Opening Our Heart to Become Enlightened

What knowledge have we ever learned that is more important than what we have felt in our heart to be true?

In the past science taught that the human brain was larger because we used it to think. The last few years of research have shown that the structure and function of the brain are most highly optimized during social competence; our brain is more of a social organ than a thinking one. Our brain is optimized when we open our heart.

Most of this research has gone unnoticed by those that would be users of this information and it will be many years before this new research will be taught in schools.

How we use our brain changes it, physically. Use dependent plasticity of the brain determines that intensive use of a particular area of the brain will make it have more neuronal networks, over time these networks or freeways of energy, become more complex, denser and thicker.

From a lack of use over time… a loss of neuronal activity,  there is a loss of the networks or freeways that move the information. The brain changes physically and from lack of use the area of the brain then becomes less and less complex. In time we have difficulty because we have impaired functioning in that area of our brain.

In essence, the brain takes the form of how it is used. Optimally we want to have all of our senses and abilities available to use in our brain.

What is clear because the brain is primarily a psychosocial organ is that to become more “conscious” we need to use all of our brain, the thinking part as well as the emotional feeling part.

When these two parts of our brain work together, thoughts and emotions, we are able to use our brain at its highest and most remarkable levels.

Because of patterns of use, thinking about our thoughts, feeling pleasure but not developing the emotional part of our brain, many people are missing a great part of life. We want to be able to see and feel, listen to music and dance and think rationally as well as understand things intuitively.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb, “Not where you have mastery, should you exert yourself further but there where mastery has still yet to appear.”

What is the difference between a person with funny bones and a person that says funny lines? The person with funny bones is able to understand and feel their emotions. The person with funny bones is also able to understand when others have a common experience of these emotions as well. The comic with funny bones is able to relate non-verbal information about the experience that adds much more than words could add.

Children laugh 400 times a day, an average adult laughs 15 times a day, how did we lose 385 laughs a day? When we are young, the road of information from our emotional centers to our verbal mind is like an 8 lane freeway…we are feeling and happy.

As we learn over time to be in our “thinking brain” the canalization (term for neural highway of information) of information coming from our emotional centers to our “verbal brain” is diminished. When we learn to suppress our emotions, the freeway of emotion becomes a small road and some people even lose touch with their emotions.

When we have suppressed feelings long enough, we still have reactions and emotions; we are just not as conscious, of what our emotions and feelings are.  What was once an area that brought us so much laughter and love, now primarily only alerts us to fear.

Many people try to find a spiritual path where they do not have to face themselves but where they can still liberate themselves. In truth, that is impossible. We have to be honest with ourselves. We have to see our gut, our real shit, our most undesirable parts ~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinoche

Our brain is able to change and we are able to regain the connection to our emotions with hard work and determination, over time. When we are capable of compassion, we are able to understand real creativity.

The person with a great connection to their feelings and others feelings as well, can have an understanding of a common truth. Creativity is born of a psychosocial understanding and when we are using our brain at full capacity, we are most capable of creating something that resonates with all of us.

Those that develop an understanding of what effect their emotions, reactions, perceptions and creations have on others, discover they are able to laugh a lot more too.