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Archive for March, 2021

Abundance

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology, science on March 21, 2021| 2 Comments »

I know a dandelion seed head is almost a cliche in photography. I mean who hasn’t seen an image exactly like this one? But the truth is I have several photos of the seed heads of plants, whether they are dandelions, or some other flowers. I find them beautiful. In fact, I find them irresistibly beautiful. I am almost compelled to stop, to look more closely, perhaps to take a photo, perhaps to blow gently on the seeds and send them off into the wide blue yonder. Maybe that’s partly a harking back to childhood. Who hasn’t counted how many breaths it takes to blow all the seeds off a dandelion? As kids, we even called them dandelion clocks and the number of breaths it took to blow all the seeds away was supposed to be the number of hours we were into a day. I’m not sure why that practice persisted because I don’t ever remember that being a remotely reliable way to tell the time!

But what I want to focus on today when I look at this particular image is the fact of abundance.

Just look how many seeds there are in this one single plant! I suppose you could count them if you had a lot of patience, but do you think anyone has ever managed to count the number of seeds in a whole field of dandelions? (Ok, why would you??) But even if we just look at this one plant we see what an abundance of seeds it has produced. This is what plants do. They produce an abundance of seeds. Way, way more than is “needed” just to create just another plant.

Here’s what else plants do – they capture an abundance of energy directly from the Sun. Through photosynthesis they capture the Sun’s energy, suck carbon dioxide and water out of the air, and create sugars to store the energy they need to grow more stalks, more trunks, more flowers, more blossom, more fruits, more seeds. They get what they need to survive and to thrive directly from the air and the Sun (and, yes, their root systems gather and store other nutrients which they need – also in abundance). Many trees live way, way longer than a human being can live…..hundreds of years in fact. They have, and they experience, an abundance of life.

The universe delivers what all Life needs. The universe delivers what all Life needs in abundance.

But do we live that way? Do we live as if the universe supports us abundantly?

Ah, you’ll say, but millions of people in the world live in poverty. Their daily lives are of scarcity, not of abundance. And that’s true. But that’s a political choice. We could feed the world. We could shelter the world. We could create sustainable, thriving societies across the entire planet if we chose to, if we chose to work together, if we chose to care about each other, treat each other with compassion and kindness, if we demanded justice, fairness and equality for everyone……whatever “identity” we apply to them, wherever they live.

Utopia, you think? Wishful thinking?

I guess so. I guess such a vision is utopian. I guess I’d agree it’s what I would wish for, but I feel unable to deliver.

However, I do think we humans have created a dystopian reality with the current economic and political models that we constrain ourselves to live within. Don’t forget money is a human invention. It doesn’t exist in Nature. States are a human invention, and their borders are a human invention. We share one planet, one water system, one atmosphere, one soil, one vast, interconnected, inter-dependent web of Life.

So, yes, I agree, this is utopian, but, also, I’d argue, it’s MORE realistic than the present invented delusion which traps us in its system. Maybe this pandemic has made all of that more clear. Maybe this pandemic is a time for we humans to wake up, see the world for what it really is – a planet, in a universe, which provides for Life abundantly.

How might we choose to live if we choose to make that the foundation of our thoughts, our beliefs, our values, and our actions?

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Wired

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 20, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Vineyards consist of several parallel rows of vines, each plant pruned and tied onto wires which run from stake to stake. The cognac makers call each row a “wire” and a contract between a grower and a distiller will detail how many “wires” are being sold each year. As best I understand it, this is the unit of agreement – a number of wires, not a number of grapes. Interesting, huh?

This photo is one of many like this which I’ve taken over the years. I love how the Sun catches the wires at certain times of day. It makes them vibrant. It makes them sing.

You can tell this is a Spring photo from the fact that there are no leaves on the vines yet, and that beyond the vineyard the trees are full of blossom. Everything has its season.

This image of wires sets off my train of thought along two different paths.

Firstly, it reinforces my understanding of the world as multiply and massively connected. The wires are a symbol of connection for me. They connect the plants together, they connect the growers to the distillers, and they create the basic structure of each and every vineyard. They are an underlying, foundational, creative structuring force which makes the vineyard look and live as it does. There are many such patterns, forces and structures running through and below our lives. There are many, in fact, which give us the forms of physical reality in which we live. I love it when we glimpse these patterns and become aware of the flows of energy and change which shape our lives.

