Wholeheartedness (Why do you burn so dim?)
Originally published: 12/5/2018 on Weebly blog
Our culture often encourages us to be half-hearted. We are instructed to make money the guide for every decision. We call this the "bottom line." When we follow that instruction, we often find that our heart has been robbed of power.
The heart is the doorway that Spirit uses to enter the world through us. That doorway needs power to fully open. A heart robbed of power is too small for Spirit to work fully through us, and it doesn't have the ooomph to open the door to Spirit. This is the recipe for how to live in half-heartedness – going through the motions, doing what's "right" or "reasonable" but lacking awe, gratitude, love and wonder.
I believe something insane: these times of tumult are the door to the human heart opening wider, so Spirit can come into the world in a new way. The forces that benefit from the closed heart - from people living in listlessness, fear and drained of power - are fighting hard to re-close the heart of humanity. But it's not going to work. (It's clearly insane for me to believe this.) (So: Wahoo.)
We are half-hearted for all kinds of reasons. Maybe we are trying to disprove our unworthiness. Maybe we are competing with something that may not matter that much? Or we are living someone else's vision? Or we are covered over by fear that we don't see. Bring attention, and bring the power of intention to that place in you. "This thing that I have been devoted to for this long - do I truly want to be devoted to this?"
The Buddhist teacher Tara Brach approaches this topic in podcast entitled Wholeheartedness. To the question “What allows us to be awake?” she repeats the answer of a famous Buddhist teacher: “Attention and intention.”
The first step in healing half-heartedness in our lives, our jobs, our relationships, in our yearnings for our life, is to simply pay attention to where we are half-hearted, where we approach life with hesitation and lack of vigor. (In shamanic terms this is called tracking our power loss.)
We must begin by telling the truth to ourselves. When we don't begin with truth, Spirit will eventually bring the truth to us through disaster (the shamanic term: dismemberment). Truth telling is the single most important starting place for change of consciousness. (So it's no wonder that the forces of anti-heart begin with dismembering the very idea of truth.)
After truth telling (attention) comes intention. Brach says: “the antidote to depression is devotion.” That is a great phrase! It is devotion to your spiritual life that realigns and transforms your half-hearted energies, making you more able to negotiate the sorrows, frustrations and joys of this life. Humans are "meaning-making" creatures," and meaning only comes to us through the spiritual – the only thing that help give us transcendental direction, something which we need as much as vitamin C.
And of course it completely matters what you are devoted to. Religious nut-jobs, conspiracy crackpots and greedy muthrfkrs are bursting with what they call devotion. But it only takes a little looking to see the flaw: their devotion is not to the transcendent, it is self-devotion, and it is entirely infused with fear – of death, of intimacy, of beauty.
What is devotion from a shamanic perspective? It has everything to do with escaping the presumptions of consumer culture: that things matter more than feelings, that things can cure our inner malaise, that things raise our value as beings, that God cares about our possessions. These presumptions - as old as the human ego - are the insidious mass psychosis of self-devotion, the killer of beauty and annihilator of transcendence, the poisoner of communality, the belittler of compassion, the "'second-rate religion that has programmed a society of ‘cheerful robots.'"
So, if you want to work into this, begin by asking "Do I want to live in half-heartedness?" Ask it to yourself several times, outloud. Be honest. If your answer is no, read on.
Ask yourself, "Where am I half hearted?" Bring your attention to the place(s) you feel halfhearted. You may run through a list: My work? My Relationships? My artistic life? My spiritual practice?
Or you can ask your body, "Where am I half hearted?" Move your awareness throughout your body as you ask that question. Pay attention to sensation or emotions that arise. Locate the place in your body where you are half-hearted. Half-heartedness spreads into the belly and into the head too, into the muscles and blood and breath, and neurons. This is initiative work, so don't worry, don't judge, just be open and follow what comes up. When you locate a place in the body that seems to be responding to the question of half-heartedness, stay there, and sink in. Ask that spot to teach you about your half-heartedness. Open your dreaming eyes and let that place in the body speak to you through through images.
After some truth telling and information gathering about where you are half-hearted, then apply intention. Ask yourself what would make you wholehearted in this place. It's a mysterious practice to locate a place in your body, a place that is in pain or tightness, or lacking energy, and ask, "What do you want from me – what form of wholeheartedness can heal you?"
Another way of approaching it is asking yourself, "What do I want to be devoted to?" You can ask what kind of devotion you want for your work, from (and for) your relationships, etc. You may find yourself exploring The Nine Needs. Pick the top three and make them your project to fulfill.
These questions and practices may sound simple, but they may turn out to bring you a lot of confusion and angst as you try to tell the truth and bring wholeheartedness in as a healing force.
We fear that our devotion may fail – that we won't be able to do it. Or if it we succeed, our devotion will wreck our life. Being comfortable with wholeheartedness is like becoming comfortable with death. Both are a complete commitment to change.
If you want to work on wholeheartedness from a shamanic perspective, you can do the same two steps: tell the truth about your half-heartedness, then ask yourself what you really want to be devoted to. Then, you can call out a prayer to the Spirit(s) to come and fill you with vision, with courage, and with strength to act.
Alternatively, you can ask the spirits to come and “work” your half-heart. That “working” may mean something different from one person to the next. Being “worked” by the spirits is different from meditating on the question, and for me, it’s very helpful.
I wish for you a Holiday season and a 2019 of wholeheartedness.
I leave you with this poem from David Whyte:
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.
Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.
To find
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.
Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.
Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
~David Whyte, River Flow: New and Selected Poems
Our culture often encourages us to be half-hearted. We are instructed to make money the guide for every decision. We call this the "bottom line." When we follow that instruction, we often find that our heart has been robbed of power.
The heart is the doorway that Spirit uses to enter the world through us. That doorway needs power to fully open. A heart robbed of power is too small for Spirit to work fully through us, and it doesn't have the ooomph to open the door to Spirit. This is the recipe for how to live in half-heartedness – going through the motions, doing what's "right" or "reasonable" but lacking awe, gratitude, love and wonder.
I believe something insane: these times of tumult are the door to the human heart opening wider, so Spirit can come into the world in a new way. The forces that benefit from the closed heart - from people living in listlessness, fear and drained of power - are fighting hard to re-close the heart of humanity. But it's not going to work. (It's clearly insane for me to believe this.) (So: Wahoo.)
We are half-hearted for all kinds of reasons. Maybe we are trying to disprove our unworthiness. Maybe we are competing with something that may not matter that much? Or we are living someone else's vision? Or we are covered over by fear that we don't see. Bring attention, and bring the power of intention to that place in you. "This thing that I have been devoted to for this long - do I truly want to be devoted to this?"
The Buddhist teacher Tara Brach approaches this topic in podcast entitled Wholeheartedness. To the question “What allows us to be awake?” she repeats the answer of a famous Buddhist teacher: “Attention and intention.”
The first step in healing half-heartedness in our lives, our jobs, our relationships, in our yearnings for our life, is to simply pay attention to where we are half-hearted, where we approach life with hesitation and lack of vigor. (In shamanic terms this is called tracking our power loss.)
We must begin by telling the truth to ourselves. When we don't begin with truth, Spirit will eventually bring the truth to us through disaster (the shamanic term: dismemberment). Truth telling is the single most important starting place for change of consciousness. (So it's no wonder that the forces of anti-heart begin with dismembering the very idea of truth.)
After truth telling (attention) comes intention. Brach says: “the antidote to depression is devotion.” That is a great phrase! It is devotion to your spiritual life that realigns and transforms your half-hearted energies, making you more able to negotiate the sorrows, frustrations and joys of this life. Humans are "meaning-making" creatures," and meaning only comes to us through the spiritual – the only thing that help give us transcendental direction, something which we need as much as vitamin C.
And of course it completely matters what you are devoted to. Religious nut-jobs, conspiracy crackpots and greedy muthrfkrs are bursting with what they call devotion. But it only takes a little looking to see the flaw: their devotion is not to the transcendent, it is self-devotion, and it is entirely infused with fear – of death, of intimacy, of beauty.
What is devotion from a shamanic perspective? It has everything to do with escaping the presumptions of consumer culture: that things matter more than feelings, that things can cure our inner malaise, that things raise our value as beings, that God cares about our possessions. These presumptions - as old as the human ego - are the insidious mass psychosis of self-devotion, the killer of beauty and annihilator of transcendence, the poisoner of communality, the belittler of compassion, the "'second-rate religion that has programmed a society of ‘cheerful robots.'"
So, if you want to work into this, begin by asking "Do I want to live in half-heartedness?" Ask it to yourself several times, outloud. Be honest. If your answer is no, read on.
Ask yourself, "Where am I half hearted?" Bring your attention to the place(s) you feel halfhearted. You may run through a list: My work? My Relationships? My artistic life? My spiritual practice?
Or you can ask your body, "Where am I half hearted?" Move your awareness throughout your body as you ask that question. Pay attention to sensation or emotions that arise. Locate the place in your body where you are half-hearted. Half-heartedness spreads into the belly and into the head too, into the muscles and blood and breath, and neurons. This is initiative work, so don't worry, don't judge, just be open and follow what comes up. When you locate a place in the body that seems to be responding to the question of half-heartedness, stay there, and sink in. Ask that spot to teach you about your half-heartedness. Open your dreaming eyes and let that place in the body speak to you through through images.
After some truth telling and information gathering about where you are half-hearted, then apply intention. Ask yourself what would make you wholehearted in this place. It's a mysterious practice to locate a place in your body, a place that is in pain or tightness, or lacking energy, and ask, "What do you want from me – what form of wholeheartedness can heal you?"
Another way of approaching it is asking yourself, "What do I want to be devoted to?" You can ask what kind of devotion you want for your work, from (and for) your relationships, etc. You may find yourself exploring The Nine Needs. Pick the top three and make them your project to fulfill.
These questions and practices may sound simple, but they may turn out to bring you a lot of confusion and angst as you try to tell the truth and bring wholeheartedness in as a healing force.
We fear that our devotion may fail – that we won't be able to do it. Or if it we succeed, our devotion will wreck our life. Being comfortable with wholeheartedness is like becoming comfortable with death. Both are a complete commitment to change.
If you want to work on wholeheartedness from a shamanic perspective, you can do the same two steps: tell the truth about your half-heartedness, then ask yourself what you really want to be devoted to. Then, you can call out a prayer to the Spirit(s) to come and fill you with vision, with courage, and with strength to act.
Alternatively, you can ask the spirits to come and “work” your half-heart. That “working” may mean something different from one person to the next. Being “worked” by the spirits is different from meditating on the question, and for me, it’s very helpful.
I wish for you a Holiday season and a 2019 of wholeheartedness.
I leave you with this poem from David Whyte:
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.
Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.
To find
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.
Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.
Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
~David Whyte, River Flow: New and Selected Poems
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