Heart-Knowing vs Mind-Knowing

I invite you to a podcast I’m co-hosting at 6pm TODAY. I speak with my friend Michelle Scheibner about her book Hush, which talks about family secrets, how families shape us and how we can come out of the drama into more truth and clarity. It’ll be a live and interactive podcast via LinkedIN audio and I invite you to join us there at 6pm Eastern today, whatever time it will be for you. If you’re not on LinkedIN you can sign up in a moment via the link.

Most of the exploration around what’s happening in our world takes place in the mind. It’s analysis and conjecture about the complex system we’re part of. It’s hard to bring it down into the heart, certainly been a long challenge for me.

We learn about the heart in relationship, crucially in our earliest days and years of our lives. Despite the very best intentions of our parents, in our fragmented time, many and perhaps most us didn’t receive get the deep welcome and sense of belonging that our childhood hearts wanted. As a result we often feel dislocated and homeless. It’s a social problem, not just our particular problem, though we feel it personally.

The heart is another way to understand.

I’m not an expert in the heart, just a very ordinary person who’s struggled with coming to his own. I don’t think experts are what are needed because every person has their own way. The idea of experts inclines us to think they know, rather than that we, as individals, do.

Coming to the heart, which is a synonym for wholeness and integration, is the subject of spiritual practices.

The practice that’s helped me most with this is Dyad Meditation. This is a name for a many different forms that involve speaking what’s true to another person in a pair. I do it daily because it helps me be real. I’m often stuck in mind myself, even though I write about imagining I know.

I’m hosting Dyad Meditation practice each Monday at noon Eastern in July and you’re very welcome to join me, work with another or two if you’d like. Register here.

Dyad is from a Greek word for pair.

Here’s what it looks like from the outside. Two people, in person or online, sit facing each other. They take timed turns speaking and listening. One person gives a prompt or a question and then is silent and attentive when the other responds, then they switch. It’s very different from a regular conversation because each person stays in their own lane. They don’t comment or refer to the other person’s sharing. This helps us go more deeply into our own stuff.

Being witnessed in this way is rare. Since another is right there and silent, there’s no place to hide. We’re seen for ourselves rather than for what we’re doing or for our performance. The being seen by another helps to open up into the moment. It helps bust isolation. Over time, it can help with the sense of connection and belonging, trusting self. It can help build heart.

It helps us build our internal neural networks to connect with the outside world and belong. Many of us, myself included, experienced difficulty with the early attachment that helps us feel safe, secure and belonging in the world. The being witnessed and witnessing another builds reciprocity in our relationships. It helps us weave ourselves into the world.

There are hundreds of people offering Dyads all over the world. You don’t have to be alone with your spiritual searching and working. You’re invited to experience it on Monday at noon eastern.

Maybe I’ll see or hear you today on the podcast around family secrets and early attachment. Or on Monday at noon Eastern for the Dyad Practice.

More on heart knowing and exploration soon.

Warmly,
Andrew