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Archive for the ‘psychology’ Category

Beauty in the soul

Posted in art, books, creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 29, 2021| Leave a Comment »

There’s a bird reserve near Nimes, in the South of France, where you can see flamingos. I’ve visited it several times, and each time I take a host of photos. They are SUCH beautiful creatures!

I’m reading Gary Lachman’s “Lost Knowledge of the Imagination” just now, and this morning read these lines about beauty –

We perceive beauty, the Neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus said, when we perceive something that is in accord with our soul.

Knowledge of beauty is knowledge of soul. It is self-knowledge, and when we discover beauty we are discovering part of ourselves.

The knowledge we receive in this way is not of fact but of quality, of value and meaning.

We perceive beauty, are open to its presence, through a change in the quality of our consciousness. Only like can know like. We must have beauty within ourselves to see it in the world.

I hadn’t thought of beauty this way before. When I read it I thought about the old adage of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” which always seemed to me to be a statement that beauty was in fact a matter of taste. But this perspective from Gary Lachman describes that sort of third way interpretation which I like so much. It’s not that beauty is “outside” us, as some kind of measurable object. I think we all know that. Beauty can’t be reduced to data, can’t be captured by mere facts. But neither is it just a matter of taste, as if it is entirely an experience of the individual rendering the rest of the real world unimportant.

The third way is that beauty is a resonance. It’s a harmony. And therefore it emerges in the lived quality of an experience, of an engagement, of a relationship. We need both parts of the relationship to be present…..something “within” us, let’s call that “the soul”, and something “outwith” us, let’s call that “the other”.

We know instantly when we find something, or someone beautiful. We don’t need to way it up, analyse the inputs, stimuli and signals. We just know. We know because our inner being resonates with whatever it is we are looking at….or it doesn’t. When it does, we have the sensation of joy, delight, and gratitude which accompanies all engagements with beauty.

Beauty, I reckon, is good for us. It’s good for our souls. It’s good for our consciousness. It’s good for our health.

So, here you are, a few photos in this post, all taken during one visit to the flamingos. I find them beautiful. I hope you do too. And I hope that appreciation of their beauty nourishes your soul, warms your heart, adds some positive quality to this present moment.

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Caught by the light

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on March 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Once upon a time I was walking in a London park. I was attending a weekend workshop and we finished up late one afternoon. As I walked past the gates of the park I was drawn in by the colours of the autumn leaves and I spent a while strolling around, just noticing, pausing, photographing.

I didn’t set out with any intention to take photos. I wasn’t even looking for a park. I didn’t think I should get some fresh air or exercise. I was just walking back to the hotel and the park called me in.

We are a pretty driven, goal-focused, outcome-focused, busy society, so unexpectedly finding “free time” was a real bonus. Many thinkers have written about the value of being a “flaneur” (someone who strolls around without any explicit intent), of passing some time just being present, not working towards some, as yet, imaginary future point.

This was one of those times. I took a lot of photos. I sat on a park bench, listened to birds singing, watching families and individuals enjoying the park. I noticed that at the end of one path there was a fountain, and I’m pretty keen on fountains. They draw me to them, too. As I approached the fountain I noticed the water was catching the light of the low sun. It utterly illuminated the fountain so that it shone as if it was radiating energy all around it. I stopped to take a photo.

As I framed a shot I noticed there was someone standing under a tree, gazing towards the exact same fountain, that fountain of light and water. I took my photo, and then took some more. Then I lowered my camera and just stood taking in the scene. The person under the tree stood completely still, solely focused on the fountain and the play of light and water. Was she lost in her thoughts? I’ve no idea. Was she utterly absorbed in the moment, completely present in the experience of these magical moments? I don’t know. But my instinct says it was the latter.

Did I catch the sunlight? Or did the sunlight catch me? Did the water catch the sunlight? Or did the sunlight catch the water? This was one of those moments where the connection, the interaction, the relationship came to the fore. It wasn’t important to know the direction, it was more than enough to enjoy the flow.

As I look at this photo again, now, I am, once more, caught by the light. It draws me to it, pulls me towards it, and I slip into a few moments of quiet, of peace and calm. I bathe in the feelings of contentment and delight. It nourishes me.

Maybe it will nourish you, too.

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Paying attention to change

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology, science on March 23, 2021| Leave a Comment »

You know that thing that happens when a noise stops, and it’s only at that point that you become aware of it? Or where you catch sight of something out of the corner of your eye…..a sudden movement, perhaps of a bird, or an animal, or a person? We humans have a fabulous ability to become aware of change. In fact, in many circumstances it’s how we pick to what’s important or interesting to us…..we see or hear or otherwise become aware of something changing, or something which has just changed.

Many years ago I rented an apartment in Carcassonne. I remember waking up one morning to the sound of the church bells striking the hour. I counted “seven, eight, nine” and then they stopped. I looked at my clock and it was nine o’clock. But I had now awareness whatsoever of counting from one to six. I seem to have started at seven! Of course, that’s not possible, but what it meant was that whilst still in the zone between sleep and wakefulness my brain had registered the sounds of the bells, and had kept track of them. I just picked up the process once I was awake enough.

Much of what we experience, and what we know, happens at levels below full consciousness. That’s not a bad thing. It’s how we function. I mean, imagine if you were aware of the activity of your digestive system moment by moment, or of the speed and rhythm of your heart or your lungs? You just couldn’t keep track of it all. Luckily, you don’t have to. However, it’s also important to become aware when we need to…..or when we want to. And to do that, one of the triggers is noticing change.

This photo is of a plane trail in the sky. This particular one has already been caught by the high winds and is turning from a line, or path, into a feather, or breaking wave on the beach. It’s beautiful. For me, it captures the reality of change. This trail, like all plane trails, is changing right before my eyes. I gazed at it for a few moments, watching this beautiful shapeshifting, following the changes. You can see from the left hand side of the image, how the wisps of white cloud are already disappearing “into thin air”. In fact if you look from right to left, you see three separate stages of the change process….from the fairly condensed rope or string looking part on the right, through the wispy, feathery waves in the middle, to the almost not there any more area on the left.

I like this image because it makes me think of change, and I change is such a great way of making us become more aware.

I used to look up from this garden and see many, many such streams in the blue sky. I don’t any more. I haven’t done for a year now. Why not? The pandemic. I’m sure I couldn’t tell you how many planes past over this part of the country every day over a year ago, but I can tell you that when I see a single one now, I notice it. There are hardly any. What an incredible change!

Hasn’t this pandemic, with its limitations and lockdowns, with its profound and widespread changes which it has brought in its wake made us more aware? I think it has. It’s become clearer than ever before how fragile and unprepared our health services are. It’s become clearer than ever how dependent our societies have become on the vastly interconnected global just-in-time supply chains. It’s become ever more clear exactly how important millions of citizens are…..whether we call them “front line workers” or “essential workers” (must be pretty horrid to be called “non-essential” don’t you think?) It’s become clear how broken our systems of social care are. It’s become obvious how much poverty there is, how much chronic ill health there is, how fragile so many jobs are. It’s become clear that this economic and political system we live under is failing….failing to be resilient, failing to protect, failing to thrive.

Yep, there’s no doubt that change is a great eye-opener. Maybe now that our eyes are wide open, it’s no surprise that many of us are re-thinking our values and priorities. It’s no surprise that all those things which we at some level already knew, are now crystal clear, and demanding that we pay attention to them.

Shall we make a new beginning? Based on kindness, care, compassion, justice and fairness? Based more on co-operation than competition? Wouldn’t that be a good idea?

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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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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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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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