Some Darker Regions of the Heart: Infatuation, Obsession, Jealousy

So how does infatuation start? How does one get obsessed with someone else? Is it desperation? Is it fantasy? What starts us down that slippery, algae covered pathway? Perhaps it's when your heart is broken so utterly that you feel completely obliterated. Your heart has crashed and burned into charcoal and ashes and so little is left that any trace of liquid is enough to soothe the suffering thirst of the profoundly lonely heart. The mind tries to help and gives the heart whatever liquid it can find, even if it's dark, murky and possibly infected with poisons, parasites and malignant bacteria. When the heart drinks from these infested unsafe waters, despite it's better judgement, before the heart is completely healed and whole, then feverish infections can arise and grip the heart mercilessly. And since the heart isn't healed the mind tries to put together the broken pieces with fantasies, imagining what it was like before and what it could be like again with the new person of desire. But since the heart is not fully functional yet, it can't really conquer the fears and hold the fresh heart energy needed to grow a new and healthy relationship.

If you've formed one of these misshapen, lopsided (one-sided and therefore by definition unrequited/unrequitable) relationships, what do you do with it? Can you make it healthy again? Some of the time, the answer can be yes. However, perhaps it's worth backing up a step or two and asking "How do you know you have an unhealthy, malformed, lopsided relationship? Ask yourself this: "Does your heart hurt at any time when you think of this person but you can't find a way to relieve the pain?" Probably talking about these feelings would be the first way to lance this "boil" of pent up misdirected "bad blood" energy in the relationship. If you can't lance this boil yourself, perhaps a (professional or even a trusted and skilled amateur) third party's assistance may need to be enlisted. Some of these heart pains might be in the form of negative fantasies, jealousy and fears in various forms.

If the "lancing" doesn't clear the built-up tension and the feverish infection of one-sided obsession continues (eg: you can't stop thinking about the person but they don't feel the same way about you) then what do you do? Well, if you listen to Shakespeare, the outcome usually is as follows: Everyone dies in melodramatic and sometimes grisly ways! ;) So what does a more evolved/enlightened being do? I was just listening to buddhist dhamma talks today about finding ways to stop clinging to feelings, etc. in order to short-circuit our suffering. While this is all well and good, some feelings can't be ignored without very real consequences like hunger and thirst which when prolonged lead to ShakespeareLand.

A first good step though, is suggested by the buddhists: Insight and clear thinking. In other words, you need to get a grip on the reality of the situation and at the very minimum to recognize the denial of truth that is allowing the "infatuation/infection" to continue. The brightness and contrast need to be adjusted until all is visible in stark relief and fantasy has been reduced to a minimum. Sometimes a trusted individual can give you this kind of insight or at least point the way to the lightswitch to the bulb that has to go off in your brain to see this dark part of your heart clearly. Sometimes it is an event which will trigger this insight. It is only with this initial illumination, however dim, that you can go forward.

Unfortunately there may be some side effects when this happens. For instance, I have experienced embarrassment externally and anger internally. The anger is primarily for forgetting the buddhist truth of "letting go" and allowing myself to let the delusion continue as long as it has. The embarrassment is because, though I'm working on raising my humility level, I still don't like being a fool. But I hope that fools are needed as much as, if not more than, wise men in some cases! ;)

So once you've had this epiphanic realization what can you do if it isn't possible to "make" (as opposed to break) a one-sided infatuation-based relationship which you know to be unhealthy? How do you break out of it? The only intuition I have at the moment is that you must find a way to sediment over the schisms in your heart. Mozart will tell you that "Cosi Fan Tutte" and others will remind you that there are PlentyOfFish.com in the seas not to mention enlisting the help of ol' Craig...

But if you're not an opera fan, fisher or a barfly, what else can you do? Distraction isn't a bad technique until enough sediment builds up to cover the heart faults, just be careful of excessive/obsessive reliance on distractions or other substances (egs: food, drink, smoke, etc.) in the meantime.

Physical activity is also always a good idea. Especially, or at least in my case, activities that involve copious, vigourous sweating, shouting and smacking of things! ;) Though less directly assertive, I'm even thinking about taking the yoga and ballroom dancing classes I've always talked about! ;)

Ultimately, it's important to not hide yourself away. Though the light may be strong, and may cause you to blink, it's important to come out of the Platonic cave in order to see the shadows for what they really are and to meet other fellow humans. Now, if I would just follow my own advice! ;)

Closing caveat: Remember, I don't profess to be an expert in any of this. I'm trying my best to take a clear-headed/hearted look at some of the things I see and feel. If you try these ideas on at home, please keep in mind that they may not fit. You are welcome to return them for a full refund! ;)

From the Ear to the Heart => H+"ear"+T

Why is it when you hear an exquisite piece of music you can sometimes begin to cry? How is it that hearing someone's laughter makes you smile? How does the beating of drums fill you with courage? What is the mechanism at play here? I think the explanation is surprisingly simple and more intuitive than you might think. It's simply because the ear has a direct connection to the heart.

