Head or Heart?

 

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Head or Heart?

We often hear about the head versus heart conflict – some people say they follow their heart and others say they follow the lead provided by the head. Some people say the head tells them to do one thing while they feel that the heart is telling them to do exactly the opposite. The fundamental rule of yoga is the body is one person, unified being. There is no separation of mind and heart, we are one whole.

One usually assigns thoughts to the ‘head’ and emotions to the ‘heart’. When we turn introversive and observe we realise that the way we think is the way we actually feel. But it is also true that the way we feel is also the way we think. Yoga includes both thought and emotion as part of the same mental body.

The ‘mind’ is associated with the thought process or one’s intellect. As a matter of fact, the mind has so many dimensions of which we are not even aware, but two that we definitely know are the logical mind and the deeper emotional one. In yogic terms the mind is conventionally known as buddhi, and the deeper emotional mind is called the manas. Manas is a complex mix of memory that moulds emotion in a particular manner. So, the way we feel and the way we think are both activities of the mind.

For example, if we like someone we will think of that person as a wonderful human being, but if we don’t like someone, we feel that person to be horrible and harbour nasty emotions about such person. If we make an enemy of someone and then try to like that person, it becomes really hard work. It is best not to make hard work of the simple aspects of life.

The way we think is the way we feel, but usually thought and feeling seem to be different in our experience. Why does this happen? Because thought has a certain clarity and agility about it – we say, isn’t ‘at the speed of thought’! But emotion does not have agility, it is slow, it takes time for things to sink in. For instance, if today, one thinks so and so is such a wonderful person and has warm feelings towards such person, and suddenly this person does something that one doesn’t like and the opinion suddenly changes and that person becomes horrible! The mind thinks that this person is horrible, but the emotion does not change immediately. If the emotion is sweet now it takes time to turn around, sometimes three days, sometimes three months and sometimes three years depending on how deeply ingrained this person is in your emotional psyche.

There is no need to create a conflict between the head and the heart. Emotion is nothing but the juicier part of thought. The mind has speed and the emotion is slow, but emotion also chatters, it too goes hither and thither creating emotional instability. Because it is slow, it takes time to turn around and hence one feels its intensity to a greater extent – its intensity is substantially greater than thought.

There is no point in creating polarities within oneself – that will lead to mental issues. Thought and feeling are not different. One is dry and the other juicy! That’s it!