Making Decisions

Q: "How can I use my heart to make decisions? I know my mind is not very good at it."

A: The logical way to decide an issue is to make two lists, of pros and cons, and see which list is longer. But anyone who can't extend the short list to equal the long list is not being very creative. With a little more thought, additional pros or cons can always be added. The mind is quite ingenious, but it has no sense of direction. It is the heart that gives direction, by its feeling.

We start with the assumption that your heart has desire, like a strong current that flows through a lake. This desire gives you a sense of direction. The mind, by contrast, is easily amused and distracted. It has detachment. It can jump from one thing to another, while the desire of your heart remains relatively constant.

It is a great step in maturity to honor your heart's desire. We learn to be suspicious of our desire because it seems to be unrealistic and selfish.

  • While you can recognize the desire for wealth and fame, you also sense that this is only a shadow of a greater desire for influence and attention, and that is a shadow of an even greater desire to be significant and involved in life.
  • Your desire for stimulation and diversion can be a shadow fear of your desire for solitude and contemplation, which is a shadow of a greater desire for peace and understanding.
As you come to know your heart better and better, you save yourself years of chasing shadow desires. Wealth and fame may come to you by dedicating yourself to the purpose of your life, like flowers along the path to your goal.

When your mind is directed by your heart, your mind produces images of your desire and you experience contentment and happiness. But your mind can focus on anything, so it can also produce images very different from your desire, producing discontent and disharmony. The objective is an alignment of mind and heart, and this requires becoming intimately familiar with your heart's height and depth.

The heart communicates its desire to your whole body, just as its heartbeat is felt by every cell. You can observe the signals of your heart in many ways: in your emotions, your unconscious behavior, the rhythm of your walk, the music that runs through your mind, the energy in your muscles and subtle, physical sensations from within your body.

The first category of your heart's desire is whether it is outgoing or ingoing. You have desires of both kinds, like the two examples above. Correspondingly, the heart has two sides, associated with the hemispheres of the brain switched left for right. The right side of the heart is expressive, the left side is receptive. The desire of the heart is signaled to every part of your body, and the same left-right dominance is reproduced throughout. You will find a shift in strength in the muscles of the left and right arms and legs, in the left and right eyes and ears. The fluid in the sinuses shifts as well so that breath in one nostril becomes blocked, the other nostril clear. Notice which nostril is more clear right now, and check again in an hour.

This gives the first clue to making decisions with your heart: choose the way that is harmonious with your heart's desire for expression or receptivity, as shown by your left-right balance. That will be successful; you will be rowing downstream, going with the current of your heart. The easiest way to check your left-right balance is to notice which nostril you're breathing through at the time you're making the decision. Then consider whether that side is harmonious with your heart's desire.

If you want to go on a trip (expressive), but you're breathing through your left nostril, then postpone it, but if you're breathing through the right side, proceed. If you want to do well on a test or write a proposal for work (receptive) then the breath through the left nostril would indicate success; the right nostril would mean, "not now." If you want to build up your business, then the right nostril means proceed. If you want to attract more customers, then the left nostril means success.

You might think that you can just wait until your breath changes, as it does periodically through the day, and ask your heart for its guidance once again. But if your mind and heart are out of synch, your question will change as your heart changes, maintaining a disparity. It's quite amusing to watch in one's self.

By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
(c) 1999 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
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