Home is Where the Heart Is

Home is where the Heart is. “To live in accord with love is to set your heart on fire. In the crucible of such an inferno all convention burns away. What’s left is an entirely new kind of existence, one full of passion, presence, and infinite possibility”. Raphael Cushnir “Setting Your Heart on Fire” There are so many common expressions focused on the heart. We might say, “Home is where the heart is” or “listen to your heart and all else will follow” or “you broke my heart”. We know the heart can’t literally talk or break in two, but the feelings from this space in our bodies feel that intense. Compared with the brain, the electromagnetic field of the heart is a thousand times greater. It emanates thousands of times more electricity and magnetism than any other organ in your body. Your heart perceives information, just like your eyes might and then, as the heart beats, radiates vibrational energy. There becomes a feedback loop between the heart and the brain. The heart tells the brain what to perceive as information and what should be the corresponding emotion. Sometimes the two organs agree and other times they disagree. Think of how your heart aches for someone that your mind knows is not right for you. These vibrations cause our cellular makeup to energetically have resonance or dissonance. One of the most powerful and most associated to the heart is LOVE. We feel it when we hug our children, when we find a partner, and during love making. But we can also experience this field of energy we call “love” through music, singing, laughing, movement, dance, and meditation. Think of the “deadheads” who followed the Grateful Dead like a tribe addicted to the need to feel more love in their lives through dance and music. Artists like the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Super Bowl 2014, sing their hearts out and we connect to these passionate performances. How can one not feel something when the artists are giving it their all? If you look at the heart from an energetic chakra center, it is the central point of where love and relationships reside. The heart links to the most predominant sense in the body, our sense of touch. It is no wonder why we feel love when we hug and touch each other. When we are angry, the opposite happens. We pull away, crossing arms over chest, and retracting from the power of touch. These are instinctual and very important emotions. “The heart will hear what it is programmed to hear. If love resides in the heart, it will attune to love. If fear, greed, or envy resided within, the heart will access negativity,” writes Stephen Harrold Buhneer in The Secret Teachings of Plants. The negativity we endure emotionally can be so painful to our hearts it can literally shut us down causing illness and even death. Therefore, we must think of our hearts as our partner, lover and supporter/destroyer. So set your heart on fire with love and your life will be alive with a positive vibration. *Other inspirations and quotes from Shiva Rea’s book “Tending the Heart Fire”, Cyndi Dale’s encyclopedia “The Subtle Body”