Peace, Love and Safety: Mind, Heart and Guts
Transforming the Body+Heart+Mind
by Jeanette Amlie
In what we think of as "ordinary" consciousness, our minds, hearts and guts have obvious functions that support our lives. The mind is constantly processing and comparing and calculating. It is continually analyzing our past and present circumstances, experiences and events in order to discern the best possible choices to make and to secure the optimal future for ourselves & those we love. Our heart is the most vital organ required to keep the organism alive with blood as the liquid source of life flowing through our veins. And our "guts" or digestive system converts the living matter outside of us into the nourishment that sustains us from within, feeding our physical bodies and allowing them to grow and function in the world.
Yet through all of these triune functions runs our nervous systems, the electrical matrix that brings the spark of life to all of these otherwise inanimate organs. And it is through this amazing system of energetic wiring that another level of existence begins to be detectable. For when we begin to listen to the mysterious call of our Souls beseeching us to look within, we may discover that something far less physical and functional is also going on........
Mind as Vehicle for Peace
We may discover that the mind, when for even a moment it pauses in its constant analysis of our perceived reality, begins to act as a transceiver for something that falls outside of our learned knowledge. Somehow it can begin to simply allow a flow of expansive knowing that is far less oriented toward our own survival or betterment. Yet before this happens it is common for it to become bewildered at the thought of what it would do if it was not always ingesting and digesting an endless supply of facts and experiences over and over again. And often some jarring event or experience is required for it to make this quantum leap into the unknown. When this opening of perception happens we can begin to see that the organ of the mind has the ability to be the receiver & transmitter of a pervasive Peace that all of our intellect has never been able to touch before.
Heart as Vehicle for Love
The heart may often be the first of these three functions to open up into a new level of existence when one undertakes the spiritual exploration of the Soul. In gatherings or meditations we may be touched by a Grace so sublime that this vital organ begins to open up a field of emotional perception that literally takes our breath away. This can be both a blissful and shattering event as we begin to detect that our conditioned perception of separation between ourselves and the world is superficial at best. This mysterious life force energy can begin to flow through us into the world of supposedly inanimate and animate objects in a perviously unfathomed way. And when this happens we may begin to see that the Heart is really the organ of Love, a love far beyond our conditioned ideas of sentimentality and affection.
Guts as Vehicle for Safety
The last major aspect of this physical trinity is our guts. Yes we have been led to believe that the primary role of this earthly body part is to convert matter into energy to fuel our material vessels. Yet this area is one of the first ones to be affected by stress and fear, which would seem to have nothing to do with eating and eliminating. We now know from research into survival and trauma that our stomachs and digestive systems have a role far more complex than the mere processing of food. In fact, they rule the biological ship from an instinctual mandate so strong that for every ten signals that travel between the brain and the guts, only one travels from top to bottom. All others travel from the enteric nervous system in our guts up to the brain in our heads. And so the nervous system running through our digestive organs acts as a radar antenna for the world around us perceiving what threats there are to our survival.
Sometimes this is the most challenging function to make the leap into a new level of existence, for its biological wiring is so strongly oriented toward physical survival. Yet our guts are also capable of responding with deep relaxation to the mental and emotional states of deep Peace and Love. And our enteric nervous systems can communicate to the entire body that there is a safety available to us that is not reliant upon any circumstances or conditions. This is an amazing paradox of our living organism; that it can be wired so brilliantly for biological survival and yet be capable of opening beyond this instinctual function to consider the possibility of its own cessation. Yes, it may contract again when we fall out of this awareness and reinforce its mandate for physical survival, but over time it can also begin to trust this deeper state of relaxation and thereby express this unconditional Safety to the world around us, for benefit of All.
And so I invite you+we+me to continue to explore this boundless terrain. Together we are beginning to discover that there is a natural and imperishable expression of Life that moves through us with a Peace, Love and Safety that is beyond our wildest dreams. Let us welcome this into our lives and ourSelves with great relief, knowing that herein lies all that we have been searching for all along.
♡ Jeanette
Yet through all of these triune functions runs our nervous systems, the electrical matrix that brings the spark of life to all of these otherwise inanimate organs. And it is through this amazing system of energetic wiring that another level of existence begins to be detectable. For when we begin to listen to the mysterious call of our Souls beseeching us to look within, we may discover that something far less physical and functional is also going on........
Mind as Vehicle for Peace
We may discover that the mind, when for even a moment it pauses in its constant analysis of our perceived reality, begins to act as a transceiver for something that falls outside of our learned knowledge. Somehow it can begin to simply allow a flow of expansive knowing that is far less oriented toward our own survival or betterment. Yet before this happens it is common for it to become bewildered at the thought of what it would do if it was not always ingesting and digesting an endless supply of facts and experiences over and over again. And often some jarring event or experience is required for it to make this quantum leap into the unknown. When this opening of perception happens we can begin to see that the organ of the mind has the ability to be the receiver & transmitter of a pervasive Peace that all of our intellect has never been able to touch before.
Heart as Vehicle for Love
The heart may often be the first of these three functions to open up into a new level of existence when one undertakes the spiritual exploration of the Soul. In gatherings or meditations we may be touched by a Grace so sublime that this vital organ begins to open up a field of emotional perception that literally takes our breath away. This can be both a blissful and shattering event as we begin to detect that our conditioned perception of separation between ourselves and the world is superficial at best. This mysterious life force energy can begin to flow through us into the world of supposedly inanimate and animate objects in a perviously unfathomed way. And when this happens we may begin to see that the Heart is really the organ of Love, a love far beyond our conditioned ideas of sentimentality and affection.
Guts as Vehicle for Safety
The last major aspect of this physical trinity is our guts. Yes we have been led to believe that the primary role of this earthly body part is to convert matter into energy to fuel our material vessels. Yet this area is one of the first ones to be affected by stress and fear, which would seem to have nothing to do with eating and eliminating. We now know from research into survival and trauma that our stomachs and digestive systems have a role far more complex than the mere processing of food. In fact, they rule the biological ship from an instinctual mandate so strong that for every ten signals that travel between the brain and the guts, only one travels from top to bottom. All others travel from the enteric nervous system in our guts up to the brain in our heads. And so the nervous system running through our digestive organs acts as a radar antenna for the world around us perceiving what threats there are to our survival.
Sometimes this is the most challenging function to make the leap into a new level of existence, for its biological wiring is so strongly oriented toward physical survival. Yet our guts are also capable of responding with deep relaxation to the mental and emotional states of deep Peace and Love. And our enteric nervous systems can communicate to the entire body that there is a safety available to us that is not reliant upon any circumstances or conditions. This is an amazing paradox of our living organism; that it can be wired so brilliantly for biological survival and yet be capable of opening beyond this instinctual function to consider the possibility of its own cessation. Yes, it may contract again when we fall out of this awareness and reinforce its mandate for physical survival, but over time it can also begin to trust this deeper state of relaxation and thereby express this unconditional Safety to the world around us, for benefit of All.
And so I invite you+we+me to continue to explore this boundless terrain. Together we are beginning to discover that there is a natural and imperishable expression of Life that moves through us with a Peace, Love and Safety that is beyond our wildest dreams. Let us welcome this into our lives and ourSelves with great relief, knowing that herein lies all that we have been searching for all along.
♡ Jeanette