Hello dear reader, 

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The issue of the relationship between Mind & Heart goes probably back hundreds of years and it seems that depending on the era one was prevailing more over the other.

I grew up in an environment that you 'were' one or the other. Usually women were the ones that were following their hearts (like men did not have one) and they were considered as 'hysterics', 'over emotional', 'illogical'; men were the logical ones who would make decisions and base their lives on pure rational. Of course, I was torn between those two, not quite understanding the  distinction and not fully fitting in any of  the two. I saw couples and families based on that model who were repeating it with their children. The expectations were all there and the risk to break from it was very high!

But what is Mind and what is Heart? and why do we have the tendency to emphasise their distinction and separation?
Intentionally , I am not focusing on the biology of the brain (and body) here which can be  found in the literature of the right and left parts of the brain. I am more interested in how their relationship manifests in our consciousness, psychology and behaviour.

What we call Mind (rational mind) is that part of us which has the purpose of keeping us safe and maintaining our survival. It is like a guard voice that will always tell us 'dont do that, it is too dangerous', ' be careful with this, it is too risky', 'dont make the move, you dont have all the information', 'dont follow the unknown' etc. It is the same function that continuously calculates danger around us and 'saves' us from being hit by a car or hurting ourselves. It is a very cautious voice which struggles and more likely rejects anything that it does not understand. 

Heart, on the the other hand, is everything to do with our feelings, with excitement, with the 'butterflies in stomach' sense, with our curiosity and passions, with exploring new adventures and making discoveries, with getting lost in the wilderness, with love and connection.

I am sure it is very obvious how different and separate they seem to be and feel and there is no doubt that anyone would feel stuck between this dynamic, really struggling to make a decision based on both of them. It almost feels that there is an archetypal battle there between the masculine and the feminine, the risk and the safety, the known and the unknown, almost between life and death (one ensures life, the other risks death).

But does it have to be a battle? 
What maintains the battle is that they think of each other as enemies and, thus, they do not allow themselves to get to know and understand each other for what they are. Feeling safe, having a specific sense of self, being concrete, having a structure and stability in life are fundamental human needs that want to be fulfilled. It is also in our nature to feel and allow all our feelings to be expressed, to be curious and get to know new things, to explore and go a step further into ourselves and towards others, to be intimate and make connections with others. 

When we focus on one over the other then the other is being squashed and we are losing the benefits we can have from it. 
We dont get into relationships because we are afraid of the unknown, of intimacy, of challenging that stable sense of self of who we are and who we are not, what we like and dont like, how we want our lives to be etc. at the expense of not fully living our feelings, ourselves and our enthusiasm of the unknown, not getting closer to someone different, not learning something new about ourselves, others and the world. It is no surprise that all this is happening within a capitalistic context where everything has to be predictable, all the 'risks' have to be calculated and the outcomes have to be concrete, known and measurable.

If we were to only follow our heart then we would  never have stability, we would change places as soon as we fall in love, we would constantly move into the unknown and possibly burn our bodies out, we would create but with no focus  on any outcome and we would follow whatever shines in front of our eyes wherever it takes us.

Both Mind &Heart have their benefits and they constitute functions of our being. Permanently choosing one over the other is almost impossible, it is like saying that one prefers to live in a place where there isa always day and never night (or vice versa). 'Putting a lid' on our feelings and passions allowing only the smoke to come through, will give us safety that there is no messiness in the kitchen but it will never give us  the pleasure to explore what would have happened if we allow 'it' to come out and be experienced. 

The question that comes up then is how  do we integrate them? How can we make most of both of them that will serve us towards a life that we want to live?
One of our main struggles in today's global consciousness comes from the fact that we have forgotten that we are travellers, that we are here to experience, not just to achieve, that moving on and forward does not necessarily mean move deeper within. One can continuously achieve outcomes and goals and can maintain a rich (materialistically) status but that alone does not provide the feeling of deep fulfilment that the sense of 'aimless, exploratory playing' can provide. 

Just being with what is (Heart & Mind) will always take us home within to where wholeness and fulfilment live.

With love,
​Panos









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Hello,


The night before I had my motorcycle stolen just right outside my house. In shock I realised the next morning that the lock wad been broken and the bike  was missing.
I was feeling a mixture of feelings anger and sadness for the thief having taken something that did not belong to them, anger for myself for not bringing the bike into the front garden and for not buying a second lock, sadness and grief for the loss, helpless that I wouldn't be able to afford to buy another one etc. 

To my surprise I also noticed a sense of relief;
I was always afraid of bikes and my worst fear was that I would have an accident that would leave me on a wheelchair for the rest of my life. From that point of view that fear and angst was removed from my life. 
The bike has been for me a companion, the mean to save money and time and travel independently during my day, a sense of freedom that I can travel anytime.

As I like to reflect and learn from almost everything that I am experiencing,  I continued to reflect on my feelings throughout the day between and after phone calls to the police and the insurance company. I always had a difficultly in owning material goods, I felt 'it was not for me', 'I am too spiritual to rely on materials', 'I should not have earthy attachments' 'do I deserve to have them' and so on. By having the bike taken  so abruptly  from me I was able to reflect on the 'empty' space that it has left in me and my life.
I saw clearly how I had always treated that bike; with fear, like it was never meant to stay with me, like it would be taken away from me sooner or later; the energy that I was relating to it (our field) was one of insecurity, uncertainty, almost willingness of letting go of it at any point.  Then the reflection became bigger and reached the point where I realised once again how precariously I have been living my life; minimum security, fear of reliance on building anything by myself and others. 
I have experienced similar incidents in the past where the pain was excruciating about losing something I loved and havng to learn a lesson through pain. 

And yet these experiences and reflections always teach me about the essence of (my) existence. The bike needed (or even I wished for it) to be taken away from me for good reasons; to learn to appreciate every single thing I have and surround it with respect and love (including my own life!), to not to be afraid to own and enjoy something that I like and enjoy despite the fact that one day might disappear from me and to be reminded that on earth protection is still necessary.

We are all one and connected and I know that for me to be reminded and learn, there had to be (at least) one person (thief) who have not learned to respect other people's property, efforts to buy it etc and who more likely do not respect themselves either (e.g. living with the fear of being caught one day).
I forgive them and wish for them to learn their lessons sooner rather than later so we can all live in a more peaceful and blissful environments; so we can live more whole embracing all our aspects as opposed to having to act on them.

We can all struggle with challenging experiences and feelings and that is  ok. 
At these moments our vulnerability comes out, we feel a crack in our 'whole', 'balanced' sense of reality and of ourselves.  
What we really need is to be looked after, loved, embrace the painful feelings and not to be judged for what we have not done and be. This will come later as part of the lesson. 
Nobody wants to be unhappy and miserable;  when people find themselves in these situations is because they do not know a way out from it and they are fighting it because they lose sight of what they can learn from it..


With Love,
​Panos