As we witness our own mind from inside, we learn that this witness-consciousness is part of the heart-mind. In his book, “Be Love Now,” Ram Dass reminds us that our heart-mind is our awareness turned inward, awareness of the spiritual universe within, and the quality of that awareness, the feeling that accompanies it, is love.”

We tend to think that our awareness resides in our thinking mind, but the heart is the true location of the mind…knowledge is gained from the thinking mind (brain), which produces thought, but our mind is much more because it includes the wisdom of our hearts.

Don’t we point to our chest when we answer the question, “Who are you?” We point to our hearts and say, “I am….” So intuitively we know where our true “mind” resides…in the heart. Without adding heart to our thoughts we only gain knowledge, which is not the same as wisdom. Wisdom results from being the witness in our lives, unattached to outcome but engaged in the experience without stories to help explain why or what is happening. We lose our ego to reside in the Awakened Self from which our own truths guide our perceptions, thoughts and actions. As we contact this deeper awareness, we also come into contact with our soul qualities of love, compassion, peace and wisdom. To do our spiritual work, we need to shift from our heads to our hearts. Why is this necessary?

Some fear that if we lose our ego, then who we see ourselves as will be lost. Anxiety and confusion result because our thinking mind (that is, our ego) convinced us that our thoughts are the truth and the real truth. Yet, most of our thoughts are borne from what we have learned in the process of growing up. We need to awaken enough to realize how we are programmed as children, intentionally or not. We download what we see and hear as our own truths but when we begin the Awakenening process, we come to understand that this programming only distorts the inner wisdom that is there if we could only be silent enough to hear it. We begin to question what WE feel is true for us now rather than simply living on autopilot, which may have left us feeling bad about ourselves because we can’t live up to the expectations we’ve incorporated into our psyche. That is the ego speaking. Our Awakened Self knows about this high jacking and steps back as the witness to simply observe…as when we get upset. This is an opportunity to step back and open the HeartMind. As the witness we observe our emotions and rather than pushing them away or getting caught up in them, we simply acknowledge our humanity and say, “Ah! Anger (or sadness or….)! There you are again!” That’s it! Just acknowledge it and let it go. Breathe through your heart…in breath through the heart…out breath through our heart, saying “I am loving awareness.” As we breathe from and through our hearts, we access our heart-mind wisdom and lose our ego.