Secondly, the phrase from neuroscience “what fires together wires together” comes to my mind. Although I think the metaphor of wiring for the elaborate, complex set of relationships between neurones in our brain is somewhat overdone, the truth is that it seems that our habits of thought, feeling and action, do actually change the physical structure of the brain. When we think, feel or do something repeatedly we lay down strong, fast pathways of neurones which not only make it easier to do or think those things….they make it harder to not do them! They become the underlying structures which determine some of our unconsciousness activity. To develop new, different, thoughts, feelings and actions, we need to consciously choose to initiate them and repeat them. That’s great news actually, because as well as “what fires together wires together”, we have discovered the brain is “plastic” – not made of the material we call plastic, but has the characteristic of “plasticity” – it can constantly be remoulded. We are not stuck with a set of thoughts, feelings and behaviours. We can change them. We just need to consciously choose to do so, and to repeat what we have chosen. That’s at the basis of the teaching about creating new habits by doing them each day for 30 days. It seems that by that time we’ve created new pathways, or new wiring!

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Well, well

Posted in creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on March 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »

There’s an old stone well in the garden where I live. It’s got a rusty metal cover which is fastened with a padlock but we opened it to look down inside when we arrived here. Using a roll of string and an old key we measured about twenty metres down to the surface of the water. How deep the water is, I’ve no idea. Above the well is an iron bowl hung from an arch by a short chain. Obviously you can’t lower the bowl into the well to get water, but, somehow it seems totally appropriate.

The Redstart, and some of the other small birds, like to sit at the top of the arch, and I like to photograph the well in different lights and against different skies. There’s something deep, something rooted, something which connects me to this place, this time, and times gone past, when I look at this well.

This particular photo was taken, as you can see, during a spectacular sunset. One of those sunsets which sets the entire sky ablaze. We get a lot of sunsets like that over the summer months especially. When I look at this image I think of the four basic elements – the Sun’s fire, the winds in the Air which stretch the clouds over the sky, the Water deep in the well, and the solid Earth and rock from which the well is made, and into which it has been dug.

I think, too, of the hands of humans, because it took human imagination and craft to dream up this particular well with its iron bowl, and it took the skill of humans to sink the well, surround the top with stone, and fashion the iron bowl and its fixings.

I wonder about the beginnings of this well, and don’t doubt it was sunk to find water. There’s a very high calcium content in the incredibly stony ground in this part of the world, a region which is called the “Grande Champagne” because of the high quality of Cognac produced from the vines which thrive in this most unlikely looking soil. It’s a soil which doesn’t hold onto the water. So, I think of the vineyards and the men and women who plant the vines, prune them, nurture them, and harvest their grapes. I think of the distillers with their giant copper stills. And I think of the astoundingly varied flavours of the local cognacs which they make.

I haven’t used the well to draw water, and I don’t think anyone else has done that for many, many years. Whoever added the iron bowl and its fixings was doing something else – creating a work of beauty – something delightful to look at. And, probably without predicting it, creating a favourite perch for the local, smaller birds. Did they realise the well would look this beautiful against such gorgeous sunsets? Maybe they did.

Do you see what’s happening here?

This “object” – this “thing” we call a “well” – I find that I develop a relationship with it. I notice it. It catches my attention. I contemplate it on different days, in different weathers, and against very different skies. It delights me. It stirs my curiosity. And it sets off trains of thought which travel along a multiplicity of connections. It changes my experience of the everyday.

That’s how the human mind works. When we are well, when we are growing and thriving, we are driven by our deepest feelings – the affects – which make us the seeking, connecting, joyful creatures we were born to be. Conversely, when we sick, when we blocked or stuck, we disconnect, withdraw, and seek protection. It’s not that the former group are good, and the latter bad. We need all of our affective strategies to survive and thrive. But I’m convinced that the more we nurture joy and curiosity, the more we pursue beauty and harmony, the more we build mutually beneficial relationships in our extended webs of connections, the healthier we will be.

That’s how we thrive. That’s how we grow. That’s how we flourish.

I wish you well.

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Strange, rare and peculiar

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on March 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I’ve seen this only once.

One day, three years ago, I looked up and saw this sort of rainbow. I say “sort of rainbow” because it isn’t actually an arch. From time to time, in different places, I have noticed various rainbow-type phenomena. I’ve seen them in the spray of water in a fountain, in short almost square patches in the sky, and even in long thin strips once. But this particular one looks different from all the other ones I’ve seen elsewhere.

