Logical inconsistencies that the mind must reduce into a simple “either-or” can be held by the heart in “both-and”-and even more important, felt that way-without needing to resolve, close down, or protect oneself from the pain that ambiguity always brings. When properly attuned, the emotional center’s most striking capacity, lacking in the mind alone, is the ability to comprehend the language of paradox. It serves as a bridge between the mind and the body and also between our usual physical world and this invisible other realm. In the language of sacred tradition, the emotional center carries the “reconciling” force. But if the heart is awake and clear, it can directly receive, radiate, and reflect this unmanifest divine Reality. This other, more subtle world is invisible to the senses, and to the mind it appears to be pure speculation. The ancient Wisdom traditions all saw (I do not mean they theorized they directly perceived) that the physical world we take for our empirical, time-and-space-bound reality is encompassed in another: a coherent and powerful world of divine purpose always surrounding and interpenetrating it. The heart is not for personal expression but for divine perception.
It is our antenna, so to speak, given to us to orient us toward the divine radiance and to synchronize our being with its more subtle movements. 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. The heart in the ancient sacred traditions has a very specific and perhaps surprising meaning. All we need to do is keep the lens clean, the heart pure.Ĭynthia Bourgeault describes the connection between the “heart” and the ability to see God as taught in the Wisdom tradition: Consider the saying, “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” So is God. When the heart is right, Jesus says, seeing will be right.
Blessed are the pure in heart: they shall see God.
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