How the Heart Guides You

You know when you are following the Heart because you feel good. This isn’t the same feeling you have when you follow the ego. Usually, when you follow the ego, you feel good only briefly, when you get what the ego wants. This good feeling rapidly fades or some other desire arises to move you out of this state of happiness very quickly. When you follow the Heart, you feel good when you are following the Heart, not just when you achieve your goal. This is a very big difference and the most obvious sign that you are following the Heart and not the ego. For the most part, when you are following the drives and desires of the ego, you aren’t happy and content unless and until you achieve what the ego wants, and then only briefly. When you are following the Heart, the journey itself is rewarding, not just the endpoint. Every step of the way feels right. This feeling of rightness is what feels good. This doesn’t mean that every step of the journey is easy or pleasant, but the feeling of rightness makes it worthwhile. The sense of rightness is itself fulfilling and enough, whether or not you achieve the goal.nnFollowing the Heart is no guarantee that you will achieve your goal or achieve it in the way or when you would like. The ego has its own timetable and ideas about these things; however, you never know how life will unfold, if and how the Heart’s desire will be achieved, or when. You just trust the process of unfolding and enjoy the inherent fulfillment in that. Being in the flow, as alignment with the Heart, or essence, is sometimes called, is not always easy and certainly not predictable. The Heart has intentions for your life, but exactly how these will be fulfilled and if they will is not really known, not even by the Heart, because there are many variables, particularly determined by free will, which make life unpredictable. The Heart is not in control of these variables, or the journey wouldn’t be interesting. Free will is the wild card that makes life interesting. Who knows what will happen? Not even the Heart knows until it does. It plays it by ear, just as you have to. nnThe ego doesn’t like this way of living. It would rather pretend that it knows what’s going to happen and make plans to accomplish that than allow life to naturally unfold. To it, the idea of life naturally unfolding sounds too much like doing nothing, and the ego is in the business of making things happen. It doesn’t recognize that, much of the time, doing arises spontaneously from a deeper place than the ego. Instead, it takes credit for this doing, tries to take it over and shape it according to its ideas, or argues with it. Life is happening and unfolding despite the ego—not because of it—but that’s not how the ego sees it. It doesn’t acknowledge that anything other than it is present, and it causes you to question the presence of anything else as well. It throws doubts and suspicions on what is true and real and offers you its own version of happiness.nnBecause not knowing is so objectionable to the ego, it can’t tolerate being in the now. It immediately takes you out of the now and into its ideas about the now, which serve as an artificial reality. In this artificial reality, the ego pretends to know and pretends that it can control and manage life, which it can’t. Even in the face of obvious failure, it contends that with the right knowledge, formula, and tools, it can master life. So, it is constantly looking for the secret that will unlock the mystery of how to get what it wants. It tries to get what it wants by trying to get what it thinks it needs to get what it wants: If it wants success, it will try to get the education, personal connections, clothes, advice, or whatever else it thinks it needs to be successful. This is how most people spend their lives—getting what they think is necessary to get what they want. That’s the ego’s strategy for life, but it rarely leads to real happiness, unless it happens to also coincide with what the Heart wants.nnThe trouble is that you don’t always know what the Heart wants. It may not be clear, especially if you are listening to the egoic mind and its desires. If the ego’s desires are very different from the Heart’s, then what the Heart wants may confuse you, or you may simply discount it. And while the ego is often clear and consistent about what it wants (security, beauty, power, success, pleasure, fun, and money), what the Heart wants is often less tangible and more difficult to define and varies more from person to person. All egos want pretty much the same thing, but your Heart’s intentions are designed specifically for you. Furthermore, the Heart doesn’t let you know what these intentions are in words, and it doesn’t give you a plan for action ahead of time, so you don’t know what it wants until you suddenly do. The Heart lets you know what it wants suddenly, as knowing spontaneously arises in the moment. Knowing doesn’t arrive as a result of thought; it arises apart from and outside of thought. Thinking has nothing to do with this kind of knowing. nnThe Heart’s knowing is not experienced in the head as thought. It’s felt more in the body, especially in the center of the chest, as a feeling of knowing or as an ah-ha or as information that has just been downloaded into your body. You sense it, and you just know. You don’t know where it came from, and you may not be sure what to do with it, but there it is. You just know. nnWhat you do with this depends on whether you are aligned with the ego or with the Heart. You might not know what to do right away, and the ego doesn’t like that. So, if you are identified with the ego, you will probably make something up—you will decide to do something, which may or may not be aligned with the Heart. On the other hand, if you are aligned with the Heart, you will just wait until a knowing about what to do arises. It will also arise spontaneously outside of thought, and it might appear as an urge to do something. nnSo, with the Heart, you could say there are two kinds of knowings: when you know something (e.g. you know you want to be a teacher) and when you feel moved to do something about that knowing. Eventually, the Heart will inspire you to take actions that will unfold its intentions, but the ego causes you to be impatient with the Heart’s timing, so it may seem that this way of living is not even real or at least not reliable. Most people hardly give the Heart a chance. Their life unfolds from their egoic mind and its plans.