No other organ is spoken of more often or with more importance than the heart. I loved her with all my heart. We all know that the heart is responsible for the movement of blood throughout the body, but the heart is often spoken of as being something more than physical. It has been said that the path to god is through the heart. Salvation. We are told to follow our hearts. Trust in your heart it is said. But why is this?
I can tell you that as a Healing Arts Practitioner, athlete and warrior, the heart is what all of these disciplines use to center one’s focus and achieve the state of samhidi or non-duality. But how does this occur? Why the heart and not say the stomach or liver? Well believe it or not one can focus one’s consciousness center in either of these organs or any of one’s organs for that matter. The result will be something less than the ideal center. Remember it is not the heart that is anxious it is the stomach that is where involuntary hunger(thought) lies. It is not the heart that experiences lust, that is an emotion of an overcharged liver, which desires. The heart knows only the true central emotion of compassion. This is why, my friends we want to allow the heart to guide our actions. They will be more complete. So it’s not just spiritual or mystical. There is a real science to this.
How does this work though? For some, the feeling of the heart is as foreign as not feeling the heart would be to others. That is bi-polar. This is where it becomes fascinating. Your heart sits in the center of a chamber of connective tissue called fascia. Fascia is amazing stuff. It is stronger than steel on a molecular level! Fascia also serves a little known but extremely important function. It is along the fascial sheaths that bio-electric energies flow. This energy, also known as chi, prana, baraka, orgonite and many others is guided by your emotional state.
It is in the consciousness center that we call the heart, that how we feel about life is stored, dealt with and processed. It is not in your head. That stores what you think about life. Thinking and feeling, two very different things. But as we all know there is no separation between thought and feeling. They exist in a continuum. There is a constant feedback loop between the two. In most people though, one aspect dominates the other. The heart, the brain and all of the organs communicate thought process through the nervous system via axons, dendrites and the like. They also communicate emotionally through feelings, along the fascial sheaths with the heart as the minister much as the brain is the minister of the nervous system.
Now you may ask, Jujupoogie what is this feeling that you speak of? How do I understand something so seemingly vague? Well I ask you, have you not ever felt indigestion? Have you ever felt an orgasm? How about have you ever been in love? These are feelings. The rushes, tingles, pulsations, spasms, aches, and bloats. This is the language of feeling. Believe it or not you can train your heart to develop its ability to guide feeling just as you can develop your mind's ability to guide thought. It does not matter whether that feeling is good or bad it can be guided by the heart. How you ask?
That fascial chamber that surrounds your heart? It is called the pericardium. The pericardium has an ideal or sacred geometrical shape. Remember, feeling or emotion flows along the fascial sheaths. Negative emotions constrict and congest the fascial pathways. It begins in the sheath (pericardium) around your heart. There is an entire fascial network in your body that surrounds all organs, muscles, glands, the genitalia, everything. Through this fascial network, all of your physical being is connected and in communication. The information is sent out from the heart via the pericardium and it will either open or close the ajoining fascia depending on the quality of the emotional charge. Now we can see why we need to practice all of the corny stuff that the various religions preach. It’s essential to your best experience. Till all are one. Fusion.
The pericardium is said to ideally have many facets, much like a polished gemstone. The more facets a gemstone has the more light it may reflect. The more facets the pericardium has open, the more compassion or love that heart is reflecting. Fear destroys the facets of one’s pericardium. It causes the fascial sheaths to become ossified and hard so that the proper feeling does not flow. This makes it harder to give or receive loving thoughts or feelings and the person spirals deeper into their personal phobias and constrictions. This is the unconscious aging, dying process. One becomes more stiff , rigid and afraid.
The heart can be split in two general ways, although there are many sub-directional, karmic facets. In the ideal these spread evenly throughout. This original rift represents the dichotomy of ying-yang, male-female, past-future and so on. The left side of the pericardium may ossify causing the person to be less receptive, more active, hotter. The mind will tend to the future, the body will lean to the right, the left brain is emphasized, strong liver, weak stomach. This is the pattern of modern society. If the right side is frozen then the past dominates thoughts, the body will favor to the left, the right brain is emphasized, cooler personality, strong stomach, weak liver. The person is receptive but more passive, the left hand path. The left side receives the love, the right side gives it.
