It's a Matter of the Heart
Every war at this point in history is a war on your heart.
Every war at this point in history is a war on your heart. Yes, yours. Every war today is a war on our collective hearts also, and ultimately even the spiritual quality known as Heart. But let’s get personal here, heart to heart. Heart usually does.
It’s a war on your heart when bombs drop, when bullets zip unfeeling through the feeling hearts of others, when countries are brought to disorder, misery and famine, when children die. Life always has its challenges, but these ongoing, escalating, artificial disasters put your heart in an untenable position: either shut down to these realities, becoming callous, ignorant and clogged, or open up to all the depths of the pain: pain of loss, pain of fear, pain of uncertainty, pain of horror, pain of torture. Ultimately, your heart also has to deal with the pain of knowing that all of this is needless, idiotic, and meaningless. And, while on a yet larger level, in the grand sweep of human evolution our hearts may move into a higher phase and we finally can outgrow this phase of our development, this is by no means a given.
About this last, we are permitted faith, however. Just, not ignorant faith. Not convenient faith. Not spiritual bypass “faith”. Not faith that arises from emotional distance.
So, by design, war places your heart in a dilemma. Grow callous and ignorant and clogged, which impairs the function of heart, or go into pain, which over time also impairs heart function.
This is no accident. This is by design. This is why certain people will always promote war, against the wills of others, and at any cost.
Rudolf Steiner is known to have said that in the next phase of human evolution, the heart will be understood as an organ of perception. It’s good to know he could see that, because if he could see that, he was peering into a possibility. Interesting, isn’t it, that we’re trained in a conception of heart in which, contrary to science, heart is basically said to be a pump made of meat with an alarming tendency toward fatal malfunctions. It’s as if someone somewhere was saying, “Hmm…how can we get people to fear and misunderstand their own hearts?” The materialistic conception is guaranteed to do so, if only because heart is simply more comprehensive in its reach than materialism can even conceive. This is precisely why heart is viewed as a threat.
So, there are many ways the war against heart plays out. It’s not always “warfare,” per se. It’s also in the ways our economies are designed. It’s in the ways we’re conditioned to live and see the world, and in the ways that everything from how we learn to how we eat and how we live and relate with one another is structured. It’s in the ways we’re encouraged to respond to wars by either ignoring them or by going immediately and conveniently into judgment, which in turn immediately and conveniently impairs heart function.
Viewed in this context, warfare as commonly understood is just another way that this deeper war, the war on Heart, plays out. The fear and misunderstanding so pervasive in contemporary society are themselves alienating to heart. Those who embrace their hearts more fully will find that heart is always trying, always trying, always trying to offer understanding, faith, beauty, and workable solutions…
…lub-Dub, lub-Dub, lub-Dub.
There is one caveat to all of this, however. Feelings are to the heart what light is to the eye. When we shut down to feelings, we shut down to our hearts. When we open up to feelings, this is the beginning of opening to Heart and its manifold capacities.
And this is why it is deemed so very necessary, whenever peace threatens, to continue the project of war, and to make living in our feelings unbearable and ultimately unthinkable.
Heart is always sovereign.
Heart is always sovereign.
Heart is always sovereign.
Heart rules. And Heart’s sovereignty derives from connection. That’s why Heart has the solutions we seek. However, Heart has capacities that go beyond materialistic modes of control. Consequently, those addicted to materialistic modes of control will stop at nothing to prevent knowledge of this reality from gaining widespread currency.