Even if we don’t get a direct linear answer, we don’t judge our soul or source as much for being too busy with others to answer our calls (like I used to do as a teenager). More and more people are exploring a deeper connection with their heart because it doesn’t take away or compete with their religion, spiritual path, or basic belief system. It strengthens it. Most of us can agree that whatever spiritual practice we choose, it’s important to add the qualities of our own heart’s guidance to the mix.

Being genuine and heart-connected with your feelings provides the activating ingredients in prayer, meditation, etc. We all have felt the obvious difference between genuine appreciation and counterfeit appreciation. When appreciation is not genuine, it’s not real – it’s no more effective than a “store mannequin” trying to appreciate window shoppers. For instance, when blessing our food, we know the difference when we are heart-connected or when we are mechanically repeating a memorized prayer (while worrying if we are going to get a homemade biscuit because half of the soccer team suddenly showed up hungry, unannounced). When prayers and meditations run split screens with other preoccupations, this won’t raise our vibration and we usually end up with wasted time filled with unfocused mind traffic.

Many spiritual cultures agree that inner stillness creates an energetic environment for supporting our advancing consciousness which can unleash the transformational power of our love. That’s why from the beginning of HeartMath, many of the tools and especially the technology have been designed to monitor and facilitate easier access to stillness and its connection to our natural inner wisdom and guidance. Forget the mystical and think of inner stillness as something practical and street worthy. How many times have we told friends or children to get still inside and listen up because we have something important to tell them? This reveals our innate respect for the value of stillness, so why not use it the way it can count the most—to quiet our mental and emotional static so that we can hear the council from our larger self.

When our mind finally lets go, inner stillness is where we land. From there we can reset and upgrade the experience of our life. The earlier we learn the value of inner stillness, the less we need to experience the firmer ways life nudges us into considering higher choices for personal peace and happiness. We often hear ourselves and others say, “If I had more foresight , I would have handled that situation differently.” Stillness is a primary source for increasing our foresight and discernment. Inner stillness is a place that our heart can speak without the mind running it off the road. In order to “be still, and know” we first have to be still enough to listen.

It’s a forward moving choice to schedule times for inner stillness and allow our heart, mind and emotions to experience a time-out from competing with each other and enjoy some casual peace together. Stillness requires a little practice because our mind will try to occupy that space (or any space if the door is left cracked).

If inner stillness didn’t produce high-value results, think of all the centuries of time that meditators and spiritually conscious people would have wasted throughout history. With refinement, inner stillness becomes like a personal elevator to our highest view and eliminates the weariness from climbing endless stairs. I feel that practicing inner stillness to connect with our heart’s intelligent guidance will become a most positive corner-turning step forward for humanity, not as a trend or religious motivation but as a street sense, heart-based way of life.

How do we take the benefits from our inner stillness meditations and prayers into our day to day activities? Operating from a state of ease is a natural practice for bringing the essence of stillness into our daily interactive mode. (Practicing the state of ease and its benefits in these times is discussed thoroughly in the next chapter.) We can learn to do this by breathing the attitude of ease at times throughout the day. Breathing the attitude of ease helps us to step down the carry-over effects of our inner stillness meditations into our normal interactions and activities. When we discern our direction from a place of inner ease, this helps to prevent the impatience of our mind from overriding the intuitive whispers of our higher choices. Acting from a place of inner ease is a heart intelligent skill in the economy of personal energy management and distribution. This practice reduces many decision-making regrets and also helps to access the magic of flow in our processes. Flow provides the straightest line to manifesting our intentions .

Connecting with our heart’s intuition (inner guidance) from a place of stillness can advance our capacity to take charge of our life’s decisions and direction. Our spiritual heart is a most beneficial, yet under-used aspect of our true nature and potentials. When our mind is not partnering with our heart, it often favors our ego’s choices in decisions, more than supporting the highest outcome for all concerned. This pattern accumulates an energy deficit that feeds back in our physical and emotional system. Then our vibration drops and we target something to blame other than us.

A helpful way to encourage intuitive connection is to soften our posture on knowing what we know too quickly about everything. As my self-awareness increased, I realized that I was crafty at blocking my intuition so it wouldn’t compete with my “made up mind” about what I wanted. Then I realized most of humanity is also good at that, which is one of the biggest reasons intuition hasn’t made its way into the mainstream as a most intelligent, personal guidance system. It’s humorous how often we reject our heart’s intuitive feelings and go with our ego choices, and then we take meditation classes—hoping to develop intuitive guidance.

