Mindfulness and meditation seem like such cerebral affairs. There is so much emphasis on controlling my mind, focusing on what I want to pay attention to, and avoiding distractions. Even the word “mindfulness” seems to put the main activity above my shoulders. The whole organized effort of understanding what is going on is sometimes called “a science of the mind.”
I think it is more of an affair of the heart. While mindfulness and meditation count on the work of the mind, their real essence is the work of the heart. The open awareness, connectedness and penetration that mindfulness offers me is an experience of the heart. The mind has only a helping role to play.
When I attempt to be mindful, I first of all put my mind at rest. Like I would do for a puppy in training, I give the command “stay.” More than anything, I want my mind to be at rest. It must be attentive, but it has no job to do except be in a state of high readiness. Only then can my heart take over, and the real affair can take place.
Mindfulness and meditation are not a mental exercise except to the degree that they are a mental discipline. It is time for the processing mind to step aside and allow the heart to move forward. The curtains part, are held to the side, and the heart has the full stage. The awareness that only the heart can achieve is truly the affair of the heart, not of the mind.
Perhaps there really is no duality of mind and heart. Just as breathing in and breathing out are aspects of the same breath, mind and heart may be aspects of the same awareness. Mind and heart may even need and require one another to achieve the kind of deep awareness I savor. I may be wrestling with the same problem I face when I ask if a photon is a particle or a wave; it depends on what you are looking for.
Just the same, I know that there is a different experience when the heart is very involved. I can embrace the world or a person with an openness not there when only simple mind awareness is occurring. For me, my mind is like a conduit. It is a twisted tunnel that allows experience to flow through, but not without altering the experience. My mind gives shape to experience, makes it make sense to me because of what I remember from my past.
When I relax my mind, tell it to “stay,” my experience flows into me with few of the obstacles and forms offered by my mind. When I have an affair of the heart, there are few filters that affect my perception. I see with soft eyes and hear with uncritical ears. I can touch without putting words to the experience.
It seems that much of my life is still an affair of the mind. I struggle to make sense of experience, to understand, to put perceptions into frameworks. I have discovered, however, that there is a deeper way to be part of the world. Loving kindness is more than an attitude of the mind. It is a relaxed disposition that makes living an affair of the heart.