Heart First Experience
And the Cyclical Nature of Being
Post nine of fourteen, in section About Awakening
We live in a very mind-focused society. The mind reifies experience and creates fixed ways of seeing and experiencing the world. One of the symptoms of this type of society is that people tend to believe they have an objective perspective on the world or reality.
There’s actually a huge range of assumptions that modern society’s understanding of the world is built on that are wildly far away from the true nature of reality, and to see through this, you need to be open to a more heart-centred way of being.
The mind errs towards being like an on and off system; awareness can be very black and white – something either is this or that, it is or it isn’t.
The heart in comparison is more inclusive of experience. It allows you to connect with things that are more nebulous and uncertain. Everything can become a multi-dimensional spectrum that is in some state of flow or flux.
With practice, you can learn to drop into your heart more often and more deeply. This allows you to interact with more of the world in an open, resonant, connective way of being rather than being purely in a more rational mode.
World Models
Part of the difference between these two ways of operating is the world models they create.
Minds create a world model based on a directional line; the way it makes sense of time and experience is that you are continually moving in the direction of something.
People are expected to be consistent in a very linear way – to show up for work at the same time, to have the same level of productivity, to want the same things from one day to the next – and ideally, you are always improving your circumstances because this is what makes you feel better.
When you see a linear graph, a downward trend tends to look and feel bad, so you try to avoid it.
The heart in comparison is more cyclical. It is more in tune with nature and a natural flow of experience. It presents a different way of being that is closer to what life is like.
When people are connected to the cyclical way of being of the heart, they can move more freely through the different seasons of experience. People aren’t going anywhere necessarily; they’re just present with what is here in this moment and are able to accept its place in the wholeness.
Each of the ‘seasons’ of being has a place in the whole. Every moment has a part to play in the story, from the excitement of spring to the openness of summer to the death of autumn to the dark of winter.
This also creates a more inclusive way of being where people are able to be present with a wider range of experience because they aren’t judging certain things as good and bad and shutting them out if they don’t like them.
It’s possible to be aware that the current season you are in is exactly that, just a season, and you can create more space for it to move through experience without fear that you will get stuck there.
In order for this to work on an embodied, experiential level rather than just a conceptual level, you have to embrace connecting with whatever is present in experience without being judgemental about it.
This includes developing the capacity to be present with the darkness and challenge of life and not rejecting it or turning away from it.
When this capacity to be present with the darkness has been developed, you can understand that things like anger, depression, sadness, and all aspects of experience can be there to give you an important message in life. It’s possible to make space to listen to the underlying important thing without either getting sucked into the emotion’s story or undermining the emotional feeling.
From this place, there is a sense of respect and sacredness held for all types of experience.
True Nature
One of the realisations of Buddhist mindfulness practices is emptiness. One of the outcomes of this realisation is the understanding that the way that you look at the world affects what you understand the world to be. It’s a realisation that holds a huge amount of value in it, but it’s important to recognise that this is not the whole truth.
By this, I mean, a realisation of emptiness can open doors to whole new ways of looking and being in the world, but it doesn’t mean that things don’t also have an essence or an object permanence to them. The way you look at or understand a car coming towards you is not going to affect whether or not you get run over by it, for example.
The idea that everything is completely empty of inherent existence comes from a very mind- or awareness-first perspective on experience.
A more inclusive version of this realisation, which requires coming from a more heart-centred place, is interdependent origination. Rather than assuming that experience arises in awareness and therefore by changing your relationship to mind you can change everything about your experience, it assumes that everyone is a body-heart-mind-soul where all of these aspects are arising interdependently together. Everything is arising interdependently both within each person’s individual eco-system and with how that connects to others and the world.
It is interdependent because it recognises that everything relies on everything else; it is a complex eco-system of different things arising at once, and if you change one part of the system, it will impact all other parts of the system, rather than being linearly dependent, i.e. one thing depending on another thing.
