I am still on my “serenity or die” project. (Maybe it should be called my “last chance for peace project?”) In any case, rather than my usual course of examining those things that steal my serenity, I have tried to focus on those few moments when I do feel… serene (or something akin to it). I got this idea from Marion Milner’s wonderful book, A Life of One’s Own, which I have written about before. Milner uses journaling as an instructional path to serenity, a tool for examining what makes her happy in life. One of the things that Milner says about her own search for happiness is that it somehow helped if she put her awareness in her heart rather than her head. She calls it an internal gesture. “I began to understand that my powers of perceiving could be altered, not by directly trying to look, or trying to listen, but by this special internal gesture.” Sounds silly, but I encourage you to try this change in perspective.
In ancient times (Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew), people thought the seat of the soul was in the heart rather than the head – the Egyptians even threw out the useless brain during mummification, but left the heart as the departed would have need of it. Hippocrates thought it was the brain where consciousness occurred, but Aristotle was sure that it was the heart. Science agreed with Hippocrates. Descartes even “identified” the soul in the pineal gland in the middle of the brain. Yet, Pascal reminded us that “The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of.”
Of course, my husband’s recent heart attack has us thinking of that vital organ, of heart rates and blood pressure (which we measure every other day). And surely the heart responds to our mental moods. I recalled how, when I first was learning to meditate, an instructor had us hold the bulb of a “hand thermometer” to demonstrate how blood flow increased to the skin as heart rate decreased when we were deep within ourselves. A calm mind helps the heart function. Is the reverse also true?
Grace Paley wrote a good and true story about old age called “My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age,” in which the father gives the following advice:
Please sit down, he said. Be patient. The main thing is this—when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.
That’s a metaphor, right?
Metaphor? No, no, you can do this. In the morning, do a few little exercises for the joints, not too much. Then put your hands like a cup over and under the heart. Under the breast. He said tactfully. It’s probably easier for a man. Then talk softly, don’t yell. Under your ribs, push a little. When you wake up, you must do this massage. I mean pat, stroke a little, don’t be ashamed. Very likely no one will be watching. Then you must talk to your heart.
Talk? What?
Say anything, but be respectful. Say—maybe say, Heart, little heart, beat softly but never forget your job, the blood. You can whisper also, Remember, remember.
Of course, talk of the heart leads me back to the mind/body connection, and the fact that I read over and over again that stress is a killer. “Stress can wreak havoc on your mind and body” says the Mayo Clinic. It is not great for serenity either. Stress can be caused by real challenges, but the body reacts just as strongly to the imagined ones – including all our catastrophic thinking. I have spent a lot of useless time trying to change the nature of my thinking – but after reading how Milner cast her consciousness into her heart (metaphorically), I was ready to try circumventing the brain. As a frequent victim of migraines, I don’t need to be reminded that the brain can be the enemy.
We all know that our brain cannot reason ourselves out of fear. Camus told us that, in the eyes of reason, being alive is an absurd project. Reason does not help. (And for that reason, AI probably isn’t going to help either.) Hard as my brain has tried, it has been unable to think itself into serenity. Milner’s trick of casting our awareness into the heart is one way to side-step the mind and its Gestapo tactics. Casting your awareness into another part of your body provides a new focus. My heart is the part of the body that works best for me in that regard. It is not a permanent solution, but it is a motivating foretaste of what I am after.
Maybe it’s time to give our head a rest. “When you get up in the morning you need to take your heart into your two hands.” And once you have done that, cast your mind into your heart. It is easier than you think.
For a story about leading with the heart, you might try “The More Loving One.”