183. BODY, MIND, AND …

From Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation, “Our Three Intelligences” and “Developing a Wise Presence” provide us with thoughts from Cynthia Bourgeault.

“Wisdom is a way of knowing that goes beyond one’s mind, one’s rational understanding, and embraces the whole of a person: mind, heart, and body. The intellectual faculty is one way of knowing, to be sure, but it is joined by two additional faculties: the intelligence of the ‘moving center’ [the body] and the intelligence of the ‘emotional center’ [the heart]. These three centers must all be working, and working in harmony, as the first prerequisite to the Wisdom way of knowing.”

“When a person is poised in all three centers, balanced and alertly there, a shift happens in consciousness. Rather than being trapped in our usual mind, with its well-formed rut tracks of issues and agendas and ways of thinking, we seem to come from a deeper, steadier, and quieter place. We are present, in the words of Wisdom tradition, fully occupying the now in which we find ourselves. Presence is the straight and narrow gate through which one passes to Wisdom.”

“Everybody has all three centers (head, heart, moving) in them. Most people are born into the world favoring one center or another. We learn to make one our dominant center for our own orientation to the world. … The ‘work’ is to discover our starting position and reach out to incorporate the other two so that they are fully — and in a balanced way — part of our perceptual center. … It’s only when you have balanced the three centers — kinesthetic moving center, emotional center, and intellectual center — and integrated them that you become conscious. We’ve got to have all three as the basis of a good, strong tripod before we’re really awake.”

From Richard Rohr’s “Wisdom is Loving,” we glean these thoughts. “All prayer disciplines are somehow trying to get mind, heart, and body to work as one, which entirely changes one’s consciousness.”

“Love is luring us forward, because love is what we already are at our core, and we are naturally drawn to the fullness of our own being. … Like an electromagnetic force, Infinite Love is drawing the world into the one fullness of love. When we are comfortable in our true identity, we will finally be unable to resist such overwhelming love.”

The gleanings above are from thoughtful people who find wisdom in harmonizing the body, mind, and heart. I find these thoughts meaningful with a few caveats.

We have bodies, we have hearts, and we have brains. Neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers debate whether what we call our minds are expressions of our brains or something beyond our brains.

For centuries, we have identified the heart as the ground for our feelings and emotions. When our autonomic nervous systems are aroused, our heart rate and other physical systems are impacted. The heart is an awesome pump that keeps us alive but seems not to be the source of our feelings and emotions.

Emerging research is teaching us about consciousness that appears to include the awareness of our unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and environment.

Locating and naming these different parts of our being is evolving. However, wisdom is likely to be found in understanding and acting on the “integration” of these dimensions of our being. This post and the previous ones focus on this revelation and encourage reflection upon it.

Q: In what ways do you “integrate” these dimensions of your being?

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