The Process of Living from the Heart
In using an experiential phenomenology to study the process of living from the heart, I began by asking my felt-sense of the heart process this question: How do I live from the heart or act in accord with the heart in any situation, large or small? This led to the discovery of three distinguishable, yet fluidly connected phases in combination with the use of the IGS and its feeling tones accompanying each phase of the fluid process. The three phases apply to any situation, no matter how large or small in significance, and no matter how short or long the process is in duration. [i][i] The phases are identifiable and distinguishable, but the actual experience of them is more fluid with each phase having its moment to shine as it fades into the next which has its moment of radiances before….,or… like one wave carrying its energy into the next wave, and so on. It is important to keep this in mind when thinking of the phases. It is also important to keep in mind that listening to the heart’s invitations requires that you make room within yourself to listen. Without ‘clearing a space’ to listen to the ‘still small voice’ moving within, how could we listen to the Invitations that arise in our hearts?
1. The Invitation phase
2. the Honoring phase
3. The Enactment phase.[ii][ii]
The Heart’s Invitations
In the way I am using the term here, an “Invitation”, is inclusive of an inspiration, an insight, a dream or vision of something the heart wants or inspires you to do. The word “Invitation” seems to stick because what it refers to is not a demand but a possibility for acting or living in some specific way, just now. This possibility comes as an “offer” to take it up and make it happen. When we think of receiving an invitation from someone, there is an implied ‘Issuer’ of the Invitation…which comes ‘as if’ from someone else, or from some place else. Now it is important to say that there are many other places to live from besides your own heart. You can, for example, live from the wishes of others, from efforts to be like others, or from a desire to please others. You can live in your head, with your thoughts only, and ignore the heart and bodily feeling. You can live from emotional places like hatred, greed, or lust, and they can each rule your life. Heart psychology, by contrast, is about living from your Center, that is,… living from the heart. The ‘Issuer’ of Invitations is always implicit in it.
Only in living from the heart’s Invitations will your life gain the sense of delight and deep satisfaction. The heart’s invitations stir up new energy, lure your forward into new developments, and aim at seasonally relevant[iii][iii] inspirations in response to your situation year by year, day by day, moment by moment. By way of amplification, this is analogous to living in accord with Tao. The word ‘Tao’ is difficult to translate because it means ‘way’ as well as being “led along the way” when in Tao. This being led by Tao is closely analogous to following the heart’s Invitations. Rudolf Ritesma writes:
It [Tao] traces a way or path which is potentially, reflected in each individual being. To be ‘in Tao’ or connected to Tao is to experience meaning and move to the energy of life. This is fundamental value. It is experienced as meaning, joy, freedom, connection, compassion, creativity, insight.[iv][iv]
This ‘tracing’ of the ‘way’ or ‘path’ implies a source of tracing or design that is deeper than, other than, or transcendent to the person. It comes to the person who opens the heart’s doors to it. We must become open to the heart’s Invitations the way the Taoist seeks to become open to the course “traced” by Tao. The Invitations carry this transcendent or transpersonal value, without really stating it explicitly. I mention it here by way of analogy to help us grasp that an Invitation is not created by us, it “comes” to us.
The Honoring
The word “Honoring” was chosen as a term for the second phase because implicitly an Invitation wants to be honored, which is to say, it ‘wants’ to be taken seriously, given respect, considered, contemplated, if viable, planned out in some detail, and eventually put into practice, which brings us to the third phase term, “Enactment.”
The Enactment
Enactment begins with the decision to “make it happen” or “bring it on line,” …to realize a possibility in fact. The enactment follows through into whatever action steps are needed or are implied until the enactment is completed. Depending on the complexity of the Invitation, there maybe many smaller cycles in this of these three phases as well as specific problems, possibilities and decision points arising. These, then, are the meanings of the terms of the three phase process, and it is most useful to keep aware of the feeling tones at each phase, for you can check your ideas, wishes, or intentions against them. If there is some discord in the feeling tones, you will then want to go into them more deeply and explore them to see why this discordance is there, and see what might be required to resolve it. There are a plethora of examples I could offer as instances of this fluid, three-phase process. Some instances are simple and occur very quickly, such as in contemplating what color to add to a painting this morning. But the three phase process can be so complex that considerable periods of time, persistence, and recycling through the three phases are required. A major life change such as a career change, a change in marital status or of geographical location are examples of a more complex process occurring over a significant period of time. The structure of the process is the same, but its duration, the recycling of phases over time, and the persistence required varies significantly from the simpler forms.
