When I'm out of balance, I allow my head to take over. Given authority, my head jumps into the driver's seat of my life and we take off like a shot. When my heart is solely in charge, we sit still, idling, feeling stuck, sometimes overly emotional.
But when in balance, I ask my heart what she wants and then engage my head to work out the details. My heart knows where we want to go and my head knows how to get there. Often this is an act of faith because I was taught to honor my intellect more than my heart.
I like how Eugene Peterson puts it in The Jesus Way:
When we engage in an act of faith we give up control, we give up sensory
confirmation of reality; we give up insisting on head-knowledge as our
primary means of orientation of life.
So how do we learn to trust our hearts more and engage our heads in working out the details?
By being quiet. By relaxing. By creating a peaceful place so we can hear what our hearts have to say. Getting out of our routines, getting away from the hustle and bustle, stepping off the merry-go-round of life, as one of my wise clients likes to say. Taking time for ourselves to listen to our hearts allows us to reconnect with our inner wisdom and intuition -- and it helps us re-establish a cooperative relationship between our hearts and our heads.
Looking for a break from your busy life? I've got a retreat planned for the Fall -- a great opportunity to listen to your heart and listen to what the natural world has to say to you. Check it out.