The heart is held as the key to psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual health and well-being. Love, located at the center of the heart, is considered the most potent of all the healing salves.
In the Basque tradition, and elsewhere, the condition of the heart is critical to giving and receiving love, and having healthy relationships with self, family, community, and the Earth.
The heart is viewed as an organ of vision and the true source of humanity. Heart work is a daily practice that keeps human beings available to the energy of love.
Anatomically, the heart has four chambers. In the Healer’s Way, each chamber has a specific function:
The Full Heart is the home of full engagement, reliability, commitment, and responsibility.
The Strong Heart is the source of courage, the authentic self, and the capacity to take a stand.
The Open Heart is where acceptance, receptivity and reciprocity resides.
The Clear Heart helps us to be wise, trusting and discerning in our choices.
Unresolved inner and outer conflicts set the heart to its default settings. Fear and pride are the major sources of conflict.
Half-heartedness is caused by burdens and obligations. To restore the Full Heart, we must recommit, renegotiate, or retire obligations that are no longer life-giving.
Weak heartedness results from the fear of being in our own power and telling our truth. We have “swallowed our tongue” rather than given voice to what is true for us. Facing and addressing our fears remedies this condition.
Closed heartedness signals where we have unresolved anger and resentment. Resignation and cynicism are also symptomatic of the choice to close the heart and the mind. The remedy is to face conflict and seek resolution with a commitment to do no harm. Practicing forgiveness also reopens the heart.
The Doubting Heart is connected to fear of making a mistake, feeling not good enough, and mistrusting ourselves and others. The remedy is strengthening self-trust through affirmation and recognition of the power of our inner resources and the positive choices we have made.
We do not see or hear clearly when the state of the heart is half, weak, closed or confused. These distortions give rise to myriad psychological and sociological conditions: low self-esteem, narcissism, loneliness, prejudice, separation, aggression, and nihilism to name a few. It is easy to conclude that the default states of the heart are human nature. They are, in fact, a result of a spiritual disease that affects the heart and distorts our thoughts and behaviours.
With the heart in such distressed states, optimal health for individuals, families and communities is elusive. Instead, the social disorders we face every day accelerate, leading to serious malaise and spiritual decline.
The Four Chambered Heart program includes specific practices for strengthening, opening, softening, and deepening the heart to correct these dysfunctions so that we can focus on what has heart and meaning in our lives and in our world.
Time: 9am-2pm Pacific / 12pm-5pm Eastern via Zoom videoconference
Fee: $350 US
For more information or to register for this program click here and you’ll be redirected to The Four Directions website.