Pulse of Spirit

I invite you to join me in this meditation on our experience as human beings.

Consider the nature of the human emotional realm, starting with your own. What influences affect it? What realities does it reflect?

Did you have a recent conversation with a friend? Is there a feeling residue from that conversation in your heart? A lingering joy? Or perhaps a disturbance? That feeling residue might be part of a vibrational connection to your friend.

What did you have for breakfast? Sometimes good food, especially when prepared by a family member, can leave a feeling of well-being in the body—a warm glow. And sometimes food doesn’t agree with us, leaving an experience of struggle in the body, which affects emotions.

Do you think you might carry any feeling states from your ancestors, especially your parents? My father left this world twenty-one years ago. But sometimes I have a felt sense of him. A feeling memory of him is with me from out of the past. He is in my heart. And who knows how far back our feeling memories go?

As I look out my window, I see springtime in Colorado. Dandelions fill my backyard, and as I let my dog, Gracie, out the door, a flock of goldfinches fly up from among the yellow dandelions. Spring’s arrival brings brightness and joy to my heart.

The evening news brings tragic reports from Gaza. The reports themselves are disturbing, sometimes deliberately so. But beyond the reports, you might feel the desperation of people fleeing Rafa.

For me, I am connected to an Israeli friend who has fled the country because of the dangers imposed on the population by the conflict. I can feel what it is like for her to have her country be caught up with endless rounds of retaliation.

What does this all add up to? Is it not this? Our own human heart is not just ours. It is the feeling body for the world in which we live. Our heart is the feeling body not only for us, ourselves, but for the people who are connected to us. It is the feeling body for the natural world around us. Our emotions are not just our reactions to things outside ourselves. They are an essential part of our awareness of those things.

The vastness of the human heart’s capacity extends beyond our comprehension, reaching out into the space that surrounds us and beyond. Its scope also extends through time. We feel things that come to us from out of the past. We even feel, with anticipation, what has not yet happened, coming to us out of the future. You don’t have to be imbued with any special qualities of an empath to have this experience. It is how we are all made.

This is what I suggest. What we are experiencing in life is that we are the heart of the world in which we live. We might think of the word world as relating to our own unique sphere of function. And, most especially, we are the heart of that world. But as they say, within six degrees of separation we are connected to everyone on Planet Earth.

So try saying this:

I am the heart of the world.

Just be with that thought long enough to discern how it might be true for you.

Often with little understanding of what is happening, people are feeling what is happening in their world and attributing it to themselves. Thinking, These are my feelings. I say, Yes, they are your feelings. You are feeling them. But you are feeling them for your world. You are the heart of the world.

The flood of emotions from the world can disable a person. It can make them feel like they are drowning, especially if it is not balanced by a positive outflow of emotional energy.

The heart of the world works like the physical heart of a human being. There is a flow to the heart. And the beating of the heart oxygenates the blood in the lungs and returns the renewed blood through the blood vessels to the rest of the body.

As the heart of the world, we receive the feeling currents of Creation. If it is all working properly, the heartbeat of the Creator works through us to bring the pulse of Spirit back to Creation—to the world. Life calls us to be open to that pulse sufficiently so that the outgoing flow is in balance with the flow coming to us.

To put it in other terms, we are the heart of the world and, at the same time, we are the heart of God. As we know that, the heart of the world and the heart of God are one thing.

Reading these words, you might think this was some kind of religious belief, doctrine, or dogma—perhaps a newly fashioned one. What I am proposing is that this is exactly what we are factually experiencing. The feeling nature of the world is coming to us and we are experiencing it in all its glory, and sometimes terror. And the heartbeat of the Creator is beating within us—yes, physically, but also through our emotional and spiritual nature. Recognizing this is happening, let’s let it happen. Consciously and deliberately be the heart of the world. Pump a higher love into it. Give it the pulse of Spirit it needs!

Think of people you might name as being a realized embodiment of the heart of the world. Mother Mary is that to some people. And so is the bodhisattva, Guanyin, to others.

To South Africans, Nelson Mandela was the heart of their world. As his leadership qualities reverberated around the globe, he became the heart of the world to many more. Some see the Dalai Lama in a similar light. Others might acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as having been the heart of the world in a way that we feel even today.

When the human heart doesn’t open fully to the heart of the Creator, it is compromised. It is overrun with the feelings out of the world. And like a diseased physical heart, it lacks the ability to circulate a revitalized stream of emotional and spiritual energy to the world.

Also like the physical heart, the feeling currents of the world don’t come to us randomly and they don’t flow to us through a general tide of emotion, though it can feel that way. There are particular pathways for that flow, just as there are blood vessels that collect the blood from the body and bring it to the heart.

Likewise, the fresh flow of creative Spirit from us is carried through specific channels we create for it in our life. The revitalized blood from the heart doesn’t just flood the body randomly. It flows through the blood vessels that are there for its use. That is how the whole body is nourished. In fact, the heartbeat begins in the embryo by six weeks, before there is even a physical heartbeat or blood vessels.

For us, our specific connections with people and circumstances are our opportunity to allow the pulse of a higher love to nourish the world. As we allow that to happen, we establish pathways for the pulse of Spirit to move emotional and spiritual currents to our world.

I am the heart of the world. 

We all have the opportunity to be a realized embodiment of that reality, no matter what anyone else is doing. And still, when a person knows that to be true for themselves, they make that opportunity explicit and immediately available to others. Imagine if Nelson Mandela walked into the room. Or Mother Mary. Or Jesus of Nazareth. You might experience yourself in a different way.

You and I can be people who live the experience of being the heart of the world. We can make this knowledge available to the people around us.

We might imagine a world in which all humankind knows that it is the heart of the world. And one day, that vision will come true. But today, something else is happening. Unconscious human beings are often perpetuating tragedy and agonizing over what is coming to them from out of the world. They are not allowing the heartbeat of the Creator to pulse through them, to bring a renewing creative current to their world. So, as we become consciously aware of our role as the heart of the world, this is part of what we become aware of. We feel the tragedy they are caught up in, and their agony. I’m not suggesting we should get caught up in those feelings ourselves. I am simply acknowledging that is part of what we become aware of.

The world, as it is, needs the power of people who become aware of these things. Together, we can be one heart of one world—the beating heart of humanity, known in miniature by us, beating in rhythm through you and me. That great collective heart brings renewal to the sleeping heart of humankind.

That might seem to be a pipedream. But scientific studies report how people’s physical heartbeats can entrain with each other, and so can their emotional experience. Choir singers synchronize their heartbeats. When lovers hold hands, their heartbeats and their breathing synchronize.

Sufis believe that when they participate in a Sufi ritual—a dhikr—their hearts “beat as one” as they remember Allah. After placing heart monitors under the garments of Sufi dancers, scientists can now verify that this is literally true.

Knowing that I am the heart of the world, let me entrain with all others who know this too. Let us beat with divine power as one heart, awakening all humankind.