The Divine Heart
As I was sitting in a restaurant in the south of Mexico a couple of years ago, a long table conveniently in my view was occupied by a large, multi-generational family, celebrating something. In a place of honor, the matriarch was sitting amongst her adult children and her multiple grandchildren. My Spanish isn’t exactly fluent, but what stuck out was that she called everybody “Corazon,” or “mi corazon,” my Heart.
This reminded me: Please stop calling the Heart center the “Ego center.” It so misreads the Heart’s magnificence. It is so myopic, limited, misleading, it breaks my Heart!
Cobblestones in a Zen garden . Kamakura, Japan
As is the case with any center, there’s a spectrum to the Heart, from basic function to its flowering. The difference, as always, is awareness. The more attention is paid to what's going on, the greater the chance of a blossom. This is ancient wisdom, known to the Indian chakra research since millenia.
Like the Root, the Sacral, and the Spleen, the Heart is concerned with a primal aspect of survival. On the biological level, its responsibility is to keep the entire organism supplied with blood, driving its metabolism. Without conscious effort, it beats on average 115,000 times a day, pumping 2000 gallons (7500 liters) of blood through the body. Per day. No wonder it’s resilient, persistent, determined and stubborn.
Birch trunk . Costilla, New Mexico
No Heart, no life. Without it, I’m done. The Heart knows this, it knows its worth. It may appear hard, aloof, arrogant. But it also knows how fragile it is, how a little electrical short or a clogged pipe can snuff it out in an instant. So it’s touchy at perceived threats and defensive, often posing as a threat itself.
It approaches everybody with an initial “Are you a threat to me? You better not!” Or, toward the more mature end of the spectrum, “Are you my friend? I sure hope you are.” Often it postures, to appear stronger than it is, covering its fragility. It becomes loud, pushy and angry, intimidating and defensive at the same time. It can become brutal, even vicious and unforgiving, in the face of a real threat, like a cornered wild cat. You need to earn and deserve its trust. This may take a moment, or much longer.
Lavatory door . Konya, Turkey
These are primal biological functions of the Heart, the foundation of its spectrum, and, while understandable, labeling them the ego is just not helpful, seeing that the most unpleasant qualities of the “egoist,” selfishness, self-absorption, self-pity, and self-inflation, are actually crossed wires in the Ji, not the Heart. And naming something multi-dimensional with a one-dimensional term seduces to let perception be limited to that one dimension, as the routine term “ego center” instead of “Heart center” so clearly shows. If it’s the “ego center,” I can feel free to shine on the effort of becoming aware and take responsibility. I can lazily remain an ass because “it’s my design.”
To me, the ego is not an aspect of my form located in any center, but the entirety of my form, i.e. the entire body graph, and without any negative connotation. It is the entity that perceives itself as separate from the totality, that delightful temporary and unique refraction of totality that is me. It is my dharma and karma, my personal sliver of Maya.
Mirror . Assagao, India
The Heart gets stressed when it can’t trust and stress kills it frequently. It needs and wants to trust. To fulfil its potential, it must trust and quite readily does. And when it does, its transformation begins, the rainbow of the spectrum unfolding its shine, light-hearted, loving and generous.
The Heart is the fourth chakra, three up from the Root, two up from the Sacral, one up from the Spleen. When the yogi successively frees and makes conscious and available the full qualities of the chakra from the Root to the Sacral and further, the "Kundalini rises." Only when a chakra is penetrated by awareness and liberated in all its glory can it rise to the next.
If the Root is the spark of life, the Sacral the imperative to preserve the genes, and the Spleen the imperative to preserve the individual, the Heart is the first chakra with the capacity to go beyond the individual. It is the blood, shared with the other. The Heart is the threshold from the material to the spirit, from animal to human. Its blossom is the love of the other and compassion.
Graffiti . Cholula, Mexico
Like the wisdom of the chakras going back millenia, common sense more often than not illustrates exactly what a given center actually is. After all, common sense is the accumulated wisdom of untold generations! All these generations have lived their designs their entire lives, even if they didn’t know a thing about Human Design.
Common sense knows the depth of the Heart, like the Mexican matron showed so abundantly. The common (sense) people, the blood of the earth, know and fear a closed Heart when they see one and appreciate and cherish the Heart that’s open. They’re eager to share their Heart with others, to let it beat for someone else, a lover, a spouse, someone with whom they commit to mutual protection and survival. They dot their i’s with Hearts, carve them in tree trunks and park bench backs, they pierce a Heart with an arrow connecting two, and wear t-shirts Heart-ing NY. They make love and conceive children to take into their Hearts and guide and protect them until their own little Hearts are mature enough for their jobs. Great music is composed, great poetry and literature written, longing for the Heart's fulfillment and celebrating its magic.
Social gathering . Hanoi, Vietnam
To common sense the Heart is love. One Heart and one soul, a true glimpse of the divine, elusive, cherished and sought after. And for some this love might even break into unconditional love, love of everyone and all, thy enemy and thy neighbor, Jesus’ ideal, the ultimate expression of a truly open and free Heart. At this most mature end of its spectrum the Heart's approach is, "Whoever you are, I'm your friend."
Imagine a world where most have a fully “lighted” Heart chakra, loving each other for their shared humanity, the miracle of it, the peace of it, instead of being stuck in survival, competition and comfort at the Root, Sacral and Splenic levels, as the human world so tragically is. It’s only the fourth chakra, it isn’t much to ask, and it would be paradise. My Heart pounds at the prospect!
Chaitanyo
Madonna . Vienna, Austria
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