Mindfulness / Heartfulness
Remember to think with the heart.
This piece was originally posted on my website 25th June 2024. I’m finding myself revisiting this this thread of thought and therefore resharing on here. I’ve since decided to pause (for now) the learning of reiki and the overall revisiting of the things I learnt during my time with Rumi Arts Centre. Over the next few months, I’ll be republishing works from my site over on here.
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I am currently half way through a Sufi Psychology course from Rumi Arts Centre. This came about after I decided to learn reiki, a friend thought of me, my art practice and thought this would be perfect. She was right. Below are my words from last week’s exercise.
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I’m a little late on writing this but it’s something I wanted to share and as someone who has lived in her head, having conversations and figuring a lot out within that space for a very long time, until a close friend of hers said ‘what does your heart say? Not what your ego or brain think needs to happen?’. So, this felt like an apt thing to share.
There are two very key differences I’ve noticed when conversing with the mind and the heart. The mind can switch or wonder, in a second. You have to repeatedly, on-goingly, make effort to look after her - as you do with the heart but in a different way. The heart however, is firm for a far longer time in what it wants, and what it feels is right at it’s very core.
People can often ask you to think with you head over your heart or vice versa. It seems that only emotional and even idealised situations, which for some strange reason humans deem lesser than the everyday grapple of logic are worthy of the heart’s attention. We hope through listening to the heart on lesser riskier factors, where we hope the person comes to their own good intentions will act correctly when ‘thinking’ with their heart. But the mind, the brain we traditionally have used for everything else. The logical stuff. The stuff we ‘need’. The stuff without soul. Yes, we absolutely need the mind. It helps us grow and learn, however, I would never say in isolation.
I would like to argue there is no differentiating the heart from the mind at times and nor should we. Oh gosh, I’m sighing and I’m feeling my heart swell up with emotion as I type this, Because, if we do things without heart, our intentions, what do they become? How can the mind breathe without reason. The mind can help us a little communicate what is going on in the heart. I believe we need to stay mindful that sometimes our brains overcomplicate how we feel and there’s a certain braveness which is needed - and can be borrowed from the heart - to continue.
So, how does this relate to mindfulness? Listen to the heart, and everything becomes clear. I think it’s as simple as that. When we stick to constantly going back to our minds for where we need to ask ourselves how does the heart feel, we run the risk of ignoring our intentions and matters, or completely not knowing them or ourselves altogether.
Maybe as an artist and poet, I’m bias. I’m at service to my heart. I’ve been thinking and creating with my heart longer than I care to admit and I don’t think this is limited to artists.
When we think of the phrase “to know yourself, is to know Allah”, and Allah’s our resides in our hearts. Whenever I have personally had a slightly unfortunate event happen, I check in with the heart. And I tell myself, this moment was done out of love. Allah does not decree matters to challenge us more than we have to.
I will leave it at that.
Salaam.