I don’t expect I’ll see another one the same.

What caught my attention? Was it the sudden appearance of colours in the sky? Perhaps. But I don’t think it was all down to the colours. The shape, the size and the location were equally important. What really caught my attention was its uniqueness. It appeared strange, rare and peculiar.

Some of you may recognise that triad of terms – strange, rare and peculiar. It’s one which was at the heart of my medical practice for several decades. I found that every single patient who came to see me was unique. I was never able to, nor ever wished to, reduce them to a diagnostic category. Naming their disease was one small step towards understanding them. Listening non-judgementally, with genuine curiosity and interest allowed them to unfurl their stories. Every story was strange, rare and peculiar. In every story I would be struck by something. Something would provoke a question, stir a sense of awe or amazement, in me, move me, suggest to me that here was a story of a unique life, a life where particular (peculiar) events occurred, and which had unusual (rare) effects. Every story would strike me as having something distinct, something “not normal” (strange) about it. Because that’s how life is.

Every single one of us is “strange, rare and peculiar”. We cannot be understood as “data sets”, spreadsheets full of “variables”, “averages”, “norms” or “typical features”.

And so, I learned, this is true, not only of patients in a consulting room. It is true of life.

Iain McGilchrist’s “The Master and His Emissary” remains one of the key texts of my life. His description and exploration of the asymmetry of the two halves of our brain (our two cerebral hemispheres) has helped me make sense of things in so many circumstances. Our left hemisphere is great for picking bits out of what we perceive, matching them up against our memory banks of what we know already, ascribing labels to them, and filing them away as further examples of familiar categories. Our right hemisphere, however, is continually on the lookout for what’s new, what’s different. It engages with the world as a whole, not as a collection of bits. It sees whatever we are looking at in its contexts, understands it in its vast web of connections and relationships with everything else.

In short, I think, our right hemisphere is terrific for finding the “strange, rare and peculiar”.

So what? you might ask. Well, look again at this photo. I find that the colours and shapes together are beautiful. I love the way light has been prised apart into these bands of colour, in two clouds, one above the other. I love how this phenomenon hangs on a setting sun orange sky, how the silhouettes of the trees form the lower border of the image, and how flocks of birds scatter across the entire sky.

It’s all very beautiful. Enchanting. Entrancing, even. It amazes and delights. It makes me feel good to be alive, and humbles me with the awareness that I will never know all that can be know. I will never cease to encounter what I’ve never encountered before. And neither will “we”, we humans together. I love the feeling of wonder and curiosity that these events create. I love the sense of mystery.

Opening ourselves up to what’s strange, rare and peculiar, turns out to be a great way to live.

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One year….

Posted in creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 17, 2021| 2 Comments »

17th March 2020, I sat down and wrote my first post of the pandemic. We went into a national “confinement” that day here in France. None of us knew or even guessed exactly how the next 365 days would unravel. I certainly didn’t think I’d write a post every single day for an entire year. But here I am, still writing. What I committed to on this day one year ago was to share a beautiful photo I’d taken, describe some of the “émerveillement” (wonders and delights) of my every day experience, and share my caring heart.

I still think those are some of the best things I can do – share my joy, my delight, my awe, my wondering, my perspectives, thoughts and understanding – share them all through the lens of a loving, caring heart.

I still think that whatever we think, imagine or do, influences our daily experience of life, changes the lives of others, and co-creates the reality of life on this one, small, blue planet. So we should try to live not on autopilot, but with awareness, with consciousness and with agency. “Heroes not zombies” folks!

As I look at this photo this morning I remember the day I sat on a plane and saw the Sun come up between the clouds. Yep, that’s what that image is – the Sun emerging with clouds above and below (as above, so below) – and I immediately hear Leonard Cohen in my ear. I suppose his line has become one of the most famous lines in song history, but it’s still a brilliant line.

There is a crack, a crack, in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

By the way, if you want to read about the origins of that phrase, check out this excellent article. It reveals some of the roots and influences which led to this particular form of words.

Back to my photo – it looks to me that I’m staring right at that crack which is letting the light in. But, hey, hasn’t this pandemic been just such a crack?

Hasn’t it shone a bright, clear light on the fact that we are one human race, embedded in one living planet, sharing the same air, the same water, the same earth?