The depths of this interdependent nature run incredibly far. By connecting to it, you are simultaneously embracing the simplicity and complexity of life; you are becoming present with whatever is in experience in this moment while also recognising that this moment is connected to all other moments in time.
If you really lean into this world view – that everything relies on everything else – cause and effect completely collapse, and this opens up a radical sense of compassionate presence. Experience and the Universe couldn’t be any other way than they are now; everything is in its right place, which gives you more capacity and willingness to meet experience, whatever it is, without turning away from the painful or difficult parts.
This sense of compassionate presence is the base that this more cyclical nature of being is built on.
The Seasons
The best way I have found to represent or model this is through the seasons. I find it beautiful and pleasing how our way of being can be described in a way that it is a reflection of the nature that we are inextricably a part of. Each of the seasons corresponds to a different part of our experience.
While nature is more fixed in the way it moves through the seasons, we have a bit more flexibility to move in and out of different seasons at different times. We aren’t on a fixed schedule; however, I have found that cultivating some kind of balance between the different seasons tends to lead to much more presence and connection.
Here are the different seasons that it is possible to be in.
Spring – Mind: Growth, curiosity, play, creativity
Summer – Heart: Connection, enjoyment, authenticity
Autumn – Body: Cutting away what needs to die, destruction, protection
Winter – Soul: Journeying deeply in, darkness, visioning
One of the things that keeps people away from this mode of being is that people typically only operate in one or two of the seasons. They have learned certain ways of being and try to apply them to everything in life.
Through awakening, you can learn to operate more freely in the different ways of being. You can open up your system to more and different parts of yourself, which gives you more freedom in how you experience or respond to something.
When people get stuck using a limited model of the world, it can create a lot of suffering. People tie themselves in knots because they can’t respond to a situation in the most effective way. Developing your capacity for compassionate presence means that you can connect more openly with a wider range of experience. You are learning to start from where you are, without needing experience to be a different way, and giving yourself lots of options of where you could go from there.
It can be really helpful to think about which seasons you gravitate towards and which ones you avoid and see if you can find some more spaciousness around this. You can increase your ability to be in a wider range of seasons by breaking through the barriers and limitations that are keeping you in fixed ways of being.
Most modern cultures, including Western capitalism and a lot of spiritual practice, focus heavily on spring and summer ways of being. They are trying to create a world where everything is always growing and feeling good. This creates a very limited way of being that causes tension, restriction, and suffering.
Autumn and winter, in comparison, don’t get as much air time in most people’s experience. People are terrible at saying no and getting rid of stuff that doesn’t serve them anymore. It’s very rare to have deep hibernating rest and the kind of deep visioning and thinking that arises from the winter state. People are too busy doing new stuff and ‘being productive’. They are expected to always be on in the capitalist society.
I am a huge believer in cutting away the things in life that aren’t serving you any more. I am also a huge believer in deep rest and introspection. Taking time to really listen to what is coming through in your inner world and dedicating energy to reflection and attunement with yourself – not with any expectation of what state you should be in or something you should be achieving with (a lot of meditation practice is actually spring and summer) – but with a radical sense of being willing to be present with whatever is there.
Example of the Seasons
An example of these different ways of being can be shown through a simple meditation instruction.
The classic instruction of ‘letting go’ can mean completely different things from each of the different ways of being.
Spring – Mind: Letting go of the controlling mind and allowing yourself to be open, curious and playful
Summer – Heart: Letting go of ideas of right and wrong and connecting with the sincere emotional reality of what is here, whatever that is
Autumn – Body: Recognising what needs to be let go of and doing what needs to be done to allow it to pass through or remove it from the system
Winter – Soul: Letting go of the need to be doing anything out in the world and journeying deeply inwards to the deepest parts of you
None of these is a better or worse way to let go of things; it just depends on the context and scenario that you find yourself in.
It’s useful to have this meta-perspective that there are different modes of being. And what is important is increasing the capacity to be present so that you are able to act in wise and skilful ways for the benefit of yourself and others in a wider range of circumstances.
