Minds Are Open Only When Hearts Are Open From the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we fall into exhausted sleep, most of us are confronted with so many challenges: social, psychological, ecological, and economic. Given the current troubles of the world economy, the harmful effects of global climate change, the occurrence of natural disasters and epidemic illnesses, and the persistence of acts of violence by individuals and groups, the world in which we find ourselves can seem like a ticking time bomb, moments away from exploding. Our interior lives, meanwhile, mirror the various dysfunctions of the external world. We’ve become experts at multitasking the possibilities of disaster. Our minds work like perpetual news channels, complete with big windows showing the main story of the moment, side windows showing stock and weather reports, and “crawlers” providing the latest, often sensational updates. Or is it the other way around? Could the trauma evident on the world stage reflect a fractured internal image—a conflict between our longing for well-being and the fear, loneliness, and despair we acquire when someone or some situation inflicts a wound upon our hearts that seems impossible to heal? As human beings, we find ourselves in an uncomfortable position of balancing thoughts, feelings, and actions over which we can acknowledge some conscious control, and mental, emotional, and behavioral habits formed by factors beyond conscious awareness. For many of us this discomfort feels as though we’re living a double life. A shadow seems to stalk us, a self behind the personality we consciously acknowledge and present to the world. Identifying and coming to terms with this shadow, for most of us, can be an unsettling experience. But the process does have its upside. A shadow is projected by some source of light, and by recognizing and acknowledging our shadow selves we can begin to trace a path toward the light. Discovering this light is a gradual and deeply personal process through which we...
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 06:35:17 +0000
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