Have you ever tried to watch a modern day movie without the soundtrack? How does it feel? Why is it unnerving? Did you know that movie composers actually refer to the soundtrack of a movie as the "emotion track"? While it is fun to let the music and emotions wash over you, it is also interesting to observe your own reactions to certain portions of a movie and then try actively listening to what's going on in the soundtrack. When was the last time you watched an Alfred Hitchcock movie? Do you remember/notice how he typically has very austere soundtracks, rarely punctuated by anything except of course famous "sound quotes" like from the famed "Psycho" scene? His use of sound serves to give you a much more uneasy and creepy movie (emotion) experience.
Interestingly, in contrast to this, visual media (eg: TV, Film, etc.) because they are processed through the eyes go directly to the brain and often bypass the heart. It is only with the soundtrack/soundscape/laughtrack that they make the heart connection.

With this mechanism in mind, it reassures me to hear that music downloads have finally surpassed porn downloads on the internet. I hope this shows that people are finally becoming sufficiently enlightened, even if it is only on a subconsious level, to realize that they must feed their hearts first. With any luck, these music downloads will not serve only as fast-food for the heart, but will nourish and open people's hearts and minds to all types of music and ways of being. Perhaps it will also help strengthen our hearts in order to fight the fear that is so popularly propagated by the "bad news (porn)" mongers.

Here's a quick experiment you can try at home:
1) Turn on a TV/Video and mute the sound for 60 seconds.
2) Unmute the Video but close your eyes for 60 seconds (no peeking!).
3) Which was easier? Watching TV/Video (#1) or listening to the soundtrack only (#2)
My bet is #2 will be easier/more comfortable. This is a secret that radio producers (and other authorities) know and understand only too well. Do you ever wonder how, if TV is meant to be such a "powerful, new" medium, why "old fashioned" radio is still so readily accessible/available? When politicians say they plan to capture the hearts and minds of the people, that's what they use: Radio and TV, in THAT order of importance! The heart is more powerful than the mind!
I just wish they'd bring those lovely old (or even new) radio dramas back to the air! :D

Divorce: The New Heart Disease

Why is there such an epidemic of divorce in the modern world these days? Are people, women in particular, getting smarter and simply not putting up with the typical “crap” (ie: the difficulties of day-to-day living with any other human being in close quarters) of marriage any longer because they can conceive of other “better” possibilities? Is it this “overgrowth”/”imbalance” of mental energy that is overcoming/overwhelming our capacity for heart energy. We are encouraged to be mentally ambitious and always think of the “bigger picture”. Well, what about the smaller picture? The picture at home, right around you each day? Do we let your hearts be ambitious and try to find things to love in your surroundings?

My aunt has many wise stories, but this is a good one. When my uncle was alive, I jokingly asked her how she could stand his loud snoring each night as he slept. For this next part to make heart-sense, you need to know that my uncle had had several heart bypass operations by this stage in his life. She told me quite simply, that she loved to hear him snore, because it meant that he was still alive. Looking back, I remember when my children were just babies and how I would awaken at night in a panic because I couldn’t here them breathing. Once I was able to ascertain that they were indeed still breathing, my heart could rest once more.

When your heart fills so deeply with venom, that even the sound of your partner chewing makes you angry or annoyed, a mental shift and more importantly a heart shift (a change of heart) needs to happen. Sadly, this shift doesn’t happen for many people until they or their partner is seriously injured or near death. That is commonly when heart/mind shifts can most easily occur. If you think of it geologically, it makes sense. When there is an eruption/earthquake, it is easier to shift things than if everything is still and unmoving filled with intertia.

As an exercise, imagine that you and/or your partner is near to death (No, don’t imagine killing them!  ) or gravely ill. Perhaps, think of an end-of-the-world scenario if that helps. What would you say to them? What things would you get off your chest to make amends? Where do the hidden deposits of guilt lie? What knots of resentment, revenges and angers are harboured in your heart and do they seem important now that the end is near? If one or other of you did die, what unfinished matters of the heart might you need to come back to resolve, even as a ghost? Perhaps it’s just as easy to let all that stuff go even though no one is actually dying. Give it a try and let me know what happens.