Hasn’t it shown us the power of co-operation and collaboration?

Hasn’t it highlighted the vulnerabilities we are subject to from our current model of civilisation? Highlighted poverty, precarious employment, poor nutrition, inequality and injustice, climate change, loss of biodiversity, how we treat animals, and just how broken our economic and political models are?

We are a long, long way from dealing with any of these problems and our current silver bullet of vaccination will not be enough to create a stronger, more resilient, healthier community of humans on this planet. I still have hope. I still hope that as the pain of the wounded crack, and the illuminating brightness of the light which gets in, we will be motivated to enhance the incredible inventive genius and co-operative, social power of human beings to create a better world.

But, hey, right here, right now, I will continue with my commitment and share with you a beautiful image, a positive thought or idea, and my passion for love and kindness. I hope these touch you, and you transform them with your own unique experience and imagination, and pass them on to others.

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Transition – becoming not being

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography, science on March 16, 2021| 2 Comments »

This half frosted leaf reminds me of the yin yang symbol. About half is white with frost and half is coloured brown. The white half has an area of brown in it and the brown half has an area of white. OK, I know, it’s not the same shape as the traditional yin yang symbol but, still, it captures the same essence I think.

This, for me, is a symbol of transition. We are at that time of the year where one season recedes and another emerges. It’s not that winter has gone completely, and it’s not that spring has quite set in.

Transition is a time of emergence. It’s where whatever exists is in the process of becoming something else. I only discovered this term, “emergence”, a few years ago, but it has been one of the most useful concepts I’ve ever encountered. Emergence describes change in complex systems. The thing is, complex systems are “non-linear”. They aren’t like machines. They don’t change predictably step by step. Because complex systems (like the human being, like all living creatures, like Life, like the living planet, like reality) are non-linear and “open” ie embedded within other systems with constant flows of molecules, energy and information between and through them……then they change in this very different way, which has been called “emergent” – looking back you realise you couldn’t have predicted what they become from how they were! Even if you knew ALL the conditions today, you could NOT predict accurately how a complex system will change.

All that might seem a bit frustrating. I mean, it would be great if we could just gather the “data” and the “evidence” and know for sure how things were going to change. But we can’t. That’s the delusion of the positivist, technocratic world view, the kind of view which claims to know with certainty exactly what “will work”, and only later to realise that it didn’t. In fact, for me, it’s the delusional view which I find most frustrating. I can’t stand the constant pushing of the next “silver bullet”, the next “quick fix”.

I find it liberating to acknowledge and accept the reality of complexity and emergence. It brings several things with it. It demands humility. It requires me to keep an open mind at all times, to remain aware and conscious of the here and now…..just as that here and now constantly comes into being. There’s something exciting and ALIVE about transition and emergence – do you see that phrase I have at the top of my blog?

“Becoming not being”.

I choose that to keep my focus on change, on emergence, on transition, on the everyday, as the everyday unfolds. It brings me my abundant experiences of wonder, awe and delight. It brings me joy.

Final thought for today – transition, the yin yang concept, the idea of emergence – these all fit beautifully with the scientific, rational, and philosophical understanding of complexity – complex systems which are open, non-linear and massively inter-connected. That demands that we always consider contexts, connections, relationships and environments. It shifts us away from the delusion of a world made up of separate unconnected pieces, and brings us face to face with the reality of holism. The whole is always more than, is always different from, the sum of the parts.

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Cycles of life

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography, science on March 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I got down on my tummy and took this photo. What captured my attention was the delicate but vibrant life of this new leaf on its bright green stalk. I’ve come back to this image again and again to contemplate the incredible phenomenon of birth and growth……how a seed can germinate, push out stalks and leaves and begin a long journey upwards towards the Sun…..growing and maturing until it realises its full potential as a flower, a bush or a tree.

Ever since I studied embryology at university I’ve been in awe of how a single fertilised cell can differentiate into so many other types of cells, and how each cells develops in exactly the right place! I mean just think of it in terms of a human being…..how does that single fertilised cell which first divides itself into two cells, then four cells, then eight, and so on, grow a head where a head should be, a heart where a heart should be, and so on to create a beautiful fully formed baby? It still astonishes me.

