A friend asked me if I wanted to go to sound healing with him the other night.

I said that I had been writing and was a bit too much in my head for that to suit me.

He replied, “Oh, you poor thing.”

As if being in my head was a bad thing.

And I am sure there is not a person out there who has been to either a yoga or meditation class and not heard the term “monkey mind.” As in “still your monkey mind.” Or been told to let your thoughts go.

Or been told to not be so much in my head.

Now, I am not a meditation expert. But I am an expert thinker. I was completely head-oriented for about 38 years. And I am going to say there is nothing wrong with being in the head.

As long as we are in balance with our heart.

When my friend offered his sympathy for me being in my head, I was shocked. I told him I loved being in my head, not because I was feeling defensive but because I understand the balance between my head and my heart, and like being in either as it suits me.

And so, as a complete non-meditation expert, I am going to offer a suggestion that came into my head one day.

I may not be the first person to think of this, but I am sure I have never been told this in all my yoga and meditation classes, courses or journeys.

Instead of trying to still the mind, try tuning in to the song of the heart.

Here is my explanation on how to do this.

Try visualizing yourself actually in your heart. Imagine yourself as energy in your body, then imagine all that energy is centered in your heart. Feel the energy of your heart chakra. Pretend to feel your heart space until you actually do. Put “heart meditation” into YouTube and see if anything resonates.

Whatever way works for you, or gets you started down the road, the heart is a magical place.

To truly tune in to the song of the heart is to enter a place of zero separation. No dichotomy. A place where you can recognize the value of the head, without judgment.

Okay, so we have probably all heard the idea: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience—we are spiritual beings having a human experience. I am going to suggest that this is true, to a point. Or actually, this is completely true, until you reach a point beyond which it is not. Hang in with me here.

You may or may not be familiar with the idea of the metaphorical pendulum having to swing the other way before it can find balance in the center.

I think that this often happens when people set off on a spiritual search. They go from being absorbed in the human world to leaping, boots and all into the spiritual world, believing whole heartedly that they are really just souls in a body. Obviously, extreme spiritual seekers have taken this to the nth degree—celibacy, fasting, denial of “all worldly goods.”

Sound familiar? Monks, priests, traditional yogis.

But what if there is another field, out beyond the discovery of yourself as a spiritual being, where you no longer deny or repress your physical self, but re-embrace it and form an amazing union of body, mind and soul?

What if your monkey mind was an amazing gift, an integral part of the reason being human is so damn cool? What if we are doing our souls a disservice by rejecting your mind, or indeed your body? What if being whole is not in finding your spirituality and purifying your mind and body, but in embracing and reveling in all three?

I would suggest that if you truly immerse yourself in the song of the heart, you may actually be able to bypass some of the spiritual bypassing!

That instead of becoming a possibly ungrounded spiritual seeker, you can find a path to your soul that does not neglect the body and the mind. Going to your soul through the song of your heart ensures that the path just leads to a deeper sense of you, rather than any disconnected sense of the spiritual being “out there.”

And so, next time a teacher suggests that your monkey mind is less than perfect, tune into the song of your heart and forgive them, forgive yourself.

The song of the heart sings of nothing but love for all of you.

r~

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

~

~

Author: Tui Anderson

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: flickr, flickr