The Human Heart

The word for “heart” is so different in so many languages: egs: German: Herz, Hungarian: Sziv, French: Coeur, Spanish: Corazon, etc. but we hardly know how to use our hearts.

In Western European/North American culture there is a great focus on having a very strong and well-developed Mind and Body, sometimes even having a good soul, but what about developing (eg: exercising/feeding) your heart? And yet on some level we recognize the importance of certain “heart” actions, even though we marvel at how “heroes” could have acted this or that way. We understand how amazing it is when an 11-year-old girl scrambles out of a partly crushed SUV containing her struggling mother and 2 siblings up a low-hanging tree branch after falling into a rushing river from a washed away bridge to call 911 in the darkness of night, and yet we are amazed and left wondering if we could ever manage to do something like that ourselves. We are amazed and shake our heads when we hear of how war heroes stupidly run headlong into enemy machine guns to rescue fallen comrades, uncomprehending that we would do the same ourselves in the same situation.

So what drives people to these acts of bravery? It’s a kind of “heart-energy” called courage. It is the power of the heart to fight “Fear”. As an example, think for a moment about the war hero example above. Thinking of the situation from a logical “mind” point of view, it is an implicitly illogical, irrational and “stupid” act. Faced with impossible odds of success, why would you risk everything, for very little gain? Now think of it from a “heart” point of view. Your heart is oppressed by great fear, and the sympathy/empathy which rises in you when you hear/imagine your comrade injured and alone, also in great fear. And immediately you “know” with all your heart that all that matters is that you go to your comrade, your brother/sister in arms, no matter what and you must help to fight their fear/pain, by joining them, even if it means your own death. We’ve heard it all before, it’s obvious, but somehow we tend to want to miss the point. Once you’ve overcome Fear using your heart-energy, (in this case manifesting as Courage), life and death are immaterial. There is nothing to fear and you feel/are invincible, though your body may die.

Another aspect of this heart-energy that is revealed in the above example, is how it is possible to “know” with all your heart, and be unable to explain it logically. When your heart is strong and filled with heart-energy, right and wrong are immediately and starkly clear. Even the smallest child, with very little cultural training or socialization, knows immediately what is “right and wrong”. How can a child “know/feel” this unerringly? They know immediately what action hurts their heart and what makes it feel better. When faced with options, we all know what would make our hearts feel lighter or heavier. We tend to follow the path of reason (mind) and are willing to take on the heartache of a heavy-heart. This is what our self-denying, abnegating culture tells us to do and promotes. Suffering may build character… but what does it really bring? Pathology. If the heart is denied, or broken to the point that it is always filled only with poison and darkness, so that it forgets what it is like to be filled with light, psychotic episodes of varying lengths and types follow. The heart, filled with enough regrets, seeks revenge in the form of passive- aggressive behaviour, bitterness, depression. If the heart is deeply broken or non-functional, it leads to a sensation of heartlessness where right and wrong can’t be distinguished. In some cases the mind rushes in to fill the void with curiosity or playfulness as can be seen with sociopathic murderers.

So how can we use our hearts more in everyday life? It’s very simple. Listen first to the “Should, should, should…” voices in your head, but then pause for a moment and “think” with your heart. How does it make your heart feel? Light/Heavy? Bright/Dark? Soft/Hard? My prediction is that if you seek to make your high lighter/brighter/softer more often, you will live with fewer regrets. Your mind and body will work out the details of how to stay alive and the day-to-day minutiae of survival, but if you don’t follow/listen to your heart, you will end up pinched, bitter, unhappy… and here’s the biggest kicker… you may also become mysteriously unwell, cancerous or otherwise “dis-eased”. As people see/feel you filling more often with light, they will be “infected” by this as much as they are infected by your dark/heavy heart-energy. In short you become more attractive, pleasant to be around. Fortune can’t help but smile on people who take the time to smile and chat and look around them, fighting the fear of talking to others, being outdoors, etc. etc.

As an offshoot of this newly en-lightened heart, you may find that your heart is light enough for good humour, jokes and perhaps even flirtation and romance. OK, I’m getting ahead of myself, as I need to work on that myself, but you get the idea.

Here are the 2 things I propose:

1) Next time you say/think, “Strong healthy body and mind…” Remember to include “Heart” as well. Ultimately, it’s a good strong warm heart that endures/endears, even when the body and mind begin to fail with age!

