It has been said that the longest journey of all is the one that
leads from the head to the heart. That such a short distance
should take so long to be traversed tells us something about
the nature of the journey itself. Anyone who has embarked
upon such a path will quickly realize that this a journey unlike
any other, such are its peculiarities.
First of all, it is not a journey to any outward destination.
Rather, it turns out to be an inner journey of self-discovery, the
chief characteristic of which is that it is different for each
individual. Imagine! The route we take must be our own
personal route, else we find ourselves on a road to nowhere,
caught up once again in someone else’s agenda.
Secondly, the traveler along this path will have to get used to
the sensation of going backwards much of the time. At least,
this is how it seems, for the places we get stuck are generally
familiar to us from a long time ago. In order to move forwards,
we repeatedly find ourselves being sent back to the same old
place to complete something we have overlooked, or ignored,
or denied. What we don’t complete, we are destined to repeat,
and there are snakes as well as ladders on the road ahead.
A third unusual feature of this journey to the heart is that what
we already know is of little help to us. It is only by venturing
into previously unknown territory that we make any real
progress and, having done so, we find ourselves struggling to
make any sense of what we find there. The trick, it seems, is
to let go and trust in something we have been taught from an
early age not to pay much attention to: our own feelings and
instincts. Our inner-sense (innocence) of what is right and good
for us.
A further challenge to be faced is that where the head favours
duality, the heart prefers unity. What the mind has divided up
and separated, the heart must reconcile and heal (make
whole). What we have rejected comes back, like the prodigal
son, seeking acceptance. Where we have blamed, forgiveness
is required. To have compassion is to suffer with the
other, and to recognize that what we do unto others, we do to
ourselves.
To embark upon a journey such as this is clearly not for the
faint-hearted, and we may wonder who would chose such an
arduous undertaking for themselves. The answer, perhaps, is
that this journey choses us, and the chief decision we have to
take is whether we go voluntarily or reluctantly, screaming and
kicking along the way. I recommend the voluntary path, if only
because this choice seems to open our eyes to the invisible
helpers that lie hidden along the way, waiting to be summoned.
Either way, the spiraling journey towards our own heart centre
is life’s greatest adventure. Along the way, we may lose more
than we gain, yet what remains is worth so much more than
what has been surrendered. And when we finally catch a
glimpse of what this journey is all about, we seem, in the
words of T.S. Eliot, ‘....to arrive where we started/And know
the place for the first time’.
