Heart vs. Mind... there is no versus.

There are a lot of things I am not sure of... which is the Human Condition.

There are a lot of things I know from experience; which is to be human.

There are two types of belief-systems:
Believing with the mind & Believing with the heart

The mind is conditioned to understand cause & effect relationships, using critical analysis as its means for reasoning. It does not feel feeling, but sees feelings. The 'knowing' of the mind is not absolute, but a hallucination based on experiences, teaching, a disregard for the emotions. The mind can convince you to act out the most irrational behavior.

The heart knows not conditioning, but loves unconditionally- without judgment, preconceived patterns or logic. The heart has a sense of 'knowing' which can often be perceived as 'conditioning', though the knowing in your heart comes from an intuitive- almost ethereal- sense of comfort, certainty, calm, and deeply-rooted peace which transcends reasoning. The heart can cause the most irrational behavior.

So where am I in all this 'belief'?
This remains the question of the hour.

The soul and spirit must find ways to escape the prison of the body, and life is a series of events which give opportunities. When the heart is unripe, experiences damage its growth and callous the tenderness... in strenuous efforts to break free, the soul spirals into the mind and thus is a conditioning: pain too harsh to handle surfaces and an opinion is formed. For the lucky ones, this opinion will only last for a season- granted the heart is left alone and encouraged to blossom between trials.

Yesterday, I heard a beautiful anecdote for loving your 'enemies' (and by enemies, I mean anyone who has ever done anything to offend your ego, regardless whether or not it was intended.) Imagine this: A blind man walks into your house and bumps into your glass cabinet, causing all your finest China to smash into pieces all over the ground. Would you forgive this person? Chances are, the people who 'come against us' don't even realize what it is they have done. Forgiveness is a gift- it frees us from the bondage of disdain. To walk in love is to walk in forgiveness... and we all want to walk in love, right?

Well, I do. I also tend to beat myself up with personal shortcomings, which is another area I'd like to become more developed. This is another form of forgiveness- forgiving yourself. I really, really struggle with this... to the point where it has recently made me a negative, pessimistic- even boring- person even though I know that is not who I am. We are not negative. If someone holds the door open for us, it lightens our mood. They were not obligated to stand and wait for us, but they did- and did you smile? Chances are, you did. Is that so negative? Knowledge is empowering- and with this point, I will bring my thoughts to a close: the heart follows the mind. The heart is irrational and follows emotion... good and bad. The mind has the power to hold the heart accountable for its actions- but the heart forgives itself. Your reasoning has a purpose- sometimes for survival or self-preservation and if we are truly lucky, we recognize the schism that is happening within our mind: a battle between true desire and the facade created by opinions & ideas based on how we would like to be perceived. The heart softens the mind if the mind allows, making the heart and mind a symbiotic relationship. They work together so it is up to us to feed our hearts and minds with all that is pure, all that is holy and encouraging to the greater good of mankind.