That is why some people can give advice but can’t take it! It is also why some people seem to be vampires or takers. They receive more then they give. The key is the balance of the pericardium. Most of us are completely ignorant of this information and generally see our side as "right" and the other side as "wrong". Obviously there are various degrees of constriction and many levels of being open or closed. Some believe that the imbalance of our age is an inability of the dominate culture to receive love. The right hand path. Some would say that global warming is nothing more then the heat generated by love, compassion improperly received. Like friction between human and universe. Or man and woman....
We can change though. The pericardium is controlled by the muscles that surround it and these muscles can be exercised. We can learn to develop the weak side of our heart the same way we can learn to develop a weak hand or leg. In fact it is the only way to develop a weak hand or leg. This is where athletics and art are critical. You have to feel your way back to wholeness. Bruce Lee speaks on this in the Martial arts film classic , The Return of the Dragon. You must learn to retrain the weak side of your consciousness. This is the highest reason for athletics and art. Not to dominate your peers but to reclaim your wholeness. We love the best athletes and artists because they represent the least afraid hearts. But you can become more whole too. The key is to repetitively train your weaker side. This will slowly begin to awaken the rigid muscles and fascia on that side of the heart. Be patient.
It will be hard and uncomfortable at first. You must feel your way back slowly but surely. There will be setbacks. You’ll have to work through old fears that may be ancestral in origin. The fears locked in your DNA are expressed through the fascia upon conception. Rapes, wars, addictions and so on. We pass them on to our children if we do not deal with them ourselves. In a future article I will write about how it is actually emotion that is responsible for activating or deactivating the DNA. Deep stuff but have faith, eventually, re-calibrating the pericardium will give you everything you ever really wanted. A sense of wholeness that supersedes any external condition.
Have you not ever noticed how many former fighters and warriors go on to find god? There is a whole sect of Buddism, The Shaolin, that emphasize martial training as a prerequisite to initiation into their higher schools of practice. Until you have proven you can feel your heart fully, they ain’t interested. There are tribes in Africa, the Mende in Guinea come to mind, who don’t want to hear a word you have to say until you have centered your heart and are happy. They drum and dance as a way of life and one’s ability to center the heart is how they judge success. It’s also why they were sought out as slaves. So much love, so much ability to forgive, to be in the moment and ignore adverse externals. They could keep themselves alive during the most hellish conditions by losing their minds behind their hearts. There is a lesson there.
It’s no accident. All the years of repetitive training, from many different angles, with both sides of the body emphasized evenly, have left these types more whole. Not only that, but through that repetition they now have the ability to control the shape of the pericardium under the stressful or adverse conditions that arise during competition and more importantly life. That is spiritual maturity. One of my mentors and good friends is a former world Champion kick boxer and Hollywood stuntman. He ain’t too scared. Now he is 57, looks 40 and is one of the happiest people you will ever meet.
Two of the most spiritual dudes I know are former special forces operatives. One Marine Force Recon the other Navy Seal. These guys have ran and swam so many miles. They have carried 60 lb packs on 20 mile humps and been in the midst of death and destruction. If they had not found their heart center the work would have worn their bodies out, the stress of combat crippled them with fear.
In movement you use your joints.The hinge joints are meant to work on an even plane. There is no quicker way to wear out a knee than favoring one leg over the other. Most people neglect the weak side and overdevelop their strengths. This builds the false ego and is a sure way to end up dead, defeated or unable to continue using your body at a high leve due to injury. Now we can see how fear actually works its demonic energies upon you. The negative emotions may well be likened to demons and perhaps that is why the words exorcism and exercise are so similar. Notice the pattern though. You have to be strong. You must learn to give all that you have and receive all that is for you. There can be no guilt about having, no doubt about giving.
I know a beautiful young lady, who has experienced more loss and heartbreak than most people twice her age but she is a committed fighter and dancer. She keeps her heart pure through the wholeness of her movements. A light and inspiration to all who meet her, she has become an angel on earth and one one my dearest friends.
Think of the high, chested song bird. Keeping their hearts clear through song and flight. There was a time when people remembered that singing could be used to feel the heart whole not just to gain recognition and be idolized. Only one person can win a contest but everyone can be whole. The different song notes exercise the different facets and you can literally hear the blemish or purity in a person’s heart as they vocalize.
Dance, athletics, combat, Healing Arts it’s all the same. You can see, hear, feel the heartfelt integration or lack thereof. You don’t have to stay half of a person. This is the experience of life. It’s in the feeling. It’s in the heart.
Peace and blessings
The Poogie Juju
