"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be touched - they must be felt with the heart."
-Helen Keller
Lately the way I perceive the world has been changing significantly. These changes in perception and feeling were the main reason I really dove into spirituality as they allowed me to comprehend the world more fully, to look at the bigger picture. These last few days I've noticed an ability to open up to this new type of perception much more easily than in the past.
The change in perception seems to be a key point in spirituality, seeing things in a different light. Rather than relying on vision and thought as the primary ways of taking in the world, feeling and knowing are the direction I've been taking my perception. Honestly, as amazing as it is, sometimes it's uncomfortable, I'll get odd feelings or get in a funk of some kind.
The concept I like to use for a model of the world is similar to CGI, like in video games or movies. When creating CGI or a video game, the base 3d shape is molded first. Then, on top of that, all of the visual effects and sound effects are placed in various layers and textures. This limits us to two senses basically, sight and hearing.
"Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye."
-H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Real life has much more to offer. Each organ seems to be able to pick up certain aspects of our environment and selves. The different vibrations of light waves, sounds waves, the vibration of external objects, and chemical vibrations are all picked up by our sense organs. In Chinese medicine and other ancient teachings, they even go as far as saying and our internal organs are picking up other information, thus gut feelings and the like.
So what about the heart?
I like to think of the heart as the unifying organ, the place where everything comes together. For one, it is the source of our own vibration, even in a physical sense our heartbeat is a vibration, just look at an ECG. But the heart isn't just putting out a pulse, it's receiving them too. Everything is sending vibrations that the heart can pick up, including our other organs. So rather than focusing on our hearing or our sight or our smell we can let go and take everything in at once.
Just be open to experience.
I personally used to have a very closed off heart, rarely able to even feel my heartbeat because I was so tense physically and mentally. I was more concerned with thinking than feeling. After a lot of internal work I am now starting to really notice this type of perceiving through the heart, and it's really beautiful. I highly suggest feeling it out, even thoughts.
I'd love to hear all your experiences with perception in the comments. Sometimes it's hard to describe, perception is one thing most of us take for granted, and I think growing up some of us believe everyone is perceiving relatively the same. IN recent years I've disproved this to myself and now I always wonder how other people are seeing the world. Sometimes you can tell by how they act and hold themselves, sometimes not.
Thanks for reading!
@jakeybrown