I rarely hear about the role of the Heart or the power of Love as relevant determinants of human health or spirituality. This was particularly highlighted at a recent energy psychology conference in which a keynote presentation on the topic of Enlightenment seemed to focus almost entirely on achieving altered states of consciousness. I could feel my heart crying out inside me how incomplete this felt.

Also at a breakout session where an energy therapy was being presented as an effective way of releasing ego based negativity (i.e. negative emotions, perceptions, beliefs and memories) one question shockingly drove home to me the level of disconnection we have with our hearts. The question: "As nature abhors a vacuum, once we release this ego based negativity, what do we replace it with?" My answer: "With the essence of who we are and have always been, our hearts!".

So on hearing all this, as a duty to my Heart and Myself, I feel it imperative to help bring the Human Heart back into the forefront of our work and personal development. As a result I will share here some of my clinical experiences of the crucial role that I feel both the Heart and the energy of Love play in the field of energy psychology and in the destiny of humanity.

I start by addressing the following issues:

1. How the current concept of consciousness as a mental phenomenon has deflected our attention from the Heart.

2. The awareness that the Heart is the equivalent of the Core Human Self

3. Core Human Emotions

4. Conditioned Emotions

5. The role of the Heart as an organ of perception

6. The role of the Heart as a source of immense wisdom and knowledge

7. The energy field that we call the feelings of Love

8. The healing power of Love.

9. The concept of a Divine Holographic Energy Field

10. Factors which impinge negatively on this Divine Holographic Energy Field

11. A new definition of "consciousness"

12. A new definition of illness

13. A new definition of health

14. The Body-Spirit Dichotomy

15. The Road to Enlightenment

Both Western and Eastern spiritual traditions have largely gravitated towards an understanding of consciousness and its altered states as possible doors to spiritual enlightenment. Unfortunately "consciousness" usually refers to a mental state or phenomenon. Rarely does one think of the Heart in this picture let alone emotions or feelings of Love. As science is largely a mind/brain dominated and driven discipline it is not difficult to understand how Heart and emotion become relegated to the back rooms never to be heard from again.

To say that we as feeling human beings consider ourselves primarily "thinking" beings is to essentially forget who we really are. It is difficult to understand then how we will ever achieve Enlightenment if we in fact are leaving ourselves behind. Hence it is my view that by focusing primarily on consciousness, as a mental phenomenon, we are missing an opportunity to know ourselves and our true nature as Divine Beings.

The concept of the Self has received endless dissertations by psychologists, psychiatrists and others over the last century. Opening an erudite text on the subject can mesmerize one to such an extent that one can walk away feeling totally confused about what appears to be an elusive and complex concept. In my view this situation exists largely because the Self has been defined theoretically as a mind/brain construct. That is we often consider the Self to be related in some complex way to what we term personality.

I would like to suggest a more pragmatic and personal way of defining the Self that everyone can identify with and feel almost instantly. This new approach entails a personal awareness of one's Self. This awareness can be facilitated by one of the following simple exercises:

1. Say the word "Myself" to yourself and notice where inside your body the word resonates for you, Or

2. Think of something about yourself that you appreciate, appreciate yourself for it, and notice what you feel and where you feel it. The location of the feeling in your body is the location of your Self.

In most cases both 1 and 2 yield the same location, i.e. in the mid-chest or over the Heart region. For individuals who have been heavily mind/brain oriented (i.e. overly analytical people like most well educated professionals) the tendency may be to say that they feel the Self in their mind. A close examination of this will often reveal an inability of such individuals to feel their feelings or even worse a fear of feeling them. When one is in a state of self-appreciation one usually feels joyful, happy, content etc. With some self-awareness I know that you will recognize that these can only originate in the Heart.

This personal awareness of the Self is also clearly felt as being the "core" of that person i.e. where they feel themselves to be. Hence we can also refer to the experience of the Self as the Core Self or more generally the Core Human Self. Again, I must emphasize that these statements are drawn from one's personal awareness of themselves and not from theoretical considerations. This caveat is necessary to avoid endless debates on the merits of one theory of Self over another. Your personal awareness of your Self is what it is for you.

As core feelings clearly emerge from the Core Self (or the heart, used interchangeably here) one might ask oneself what the nature or purpose of these "core emotions" is? We will address this shortly. The nature of the core emotions can be classified into two categories:

Category 1: Emotions of joy, happiness, peace, love, contentedness, expansiveness, hope, buoyancy or lightness, And, Category 2: Emotions of sadness, darkness, constriction, heaviness or sinking

We contrast these emotions with what we describe below as "conditioned emotions".