Personal Example:
Three Fluid-Phases and the Use of the IGS
I would like to share a little personal story as a way of presenting the four principles of living from the heart. Although I have been living a version of heart theory as described in this book, for 30 years, the real impetus to define it and put it in written form is an inspiration born from suffering that arose three years ago with the death of my mother. I received a call one morning saying that my mother was seriously ill. A few hours later the diagnosis of liver cancer was conferred, and over the next five weeks she rapidly deteriorated and suffered pain greatly, before dying in a moment of peace, with a smile on her lips. This illness seemed to appear out of the blue, and my whole family was so caught up in dealing with her day to day struggle with the illness and her rapid deterioration, we didn’t have time to grasp what was happening until after she was buried. For weeks afterward I found my self reading death poetry, driving slowly past every cemetery, and journaling about death and loss of the mother.
My pain was deep, and for awhile my life slowed down into a ritual of mourning. I constructed an altar on the coffee table with photos of my mother and a candle, incense and a green branch I clipped off a pine tree. I did this intentionally to provoke my grief, to help me process the feelings of shock, loss, anger, and confusion that attended her rapid demise and death. For a few weeks, perhaps three, I was preoccupied with mourning, and then there was a shift to more of a contemplation on death itself, and my own mortality. I sensed, at age 51, that my life would be over all too soon. Thinking of my own death was not new, but the sense of the brevity of my own life was. I found myself growing restless and discontent over the next several weeks and this discontent gradually clarified itself as a sense of urgency to get on with whatever it is I must do with the remainder of my life. Since I had already been living from my heart for a long time, and I had fulfilled most of my wishes and dreams, “What was this urgency about?” I inquired more deeply, explored my own felt-sense of this question and what eventually came was a sense of needing to transition into the next phase of my life, a move from primarily doing therapy towards more writing, teaching, and mentoring. Yet this wasn’t quite right. Something else was stirring in me. “What was it?”
The Arising of the Invitation
I kept focusing on my felt-sense of that and gradually it opened like this: A sense came of wanting to find some land in a forest or wilderness area where I could develop it into a retreat setting. I sat quietly with this for a while and then more detail came: “Perhaps a place I might run workshops, and consult with people,… perhaps do more supervision and mentoring.” These were the thoughts that were progressively coming. I still had no definite or final sense of how all that would look, nor of what specific forms it would take.
I kept paying attention to the bodily feel of this emerging invitation, still waiting for more clarity. I did feel sure, however, that this was the ‘direction’ in which the heart was inviting me to go. It wanted me to find some land. Not just any piece of land, but some very specific kind of location. Just where this would be and what it would be like I had only an unclear notion, until I eventually found it. This fussiness of the heart about what it wants is worth noting. When it first issues an invitation, it is typically not clear, and yet it is not wide open either. Something is highly specific, and won’t be satisfied until it is found, honored, and enacted. The mind wants clarity but the hearts way of speaking to us is at first often unclear, yet persistent and definite in some way that refuses to be satisfied with anything less than what it wants, what it is aiming at.
Shifting into the Honoring
The invitation to acquire the right piece of secluded woodland became clear, and already I found myself honoring it by searching for possible candidates for purchase. So for the next month I spent my days off driving into the rural areas in search of property without much of an idea of where to look beyond a country location, and without any specific idea of the shape and specific features required of such a property. I looked at many “for sale” candidates, but none of them would match the highly particular demands of the heart. Time passed and I kept searching on Tuesday afternoons. Then it finally happened. One Tuesday I found it, and knew it in a flash, felt it in my body with such a feel of rightness— like the feel of destiny. On the surface it was nothing to look at, although it struck me as a marvelous piece of woodlands, very secluded. But It had a dilapidated house on it, and literally tons junk to haul out of the woods, but I knew, as if having been led there from on high, that this was the place,… “this would be mine!” was the sense of it. I then set about dreaming of the possibilities abut this piece of land. I did architecture drawings, and drew up remodeling plans. I visited lumber yards and home improvement centers to get ideas about prices. I check my own finances and borrowing power, and once I felt I had the clarity and resources to make an offer.