But the other reason I return to this image is because I look at where the young plant is growing and I can see it is emerging from a forest floor covered in dead leaves. Right in that observation we see the basic principles of life and death….of how there are cycles to life, cycles of birth, growth, development, maturity, ageing and death. That story isn’t a straight line. It’s a circle. Many people have pointed out how, unlike human beings, there is no waste in Nature. Everything transforms into something else. We humans haven’t quite learned that trick and throw away, discard, dump what we don’t want. Where do we think it goes? What happens to all the waste we produce? What effects does it have on the complex, interconnected cycles of Nature on this little shared planet?

I’m already hearing economists and politicians say how they are looking forward to the world economy “re-starting” and saying “we need to get people consuming again”. Already they are talking about how to stimulate “growth” with little thought given to growth of what, and how that increased consumption is both sustainable in a finite planet, and how it fits with the cycles of the natural world.

My hope for after this pandemic is that we undergo what I recently heard an economist call a “metamorphosis”. He said “A butterfly is not an upgraded caterpillar”. What a great phrase! The current system is broken. It’s not meeting the needs of either the human race or the rest of life on this planet. It’s increasing inequality, it’s making us all more vulnerable and it’s teetering on the brink of total collapse.

We need a metamorphosis – we need to emerge from this crisis with new ways of living, new ways of meeting the needs of Life on Earth.

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Special

Posted in books, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on March 14, 2021| Leave a Comment »

“Special” – there’s a difficult word – when someone claims they are special they might be claiming that they are the exception which should be respected – that they don’t need to follow the same rules as the rest of the community. This “exceptionalism” is the root of a lot of trouble in the world. The danger with “special” is that others are seen as “not special”.

But I am a great fan of this word, and I think we fail to grasp it enough. This Robin is special to me. He lives in “my garden”. I see him almost every day. We know that Robins are territorial birds and I don’t ever, ever see a flock of Robins in my garden. I can’t be sure that the Robin I see today is the exact same Robin that I saw yesterday, but I assume he is. There are other birds like this near me. There’s a “Little Owl” who lives under the roof of my neighbour’s barn. He often sits on the roof at dusk and watches me as I close the wooden shutters over the windows of the house. He doesn’t fly away when he sees me. I’ve become familiar to him. You could say that we have become special to each other. There’s also a Redstart which returns to this garden every Spring and flies away for the Winter. We have had several back and forth whistling conversations together, the Redstart and I, and when I hear his call again in the Spring I know that Winter is over. When my grand-daughter hears him she says “There’s your friend, grandpa”.

In “The Little Prince”, the boy claims that his rose is “special”, that she is different from all the other roses. He cares for her more than he does for all the other roses. And there’s the key – what makes that one rose special is the attention and time he has invested in her, watering her, protecting her from the grazing sheep, and so on. It’s the time, attention, and emotional investment which makes this rose genuinely “special” for him.

I think everyone is “special”, and contrary to what I wrote above about exceptionalism, in my experience, in the consulting room, one to one, with patient after patient, I found that it was way, way too common for people to fail to realise just how special they are. In fact, they might have been bombarded with messages which have said the exact opposite for years – “you are nothing”, “you are worthless”, “you don’t matter”.

Those messages are cruel and they are wrong.

Every single human being is special, in the sense that they are unique. There are no two of us with identical bodies and minds, no two of us born in identical places, at identical times, to identical families. There are no two of us with identical life stories. In all my four decades of work as a doctor I never heard the same life story twice.

“Special” works when we embrace the paradox of “special” with humility. But there’s something else, and it comes back to what makes us unique – what makes us unique is our connections. Not our differences. I am not special because I am different from everyone else. I am special because of the particular, vast, complex web of connections and relationships that I have, that I’ve had, and that I will have.

One more thing to add here – love.

It’s not just our relationships which make both you and I special. It’s the relationships which we invest with love and care which make both you and I special.

Have you ever noticed that? Just like The Little Prince, the more we care, the more we love, the more compassion we have, the more special others become.

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The heart is the key

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Do you know what I like most about this photo?

The heart shape is carved into the keystone.

Without the keystone, the entire structure will collapse. The bridge can’t exist without the keystone. What are our keystones? We, human beings? What are the keystones without which we cannot exist?

Well, actually, I’m simplifying things already, aren’t I? Because you can’t reduce the entire existence of a single human being, let alone the entire human species, to a single structure. In reality there are many essential “keystones” in a life.

