The Transpersonal is Political: The Future & The Mind in the Heart

At this coming CONNEC'SHEN gathering, I will be delivering a presentation on the Chinese word 'Shen' – translating as “the mind in the heart”, “the spirit in the heart”, or, most succinctly, the Heart-Mind. I am flattered and honored that this group has given me this opportunity; If you are interested by the way, I am giving the talk at about seven for all timely invitees to the Connec'shen gathering. The talk is dubbed THE TRANSPERSONAL IS POLITICAL: The Future & The Mind in The Heart.

If you haven't yet heard word of Connec'Shen, it is a truly unique event coming up in Olympia, with the high hopes of bringing disparate evolutionary voices together. At Connec'Shen this July 17th, we will be exploring how to make good of our heart spaces, so that we might take steps as individuals to releasing our fears of intimacy and constant interdependence between living things in order to live as a more enlightened tribally-extended society.

I enjoy many day by day blessings and synchronicities that seem to come in moments of light, such as this, when I dedicate my energies to a project that is greater than the self, in so many ways. Although I am often hard at work on this as well as my autism-related love, I feel at ease, because with every small act I take steps, pebbles in the water make small karmic ripples, towards feeding the life line of more enlightenment, more harmony in our newly found group soup.

I believe that now, more than ever, each of us has to choose between love and fear. What is this fear that keeps us lockjawed into a limited trip? These days it is easy to feel crushed to death, like Rachel Corrie, no doubt by the reality of the seemingly limitless worldly destruction being reeked by, say, the oil spill in the Arabian Gulf. The economic false prophets have taken a fall. As the iceberg of illusion melts into the seven seas, our concepts and realities of self and other are being renegotiated...

These days each of us can sense the gravity of the world situation. To raise a time-honored question – what ought to be our response to fast change and uncertain circumstances? People inevitably will take differet paths. I for one would like to suggest any path that works through the mind in the heart. The obvious balance of our external crises on the earth today is in every way a magnified version of the internal crises.

Until recently – western intellectuals marched in lockstep defending a rather boring, unambiguously-linear doctrine that made rationality and the brain the center of the complete, mechanized vision of the self. This is sometimes epitomized by cartoon sketches of nerdtellectuals with dramatically exaggerated heads. Perhaps we can find all of ours answers within art, it is as if the nerdtellectuals had focused so much of their time and energy into their heads that the organ had swollen into a throbbing member, perhaps it grew an additional gland.

For all of our western focus on the brain-as-mind, wisdom traditions around the world will tell you something quite contrary and curious... That the mind is in the heart. Those who choose to journey along the path of the heart can find an expanded interconnected space, an interdimensional organic chain-link if you will. Everywhere around you, people are connecting and disconnecting with eachother, through the energy and will of the heart.

There is a well hidden place, in the heart space, a kind of garden. This garden is the garden that is neverending, ceaseless. It is the garden of rejuvination, the vibration of love, so to speak. Within its depths the heart knows no limitations. The Heart-Mind of Taoism and Buddhism is now being rediscovered by the neuroscientists, who are catching up to [while illuminating] some of the insights of eastern meditators and indigenous shamans.

They have gone sofar as to coin a new discipline, calling it “neurocardiology”. The heart and the mind act, as like two sides of a coin, as a single cogent system together. The literal “brain in the heart” is in continuous communication with your funky grey matter, two way communication. Like a hot blooded relationship …. the relative harmony of this communication may account for more than its fair share of human mystery.

Q: So, what else?

A: Come attend this erudite and visionary squalk-talk and find out. The talk is open to CONNEC'SHEN attendees, of course.

Thanks for reading all of this. For more information on CONNEC'SHEN (July 17th) please see the Evolver Events page listed here -

http://www.evolver.net/event/2010/07/17/connecshen

One Rediculous Love Wobble,
Aaron Zanthe