Recently a very close friend, maybe the closest, stopped answering my calls.

We usually share some form of communication at least every third day. It’d been a week, then ten days, then more. I thought back to our last interaction, a phone call in which we laughed a lot. I figured this person must be dead because there’s no way they’d just stop talking to me. It was too cold. It reeked of death. I’m very black and white with my consignments to the afterlife, and it couldn’t have been something I’d done, so … yes, they were dead.

But I tried again and again because I loved them, still do. They eventually came back to life and answered. I was shocked like I was shocked when Jesus and John Snow came back to life. The voice coming through was meek and then cagey and the pauses were so vast I saw my whole life in them.

Eventually the voice I knew so well called me a terrible person. They’d been thinking long and hard. It happened eons ago, but a backlog of personal diaries doesn’t lie, and now it was time for me to repent my past ways and any forgiveness granted over the last year would be revoked. Just like that.

It was a bad scene. Mainly because I’d forgotten about the guy who’d done all the damage. I hadn’t shunned him or repressed him in some fearful scramble to be good and just, but I’d accepted him, forgiven him, assimilated the hard lessons and given up on my nihilism and atheism and refusal to truly live. I’d done a lot of work on that man and this phone call threatened my belief in God, which is what I call myself when I feel amazing.

What is a close relationship if not a mirror? Maybe it was a test, to be bared the man I used to be. Maybe I was supposed to crack. Later on, I thought a lot about forgiveness.

What is the heart’s role in forgiveness? What does it mean to listen to it?

HeartMath Institute is a research and education organisation that focuses specifically on heart communication and the creation of heart-empowered individuals. Basically, they do a lot of good research on the mysteries of the heart. And there are plenty of mysteries.

The heart’s extensive neural network, complex ganglia, neurotransmitters and proteins, not dissimilar to the brain, have landed it the title of the heart-brain, an intrinsic cardiac nervous system independent of the cranial brain. This independent system means the heart-brain can store experiences and capacitate its own interpretation of the environment via the feeling and sensing of external stimuli. It does this processing via 40 000 specialty cells called sensory neurites.

Neurons are cells that transmit energy in the form of electrical and chemical signals. Neurites are like tentacles, or spindly tree branches raking the windows in the night, projections from the neurons that seek connection with other neurons and the kindling of little forest fires, a spirited broadcast of feels.

The heart-brain can store experiences and capacitate its own interpretation of the environment, independent of the cranial brain.

When thoughts are repeated they build strong connections. When they’re fleeting, they don’t have the gumption to build anything too impressive. Hence why you may want to practise positive thoughts about people, over and over. Because, did you know, we choose our thoughts, and therefore the strength of these connections.

To clear the heart, we could sever the circuits by replacing the old thought with something bold and compassionate. We could go deep on the new thought, rinse and repeat the pattern, and fortify a new impulse.

My friend had liked me so far this year, but the neurons remembered the years leading up to this one, and a simple cue like the sepia pages of a diary could reinstate those old connections and make them surge with revulsion.

Correspondence between the two brains happens in the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve and puppeteer of the parasympathetic nervous system. This wandering sea-snake directs impulses from your brainstem to your visceral organs and vice versa. The heart communicates with the brain in four major ways: neurologically (through the transmission of nerve impulses), biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves) and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions).

It must be noted that the majority of fibers in the vagus nerve are ascending in nature, meaning the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. The heart is like my mum and the brain is like me.

Correspondence between the two brains happens in the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve and puppeteer of the parasympathetic nervous system.

So, let’s ask that question again: why should we listen to the heart? Because it has a brain with a greater capacity for environmental analysis than the cranial brain. (How we’ve been lied to all these years).

But all the science in the world won’t do it and I know most people need hard spiritual wisdom loosely referenced. So here it is. In the yogic tradition, Samskara is a Sanskrit word for ‘impression’. These impressions are incomplete energy patterns derived from our environment. They build up like plaque on the heart, forming belief systems and emotional triggers that inform a perception of the world. To free oneself of these impressions, one must open the heart so the blockage can gush out onto the floor.

My friend hadn’t done this. They were still grieving. Grief is the internal analysis of an event – what it looks like inside your body. Mourning is the expression of that grief – what it looks like outside your body. If we don’t follow this process toward its outward expression, then we’re forever waiting for things to go back to ‘normal’, even though that state has well expired. This is the definition of living in the past.

Samskara is a Sanskrit word for ‘impression’. These impressions are incomplete energy patterns derived from our environment.

We must mourn our past to create a new normal and establish a new base in which to live.

My friend was waiting for me to go back to being a menace even though it wasn’t ideal for anyone. But this was their normal state, an equilibrium that satisfied their ego’s perception of me. They didn’t like what I’d done, but they refused to accept my rebirth, for change is the antithesis of comfort, and we are creatures of comfort.

I should’ve said all this to my friend but it probably wouldn’t have gone down very well. They’d call me a smart-arse, or something worse, like evasive, unable to face the reality of the situation, which is true and isn’t true – because what is reality and what is the situation (…?)

Life is simple. There are two paths. We can choose to be happy, or not. If we choose the latter, external events will govern the show. If we choose to be happy, we know these are just events, and anything we assign to the event is merely a judgement we’ve agreed upon. Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of what your soul has always known.

It took me a long time to forgive myself and I’m not going back because someone has chosen the second path, the route of unhappiness. My life is a commitment to a trans-personal devotion, and yours can be anything you want.

Next time we’ll discuss heart-brain harmony, resilience and the four pillars of emotion: Gratitude, Care, Appreciation, Compassion. But until then, go and forgive someone for being terrible. Let it spill out of your heart and onto your dancing shoes.

Further Reading:

  • Science of the Heart (Vol. 2) – HeartMath Institute
  • The Untethered Soul – Michael A. Singer
  • Resilience from the Heart – Gregg Braden