2) “Think” in terms of Heart-energy. Increase your own and others’ heart-energy whenever you can. Fear can manifest in many forms and a surprisingly small amount of “heart-energy” in it’s correspondingly multiple forms/aspects, be that Courage, Love, Kindness, etc. can go a long way to dispel many types of fears that can otherwise mutate into mental and even physical dis-ease. Using your heart, rather than alternate/artificial forms of fear-control/escape (egs: Drugs, alcohol and other additions) will eventually, automatically lead toward a more wholesome and sustainable way of life.

The “emptiness” we feel is because we haven’t charged up our hearts. Sometimes it is enough to pause and sit quietly for a while (eg: in prayer, meditation, contemplation, day/night dreams, etc) and let the heart-energy pool and build up naturally by itself.

If you can find a reason/way to exercise your heart and strengthen it so you can begin to generate more “heart-energy” than you need just to fill your own heart, (eg: by volunteering, spending time with others, helping people/animals, etc) you may be surprised to find yourself breaking out of the dark spiral of depression an slowly but steadily rising out of the dark “abyss” you feel you are in.

- Inspired by Theravadin Buddhist dhamma teachings

Barack: Hungarian for “Peach”

Why should we listen to Obama now? Is he just another figurehead on a huge machine which can’t change course no matter how he sings and dances? What does Barack have that George doesn’t? He has heart!

Look at/listen to his inauguration speech. The first thing that struck me was that he talks of wanting to stop Fear. He suggests stopping fear with Hope. Very close, and maybe half a cigar… A full cigar, in my humble opinion, would be for him to suggest fighting fear with Courage. Hope doesn’t actively fight Fear. It is a passive heart energy, OK for defence. But what I think he really means is a proactive, progressive heart energy like Courage. Perhaps a combination of the two could also work. Hope and Courage can defeat Fear. Fear after all is “the mind-killer, the little death…” according to Frank Herbert’s Bene Gesserit litany against fear:

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”

While this is a more inward looking and meditative “buddhist” approach, fear can also be faced proactively with Courage.

George was a fear monger, perhaps not even on purpose, but that’s what he became. I suspect his advisors molded him to become like this, since he doesn’t appear to have much strength of mind, will, character or heart. Thankfully, Barack appears to have strength in all of the areas that George lacked. He speaks well, he looks good and will inspire confidence with his charismatic words and actions [we hope]. If nothing else happens during his reign, barring total disaster, he already stands as a historical icon of positive change and courage. Let’s hope he can successfully change the course of the US juggernaut at the bridge of which he now sits without taking a nut job’s (figurative or literal) bullet.

PS: Strange fact: In Hungarian the word “barack” means “peach” (Pronounced: “Baratsk”… the “c” in Hungarian has a “ts” sound.). If you’re interested in brandies, try some Hungarian “Barack Palinka”! It also doubles as rocket fuel! Perhaps apt for the first black US president of Hungarian origin!  Hungarians rejoice!

Heart Cancer?!?

Why is Cancer of the Heart so exceedingly rare? Is it because it is always in use and never has a chance to atrophy and become diseased (aside from sheer mechanical clogging (infarction/heart attack) or breakdown via congenital defects). Is it the essence of the “Use it or lose it” principle in effect? Is it because of the continuous flow of life that it is engaged in? Is it deemed an “essential service” by the brain and/or other governing bodily systems and simply not allowed to go on strike? Is there an analogy here that can be applied in reverse? Can the strength of the heart be used to combat cancer?

If you listen to Gábór Maté’s ideas of a “cancer personality” you may begin to think so. While he doesn’t come out and say there is a specific personality that “causes” cancer, he does talk about certain personality traits that predispose people to building up stress without dealing with or processing it properly. He also talks about how a “real” human connection (ie: true, “active” listening, etc.) and a fearless look into the murky parts of ourselves are both useful tools in healing. I would go further to say that casting the light of bright heart energy into our dark parts is a very serious healing technique.

I’m not talking about just temporary light-heartedness, which is fine but ultimately not strong enough to truly overcome and shrink the fear. Maté talks about how some of the “happiest” people can die the most quickly from cancer (eg: She was always such a happy person) because they’re not really meeting their stresses and fears head on and dealing with them. Humour is certainly a good medicine but it needs to come from the gut or the heart not the head. Trying to view the dark reality through “rose coloured glasses” can’t be sustained healthily over long periods of time. How long can you laugh your head off, before your sides start to hurt? Laughing like crazy deflects the fear for a while and helps us to look at least briefly at the darkness, but courage is what helps us to stare it down until it shrinks like a water-splashed witch, into a puddle on the floor. A warm glow in your heart that will make you smile for hours is what is needed. I you can’t get a smiley warm glow a determined, angry but controlled burn is also good. I discovered I had and could harness this “grim determination” when facing my own cancer a few years ago. A steadily burning, smouldering handful of courage embers is enough to keep the nagging wolves of fear at bay.

