Signs of Heart Health and Heart Sickness

C. Michael Smith, Ph.D. © 2015

We get a better sense of what is wrong with a person, if we know what they can be at their best. We therefore will begin with signs of heart health.

Signs of Heart Health

The heart is healthy when it is listened to, given space to speak, and when we honor it by considering its desire and point of view. A heart is healthy when it is granted a central role to play in your life. It is healthy when we allow it to do its job with feeling, intuition, inspiration, and inner guidance, for it is our pathfinder. When we are creative, of our day, of our work, and when we are co-creative of our relationships and forms of service in the world, we are heart-healthy. A healthy functioning heart, and I mean the ontological core of our being and not merely the cardiac pumper, brings in love, forgiveness, compassion and care. The heart’s desire can move us, motivate us, direct us from within so that we live lives that are authentic and of value or service to others. A healthy heart is generally open in trust and respect for others, but wisely and instinctively knows when to close its doors to avoid damaging attack, manipulation or harm.

We associate a healthy heart with giving you a love-based way of living, rather than a fear-based way of life. Love opens and encourages. Fear constricts and suppresses. A healthy heart is open, however, to the full range of emotions. It has courage to embrace even the uncomfortable feelings and realities. It can intensely feel moods of worship and states of bliss, joy, hope, and tenderness, of delight, and passion. The heart is an intelligent feeler by nature and in its healthy functioning can open wide enough to feel and express its grief, sadness, remorse and fear when they arise, and without holding on to them. The healthy functioning heart is an organ of candor, of truth, of sincerity, and not of deception, defensiveness or manipulation. It is not concerned with masks and persona, but in showing its true face at any moment, in any situation. We naturally trust people who have a healthy heart.

A healthy heart recognizes that Divine Spirit dwells within it, as its ultimate source of inspiration and inward guidance. In strengthening its bond in acts of prayer and worship, it maintains its health, creativity, love, and capacity to forgive and to serve. Because of this vital relationship to the sacred Source and its interweave with all of life, all of our relationships in the world, it is able to sacrifice for purposes higher than its own self-interest. It can speak and act the truth, and let “the cards fall where they may.”

The healthy heart is profoundly courageous. It can open to the negativities of existence as they come and take them into its own self-affirmation. It can transform adversity alchemically into gold.

It is a sign of heart-health when we are able to live in the present, to be fully present now, while appreciating the past without being stuck in it, and when we give it a role to play as we craft a future worth living in.

Signs of Heart Sickness

A heart is not well when its doors are bolted shut. It cannot play its central role in your life when we suppress the heart and do not give it space to speak, breathe, or move in life. When this is the case, the heart is in serious need of healing attention. Signs of heart sickness are spiritual despair, lack of aliveness, loss of vital energy, lack a sense of purpose, feelings of hopelessness, and an overly-rational and bottom-line way of living based in fear. The heart cannot be well when it is overly preoccupied with security and everything always being safe. The processive universe is unpredictable and life is insecure. Heartbreak comes to us all, from time to time. It brings crisis but this is also opportunity.

Heart break can be felt, grieved, processed, and in due season, life can be be fully re-affirmed. The problem comes when we do not mend the heart, because we have given away pieces of our soul inauthentically, and we do not call them back home. This can happen to any of us if the hit is big enough. But it is helpful to know what is going on, see its signs, and ask for help, when you need it to get back in your center and re-open your heart to life in all its ambiguity.

It is a sign of heart-sickness, especially in modern culture, when there is little or no spiritual life and practice. The lack of regular worshipful experiences, and of prayer, the central conversation with the lure of our own Life, and of true community, makes it difficult to strengthen our relationship to the heart, in which the Divine Spirit dwells, seeking to inspire and guide us from within. Lack of spiritual practice engenders other forms of heart-sickness, such as having a lack of a felt-knowing of your own life purpose, of what you are here for. It also leads to living a self-referential life preoccupied with your own self-interest, and forgetting the importance of service to something greater than yourself, and to others, to the world. This all leads to the heart-sickness and despair of living an unfulfilling, un-purposed life.

The most serious forms of heart-sickness has to do with self-betrayal of your heart. This happens when you don’t like or want to listen to your own heart, usually because of fear of judgment or insecurity, or wanting others to love you and accept you (when you do not love yourself enough to tend and honor your own core of being). You cannot live your true life, be happy and fulfilled if you do not love You, and love yourself in the depths of your own central core. Betrayal of your own heart can be driven by greed, pleasing others, social compliance and conformity to the crowd. It always means that you are not activating or using your potentiality, and you are not doing what you were put here to do.

The Issue of Protection

It is a sign of heart-sickness when you don’t legitimately protect your heart. There are times when protection is wise, because you need boundaries as well as openness. Knowing when to open to others, and knowing when it is not wise, is a basic psychological self-management skill. When you are inspired from within to create something new in the world, whether that be an art work, a service project, or build a more authentic life, go back to school, and so forth, it is legitimate to protect this “invitation to the new” from your own internal criticism, and the judgment and opinions of others. To protect your heart and its invitations against forces that would flatten it is wisdom, a real act of power. To learn more about this, see my little blog on “The Four Acts of Power,” or read the book which will be forthcoming soon.

The Problem of Over-Protection

Conversely, there is the problem of “over-protection.” Again this is related to fear-based insecurities and wanting to play it safe. It is a sign of heart sickness when someone points to the story of Samson and Delilah and says they listened to their heart and it was a disaster. But the heart has a truth function, a built-in “bullshit detector.” It is a rational feeler. A healthy heart knows then you are not grounded or are getting carried away with wishful fantasies. *