It has been observed that animals that grow up in an environment where they are not hunted have yet to "learn" (or have imprinted in them) the experience of fear. Another way of saying this is that these animals have yet to develop a post-traumatic syndrome. Is it not strange then that we consider animals that fear for their survival as normal?

We define these survival-based (or more broadly trauma-based) emotions here as "conditioned emotions". Some examples include worry, fear, anxiety, panic, defensiveness, avoidance, mistrust, etc. If we now consider the history of the human species, one could say that our survival-based emotions also represent a post-traumatic syndrome of sorts. That suggests that there may have been a time, before the cumulative history of human trauma, where we humans were in our natural state. Where our survival did not feel threatened.

Occasionally one will feel "conditioned emotions" such as anger, worry, guilt, unworthiness, fear, desperation, self doubt, low self esteem, etc in the region of the Core Self. In such cases these individuals have experienced emotional trauma during their lifetimes that have occluded the pure expression of their Core (Emotional) Self. Such "conditioned emotions" cannot originate from a Heart that is inherently Loving but from the personal and collective (as alluded to above) history of trauma that has imprinted itself deeply enough to allow one to mistrust their Heart and the innate wisdom of their Core Self.

Interestingly, if we look at the impact of these conditioned emotions, on our species and on the planet, we notice that they are responsible for the perpetuation of trauma at every level i.e. trauma begets trauma. The net result is the deepening of these conditioned emotions in the human bio-field. This sets up a vicious negative spiral leading to a more negative state both individually and collectively

Clearly then, conditioned emotions cause humans to become further distanced from their core human emotions. The net result is a relative and sometimes complete disconnection from the Core Human Self. Often this results in behaviors that we as bystanders feel and define as "inhuman" i.e. reflex behaviors such as violence and killing for example, not originating from the human being rather from their conditioned response based on traumatic imprinting.

Another example is someone who has been hurt so many times that they are reluctant to engage a genuine desire for Love coming from within their Core Human Self. For instance, have you ever heard someone say, "I can't entrust myself to feelings of Love again after my last disappointing experience with relationships"?

From a mind/brain standpoint, where feelings are often left out, we might find ourselves trying to rationalize, or even steer clear of these core emotions emerging from within us. However with some reflection one readily notes their real importance. Category 1 Emotions are a sign that your situation is where you want it to be and Category 2 Emotions are a sign that it is not where you want it to be. Hence your Core Self regularly and automatically monitors the desirability of your situation for you. In other words, your Core Self is a perceiving entity (i.e. your heart is a perceiving organ).

One can go further and say that the Core Self is knowledgeable about what is and is not good for you. This is clear by the fact that when you feel sad about something it can be taken to mean that the offending event is not desirable to you nor is it in your best interests. So in other words the Core Self has immense wisdom about you, your life, and your direction in life etc.

An interesting example is the individual who recognizes their sadness about being too afraid to love again i.e our Core Self telling us that it is not good for us to be cutting ourselves off from the experience of Love. If you follow this so far then you might start to wonder why we spend so much time trying to "figure out" (i.e. a mental activity) what direction to steer our lives in when we have this information already inside us beckoning us to listen to it.

Conditioned emotions of hurt on the other hand do not emerge from us but appear to be imprinted and stored in our bio-fields as a result of individual and inter-generation based trauma. They have the net effect of obfuscating and derailing our connection to our Core Emotions often leaving us feeling lost, confused and insecure about our path. This is very much like putting on a pair of prescription glasses that don't belong to you; they just make everything blurry.

We now turn to the phenomenon we call Love. This is a tricky subject because conditioned emotions (and corresponding beliefs) have largely distorted one's experience of the pure emotion of Love. For instance many people "believe" that Love has something to do with needing that someone they "love". I would like to suggest that the "need" for someone is really a conditioned emotion and not a core emotion at all.

For instance, if you ask yourself the question, "Well why do I need this person?" you'll most likely find that it is because you might feel anxious, empty, lost, alone, even desperate if they weren't there with you. It's the fear of being alone or abandoned, imprinted by the trauma of earlier loss or separation, that is creating the need which then becomes "defined" as an experience of Love. Relationships, which are based on this definition of "Love" often, become, what we call, unhealthy co-dependent relationships rather than genuine healthy loving ones.

(PLEASE SEE COMPLETION IN PART 2)

Nick Arrizza M.D. is an Energy Psychiatrist, Healer, Researcher, Speaker, Developer of the powerful Mind Resonance Process(TM), and Author of e-book: "Esteem for the Self: A Manual for Personal Transformation" which is available for download on his web site at: http://www.telecoaching4u.com/ebook.htm Dr. Arrizza holds ongoing International Telephone Healing and Teleconference Sessions on topics relating to Healing and Spirituality.

Copyright? 2005 Arrizza Performance Coaching Inc., All Rights Reserved