But I still like this concept of the keystone. It’s kind of a declaration of a priority. It highlights something so important that life would be utterly different without it.

And this keystone has a symbol of a heart carved into it. So, here’s something to consider today –

What if we recognise that our heart, our way of “seeing with the heart”, our “heart felt emotions”, our “heart felt values”, should be the keystone in our life?

Without going into all the science of affective neurology, of neural networks within the human body, of the intricate and elaborate connections between the heart, the brain and the rest of the body, I just want to focus today on how we support, nurture and develop the heart……the heart-centred way of living.

Well, we know the heart is healthy (and I don’t just mean working well as a pump) when it is in harmony, when the “heart rate variability” hits a certain sweet spot. And we know that this sweet spot is associated with certain emotions and certain experiences. Specifically, joy, awe, wonder, and love. Whether you look at the work of someone like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who describes flow states from a psychological perspective, someone like Dan Siegel, who teaches about achieving a state of integration, or The Heartmath Institute, which focuses on heart rate variability, you will discover what experiences and behaviours are associated with a healthy heart.

If we put the following to the fore –

  • love
  • joy
  • kindness
  • compassion
  • gratitude
  • wonder
  • awe

then we are creating the opportunities to build healthier and better lives, for ourselves, for loved ones, for others, and for the entire planet.

It’s not everything, there’s a lot more we can do, but if we create the intentions every day to exhibit, to practice and to experience love, joy, kindness, compassion, gratitude, wonder and awe, then we will build a really powerful, strong keystone – a heart-centred keystone.

You might say, but, hey, I can’t experience all of those every day, and you’ll be right, but I’d be surprised if you can’t choose to express, and/or discover at least one of these, every single day. I mean, why not give it a go? Why not take it as one of those “30 day challenge” exercises? How about making a chart and recording each day which of the ones you have expressed or experienced?

Maybe something like this ……….

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Kindness

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 12, 2021| 2 Comments »

Ever since I saw this door with its heart shaped hole (presumably a “peep hole” to see who is knocking at the door?) I’ve really liked it. It got me thinking how this shape, this powerful symbol, right there on the front door, might influence the lives of those who come across it every single day. It also made me wonder about whether or not it led the residents of this house to see the world through the lens of the heart – and as Saint-Éxupery wrote in “The Little Prince”, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”.

Of course there is a lot in that simple little phrase, but the meaning I’m reflecting on today is the power of the heart to shape our best thoughts, our best ideas, our best behaviours. The heart, it transpires, is not a simple mechanical pump pushing blood around the circulatory system. Around the heart is a network of specialised nerve cells – neurones – the kind you find in the brain. It seems that this “neural network” around the heart acts more to send information to the brain, than it does to respond to information from the brain. Just stop and think about that for a moment. We tend to have the idea that we do our thinking, our imagining and our feeling in our brains. But it’s not that simple. We also do a good deal of our mental work with the heart. Actually, there are other neural networks in the body too, and the reality is that the “mind” is an “embodied” phenomenon. The division of a person into “body” and “mind” is a tad artificial!

It seems the heart is especially involved in creating some of our emotions and in harmonising the diverse elements of our being. By that last phrase I mean, one of the things the heart is good at doing is producing “integration” of our entire complex being…..of producing “resonance” within ourselves, and between ourselves and others – yes, it actually sends out detectable energy waves beyond the body…..in rhythms which can influence the rhythms of those around us.

It turns out that the “symbolism” of the loving heart is rooted in biological, physical reality.

The truth is acting with love, wonder, generosity, gratitude and kindness is something that is really good for our health. When we approach others and the world from the heart-felt position of care and compassion then we increase the healthy resonances within ourselves and between ourselves and others.

So, that’s partly why I return again and again to the role of kindness. Can’t we use that more as a tool for living? Can’t we use it more to improve our own lives and those of others? How about we use that as the main touchstone? How about we ask ourselves, of our own actions and words, as well asking of others and even of governments and organisations, “how much kindness does this spread?”

Because I reckon whatever we do, think or believe that diminishes kindness harms us, and harms every other living being. In fact, I believe it harms “Gaia” – the living Earth. Conversely, when we come across the stories of cruelty, injustice, neglect, or violence in the world and we wonder “what can I do to make things better?”, then, one thing (obviously not the ONLY thing) we can do, is try to act, to speak and even to think with more kindness…..to live in better harmony with our hearts.

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