Shifting to the Enacting
I made my decision to purchase and immediately followed through in making the official offer to purchase through my realtor. There was a little back and forth between the seller and me, and within a couple of days the cost and terms were agreed upon. Within a few weeks I had title to the property and had begun the process of cleaning up, demolishing old structures, remodeling, building new structure, and so on. I dived the project into its own phases: clean up the land, then gut the house, then build on new rooms, the wire and plumb, the sheet rock, paint, and put in new floors, paint, hardwood, and so on. Each of these projects also entailed repeatedly consulting the heart, getting new invitations, honoring them, and enacting them, as various challenges and problems presented themselves. In the larger sense of the over-all renovation and development of home and wilderness retreat center, I am still in phase of Enacting the initial Invitation.
SOME USEFUL TIPS
Protecting the Newly Forming
Any process of living or acting from the heart is a creative process. Something new is forming and trying to come into being, trying to live. The more we live creatively, the more we truly do live, and this living is attended with delight and satisfaction. It is very important to understand that anything new that is forming needs protection for awhile so that it can become established, well formed, sturdy enough to endure in the face of forces that might crush it. To protect something is to safeguard it, defend it, cover it, look after it. ‘Looking after’ is a type of caring for… . to paraphrase Gendlin, we don’t want someone to drop a load of concrete on the new green shoot, especially before it has had a chance to live and become strong. This is something I always emphasize with my psychotherapy clients, the need to protect the new developments, the new powers that are forming.
In the artist’s studio, the painting in process may be covered with a cloth, to protect it from prematurely prying eyes, from remarks that people might make that could be intrusive and come between the artists and the source from which he or she is painting. Potters place a cheese cloth over the wet clay form, to keep it moist and safe while they are away from it and it is still in process. Bakers may put a soft cloth over bread dough as it rises, to keep it from drying too quickly, and perhaps to keep flies off. The personal journal is kept away from curiously prying eyes. We need to take care of newly forming creatures, regardless of whether they be personal powers and potentials, or art, or a work project, or a new design, or a poem that is forming, or a new skill, or a new idea or vision for our life and work. Protecting means taking responsibility for sheltering it, insuring its survival, guarding against premature criticism.
You must take responsibility not to share your new idea or forming product before it is ready. You must assume responsibility for knowing when it is formed enough to be open to sharing, feedback, or whatever it is you are wanting by sharing it. If you are in a close relationship with another individual, a friend, a spouse, or a colleague you need to check within and know when it is right to share and to not share. When you do share, you need to take responsibility for letting this other person know exactly what kind of response you are open to from them. You might, for example, just want this person to to listen and not comment. You might want them to just take delight in the new thing, or revel in it with you, but not criticism or feedback. You also might be ready for feedback or helpful questions, and don’t want their confirmation about whether or not this thing seems good to them or not. Whatever it is you want by sharing, be clear about this and make sure you have taken pains to see that this other person understands. Otherwise, do not share it. Beware of any tendency to seek approval for what has genuinely come from your own heart and experiencing. You can trust, honor, and be proud of what has come from here. You can rest in the authority of your inner source. You do not need approval for it from some source other than your own heart. Thus resolve to protect your newly forming or newly formed thing until it is sturdy enough to be let out into the world, and be established there. In the three fluid phases of Invitation, Honoring, and Enactment, these words about protection are important all along the way. In a sense protecting is a way of honoring, but protecting plays a role in each of the three phases. In a sense, each phase is implicit in the others, so protecting as an aspect of honoring must accompany each phase.
Watch Out for The Inner Critic
While speaking of ‘protecting’ it is important to know that we not only need to protect this newly forming…from other people, but also from ourselves, or rather, from that aspect of our minds that is highly critical. This ‘inner critic’ is the very devil when it comes to being creative, living creatively. There is a conditioned pattern in the mind, it has a kind of inner voice and it is always telling us we aren’t good enough, or we aren’t ready to…or we don’t know enough to…or we don’t have a right to… or we aren’t creative enough to… . Whatever it says, it is incessant and itself not creative. It doesn’t tell us anything new, and it seems only to want to stop our creative movement. Don’t let it. When you sense this going on, interrupt it, ask it to come back when it has something new or creative to say. Above all, protect your new thing from this Critic as much as you would from another person who is discouraging or harshly criticizing. Books on how to write often advise the writer to get a draft finished before editing. This is because editing involves self-criticism and this stops the flow of what is forming. Let it form first, then look at it critically and ask how you might improve the piece. This is a legitimate task for the inner critic, and good advice for anyone trying to live and act from the heart. Enfold your process of living forward from the heart as if in the wings of an archangel.
ãAll Rights Reserved by C. Michael Smith, Ph.D. 2005
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