our confusing, obscuring emotions

 

 

 

 

 

In the psychological climate of our own times, our emotions are almost always
considered to be virtually identical with our personal authenticity,
and the more freely they flow, the more we are seen to be honest and
“in touch.” A person who gravitates to a mental mode of operation
is criticized for being “in his head”; when feeling dominates,
we proclaim with approval that such a person is “in his heart.”

In the Wisdom tradition, this would be a serious misuse of the term heart.
Far from revealing the heart, Wisdom teaches that the emotions 

are in fact the primary culprits that obscure and confuse it. 

The real mark of personal authenticity is not how intensely we can express

 our feelings but how honestly we can look at where they’re coming from

 and spot the elements of clinging, manipulation, and personal agendas

 that make up so much of what we experience as our emotional life today. . . .

In the teachings of the Christian Desert Fathers and Mothers, 

these intense feelings arising out of personal issues were known as the “passions,” 

and most of the Desert spiritual training had to do with learning to spot

 these land mines and get free of them before they did serious psychic damage. 

In contrast to our contemporary usage, which tends to see passion as a good thing, 

indicating that one is fully alive and engaged, the Desert tradition saw passion

 as a diminishment of being. It meant falling into passivity, into a state of being

 acted upon (which is what the Latin passio actually means), rather than clear

 and conscious engagement. Instead of enlivening the heart, 

according to one Desert Father, the real damage inflicted by the passions

 is that “they divide our heart into two.”. . .

The heart, in the ancient sacred traditions, has a very specific and

 perhaps surprising meaning. It is not the seat of our personal affective life—

or even, ultimately, of our personal identity—but an organ for the perception

 of divine purpose and beauty. . . .

 

Finding the way to where our true heart lies is the great journey of spiritual life. . . .

 

 

 

 

~ Cynthia Bourgeault

 from The Wisdom Way of Knowing: 

Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart

 art by Picasso