What about making a heart connection with others? Maté tells a telling story from when he was in school:

“I’m being watched through this one-sided mirror by residents and psychiatrists, to evaluate my interviewing skills, and I’m talking to the patient who at some point says something poignant and I touch his knee and say: Tell me more about that. This was the frightening part. [The evaluator said]: Why did you do that? Touching his knee? It was brilliant! You make contact with somebody on a human level, and they think it’s a brilliant technique: Where did you learn this? It’s just something that any human being would naturally do.”

In other words, do what human beings naturally do:

1) Listen more carefully and with your heart. The ear has a direct connection to the heart.

2) Touch each other more often. Don’t be shy to look into each others’ eyes and reach out to touch each others’ hearts once in a while.

Welcome to the Canadian Journal of Cardiatry

Welcome to the Canadian Journal of Cardiatry. Why have you never heard of Cardiatry? That’s because it is a new field of study coined and initiated by founder Tamás Revoczi to address the growing lack of Heart in modern society.

What is Cardiatry?
Cardiatry is a conflation of two greco-latinate root words: Cardio- meaning “of or related to the Heart…” and “-iatry” as in “Psychiatry”. While the goal of Psychiatry is to analyze and mend the Psyche or Mind, the goal of Cardiatry is to mend the Heart.

Why is a study of Cardiatry needed?

With the advent of modern industrialized and technological culture, some of our basic human abilities/needs are being overlooked. One of these blindspots is the decrease in heart energy in all its aspects. Current contemporary thinking encourages us to develop and sharpen our minds and sculpt and hone our bodies to impossible levels of perfection. But what about the heart? Why are we not being encouraged to develop and grow our hearts?

I’m not talking about soul or spirit here, since I don’t claim to be a theologian, but having a good, strong, clear heart is the basic tenet of most religions as far as I am aware. In this new exploration of the human heart, I will be looking at all the facets and manifestations of heart energy that we all know, but seem to quickly overlook in popular parlance including but not limited to: Courage, Kindness, Caring, Compassion and, of course, Love to mention a few on the positive side.

What may happen if we don’t pay attention to Cardiatry?

If we allow this heartlessness to continue and grow, the apocalyptic “Terminator” nightmare will come true. If you’ve never watched the Terminator movie series, in a nutshell it’s about a post-apocalytic world where humans create and in turn are hunted to virtual extinction by the Artificially Intelligent machines that take over the world in the near future. The Terminators are virtually indestructible killer robots with super strong metal alloy bodies equipped with networked Artificial Intelligent supercomputers in place of brains. They have a layer of synthetic skin and some cases have artificially grown organs to mimic human form in order to better infiltrate human communities. In short, they epitomize a race of beings of superb minds and bodies, with absolutely no feeling or heart.

The reason this “Terminator Universe” is so terrifiying, is because we innately sense that this “machine evolution” is already underway, while perhaps not with killer robots, but with our own minds, bodies and hearts. There have been times when I have found myself saying I feel more like a machine than a man, partly because my jobs for the past couple of decades have required me to be “wired to” a computer for most of my waking day. Unfortunately, unlike a Terminator, my body is atrophying while my mind develops, bringing with it a whole host of un- and dis-ease which I’m beginning to find a challenge to keep at bay. I suspect there are many people in our modern world who can relate to this.

So how do we prevent this machine re-evolution? Do we need a John Connor? (The leader of the human resistance against the Terminators) Thankfully, the de-evolution is not that far advanced… yet. We still remember what it is like to have a heart. We still honour heroes and yearn after heart energy (eg: Music downloads on the internet, etc.). While it is a romantic notion to be a neo-luddite and start smashing the machines, ultimately, destruction is not the answer. Perhaps it is more important to imbue our machines with heart, like the Tin Man from Oz so that when/if they become sentient lifeforms, they will know right from wrong as any being with a heart innately knows.

What is the future of Cardiatry?

While there is currently no official School of Cardiatry, where one can become an official “Cardiatrist”, I will endeavour to develop and “practice” Cardiatry with as much care and intellectual rigour and professionalism as my heart will allow. Contrary, in some respects, to traditional Schools of academic study where knowledge is obtained and guarded by a select few, I hope to open this field of study to the world for the good of all beings with hearts. Starting by harnessing the power of the internet, I believe we can start coming together and collectively start warming, softening and lightening all of our hearts. I hope you will join me.