Heartfulness
by Bruce Davis PhD

The path of Heartfulness is simply being in awareness of our hearts. Contemplatives of all religions find their hearts as the source of true spirituality. Meditation, silence, nature...all support us to slow down.  Here, now, our awareness includes our hearts; the peace, love, beauty of this moment.  This is God's presence.

Heartfulness is the difference between thinking about life and living the joy of life.  Instead of living through the filter of our thoughts, the mental realms which keep us busy and occupy so much of our day, heartfulness restores our awareness to its goldenness, the innocence of our inner child.

Stopping the inner dialogue and coming into presence is what brings spiritual life out of the realm of belief into direct experience.  The mind stays busy out of habit and from an overly complicated life.  Heartfulness is where simplicity begins.  It washes and restores our awareness.  Heartfulness frees us from the controlling mind to the accepting heart.  Between our thoughts, we find space in our hearts.  Our awareness softens in our hearts. Here we find more and more space, a beautiful expansiveness, a pure experience.

With patience, heartfulness brings us into a life of literally more heart and less struggle.  Our awareness becomes anchored in heartfulness.  Everything good within us, our souls, is feeding us. Spiritual practice is to make time to be within and enjoy the opportunity to explore our hearts.  Here a direct experience of peace and simple being grow.  As most people expect changes in their daily life to calm and satisfy their restless minds, spirituality invites us into the depths of our heart to find the calm and satisfaction which is beyond words.  A oneness is just beneath our mental busy-ness.  A vast experience of lightness is opened as heartfulness invites us to  a whole new landscape, our inner garden.  This is our true ground of being, love and potentiality.

Mindfulness and Heartfulness
by Fr Thomas Keating
Interview with Garrison Institute
Full Article

TGI: Can you define heartfulness?
Fr. Keating: Heartfulness is the cultivation of interior silence in relation to the ultimate reality, what in the Abrhamic traditions is called God. It is a cultivation of spiritual will, the seat of the
deepest level of love in the organism. It has roots in Old Testament, going back 3000
years. It is a contemplative tradition, deeply rooted.

TGI: What is the relationship between mindfulness and heartfulness?
Fr. Keating: You might say they are not exclusive of each other. According to my understanding of Hebrew religion and mindfulness, they are meant to include both mind and heart in the deeper seat of human consciousness. The Hebrew Bible in certain passages clearly deals with higher consciousness and contemplative states. Mindfulness also includes the cultivation of the heart, the need for the heart and mind to work together, and even modern science now supports this view.

Yet the two things are not identical. The heart is has its own way of “thinking.” It produces some 60 hormones to deal with various situations in the human organism. That too is a form of relationship with the ultimate reality. In dialogues I have had with Buddhists, they have the notion of ultimate reality, but their relationship to it is impersonal. This is also true in the Hindu tradition, whereas in Abrahamic traditions, the capacity to relate personally through love is very strongly emphasized.

But because the human organism is such a unity, you can’t have one without the other. You have to have a heart that is at least listening to the commentary of human reason. And obviously the heart has its limitations. But neither should we get stuck in the limits of mental creation. Contemplative traditions are moving towards the integration of both sides – mindfulness with heartfulness.