Our intuitive heart can foresee our higher outcome options and offer our mind and emotions better choices for navigating life’s situations. Deep heart listening in stillness can create the energetic link to the wisdom and directions from our true self, soul, or our connection with source. (Insert your own preferred names for these higher vibrational states, such as soul, true self, source, etc., based on your cultural beliefs, studies or experiences.) Getting these names right to suit ourselves or others is not as important in the process of moving forward spiritually as one might think. For convenience, I often bundle them all together and refer to them as “my large.” For example, if a resistance comes up in my life, I simply get still in my heart and connect with my large for effective suggestions.

In times past, I searched unceasingly for the magic of intuitive access, the glamorous aspects—psychic abilities, seeing the future, lottery numbers, etc., rather than looking for inner guidance, deeper discernment and grounded choices. It’s normal to desire that which coddles the ego when we first get enamored with intuition and its possibilities. Later, stress from health problems influenced me to explore intuition more for insights regarding my day-to-day choices and ways to serve humanity. As we put first things first, then the extras can naturally unfold as add-ons to our fulfillment, but not a driving force that decides our fulfillment.

With that said, I still could enjoy winning a mega-million dollar lottery and heading straight to the local “Dollar Store” to do some serious binge shopping …without having to glance at the price tags! Afterwards I would stop by the local Bentley/Rolls Royce dealership and order a humble, run-about model. (This is meant as twisty humor regarding the vanities of apologetic abundance. ) We don’t have to feel apologetic if our personal abundance includes fine things. Many people know this at the conceptual level, but for some, their emotions are still trapped in shades of guilt—causing them to experience abundance through a restricted state of enjoyment. If you are experiencing this, it’s time to lose those restrictions and quit punishing your joy .

True dignity, not pretended, is a powerful heart frequency that supports the maintenance of inner-composure, especially when the tone of our interactions starts to compromise our integrity. At times we can feel exhausted and insecure from the weight of change, and that’s understandable. This is a perfect opportunity to renew our dignity and practice self-compassion to replenish our resilience—especially when life presses us with choices faster than our capacity to sort out our moves. When holding the vibration of dignity and poise, we are more effective at preventing and reducing incessant worry (hurried aging). Our minds have tried endlessly to legalize worry, yet the intelligence within our core heart occasionally informs us that worry is a stress accelerator which feeds on our wholeness health. Worry is discussed more in the “Care and Overcare” chapter .

Our true self represents an achievable vibration within us that contains the wisdom and intelligence of our heart. In this higher vibration, we are harmoniously connected with the hearts of others and all life. We naturally exude unconditional love and compassion that’s not diluted from over-attachment to others, issues or outcomes. Our spiritual advancement is not dignified by trying to be perfect or being exempt from learning and growing. Accepting our fallibility is a leap towards becoming authentic. Increased authenticity unfolds as we raise the vibration of our life with heart-felt connections, non-judgment and acceptance, while including ourselves in our love.

Operating continuously in the higher vibration of our true self is not expected of us overnight. It’s a process that unfolds at the rate-of-genuine commitment—if we don’t waste our spunk peeping over our shoulder to gloat at our progress. When we over-analyze progress we risk stopping it in its tracks, especially if it’s used just for ego inflation. Increasingly, more of us now desire to reset our life with a fresh start by leading with the heart and proceeding with love in areas that we normally keep roped off. We have our reasons for keeping our heart at arm’s length from others, but maybe it’s time to challenge these reasons to see if they are handed down behaviors that don’t represent who we really are.

Humanity is transitioning into a state of consciousness that will unleash the creative power of togetherness, and the understanding that it’s our heart vibration that qualifies the difference between separation and feeling connected. Increased heart-connected interactions will progressively raise the vibration of collective consciousness. This will set the stage for realizing that inclusive, unconditional love and compassion is the next advanced mode of intelligent living. Millions of people, and consistently more, will be benefiting from this new awareness long before the whole of humanity chooses it. Individual choices and timing have to be allowed without judgment and condescension. As more of us practice operating from our true self, the restorative power of our collective compassion naturally increases. This will make it easier for others to free themselves from limited beliefs that repress the human potentials which reside in the hidden power of the heart. The door to the global heart is opening and I suggest that love will increasingly pour its way through the streets.