It has been said that choosing where to put your attention is the highest practice of intelligence. So what are the options we can choose from?

Well, the mental realm of thinking is where most people choose to spend most of their time, and this of course is accompanied by all the emotional reactions we have to the thoughts we engage with.

Then there is the outside world of things, objects, people and places, which so many of our thoughts are attached to. We think so much about our lives… Our financial situation, our materiel desires, our relationship, how we want to improve our life in general, our dreams and ambitions for the future and so on.

Then there is the inner spiritual realm of being, which has its origin in our heart. This is where our awareness primarily belongs, for the simple reason that all joy, peace, happiness, contentment, fulfilment, gratitude and love spring from there. The more we bring our attention to our heart, the better our life will be – even in the challenging times.

Being aware of our heart gives us a true perspective on life and on ourselves that cannot be gained in any other way. This perspective is what gives us wisdom, which is the ability to understand what is really important in life and what is not. Wisdom reminds us to choose that which may not be immediately gratifying to our mind or body, but will bring a deeper and longer lasting sense of peace and fulfilment to our life.

We need to learn and practice how to return our attention back to where it belongs, because it was there when we were children. We need to rediscover our innate child-like innocence, where we just feel what we feel, and we don’t analyse, control, manipulate, think, contrive or speculate. We just feel what feel, without any mental judgement and subsequent repression of these feelings.

Our heart does not want to hurt others – that’s the ego. Our heart wants peace, it wants joy, it wants friendship and happiness. So the simplest way to reconnect with your heart is to reconnect with those core desires. Contemplate what really matters to you. Contemplate what you really want to experience in your heart, because it is on this level that we find fulfilment. We can be poor in the material world, yet still have peace and joy in the spiritual world, which is the realm of our heart.

As you enquire into your heart, there is likely to be sadness and pain stored there, and this needs to be felt…. as well as communicated. Our emotions need to be communicated, because life IS communication. Things are set free from their inner prison when you communicate them, and you not only gain greater perspective as a result but you take a journey with the person with whom you are communicating, and bonds of friendship are formed – bonds that bring us strength and support when we feel weak and vulnerable in life. To me, there is nothing more valuable in life than genuine, heartfelt, caring friendships.

The greatest joys in life come from the free flow of energy, which in essence is what communication is. So find someone you can communicate with openly about your heart and how you feel – whether there’s fear, anger, grief, pain, guilt, self-hatred…

We benefit immensely from talking about our feelings, because we learn about them as we talk. And as we learn, we become aware of how we are choosing our emotional experiences to a large degree.
Freedom comes more quickly when we take responsibility for our experience of life and we stop blaming others.

We become more empowered, because we realise that we have authority for how we feel, and we learn that we are free to make different choices that bring us different experiences. Most of these choices originate in our mind, in the form of decisions we make, which we then put our energy into and manifest through speaking about them and acting upon them.

Ultimately, our mind should be in service to our heart, and used as a tool to bring our heart’s dreams and visions into the material world. But for most of us, our heart is well and truly at the mercy of our mind. This is why it is vital that we strengthen our connection to our heart, so that we have a stronger pathway to feeling, rather than thinking.

This happens in many ways, but one of the most powerful ways is to retrain your thinking to always be thankful. No matter how challenging or unpleasant a situation, always look for the silver lining and be thankful for it, because it is always there, and it usually contains the lesson that we need to learn to become freer, and more responsible for our experience.

When we look at out materially comfortable lives in comparison to the lives of the poor and hungry, we really do have endless reasons to be thankful, don’t we? Did you sleep on a mattress last night or on a concrete floor? Be thankful. Do you have food in your cupboards or do you have to go out begging for your next meal? Be thankful. And so on. If we can slowly retrain our mind to recognise and be thankful what we do have, instead of what we don’t have, we can literally live our entire life in a state of gratitude, and our heart will always feel full.

Another way to connect to your hearts is to pay more attention to your feelings than to your thoughts. What is it that your heart wants to feel? Can you communicate it with someone? Can you talk about your heart with a close friend, or someone who is receptive? Our heart had a fundamental need to communicate, so it is important to honour this. In your conversations with others, talk less about what you think and more about what you feel. Speak from your heart about what you care about, what really matters to you on a deeper level, and your communications will become more rewarding and nourishing for your heart.

Finally, just spend your spare moments feeling your body. Not thinking about stuff, but simply feeling how your body feels. If it helps, put your hand on your heart and feel it beating. Breathe gently, and keep your attention upon your breathing and the beating of your heart. Let your body relax as you do this, and just enjoy resting in your body. This brings us a peace that cannot be obtained through anything we can think, do, buy or achieve. It is the peace of simply being at rest, and it is always available.

Do this regularly as a way to come out of your head and back into your body. Physical exercise of any sort performs the same function, if you can bring your attention to what you are physically feeling, and take a holiday from thinking.

Within your body and your heart is the realm in which your attention belongs. It is the realm of feeling. It is always there, and it will always bring you more depth and nourishment than your mind can ever offer, even when it is challenging.

Why? Because it is so much more real than what the thinking mind offers, and it connects you to a higher reality, which is ultimately benevolent. In fact, the profundity of its benevolence will blow your mind and make you cry when you fully realise it, and ultimately we are all on a journey back to that place.

So now, today, in this moment do you choose to return to thinking, or would you rather make this journey back into the realm of feeling? Remember the ways I have told you to connect to it, and perhaps you have your own methods that work well also. Be intelligent and wise in your choices, because choosing where to put your attention is the highest practice of intelligence, and the realm of your heart and your body await you.

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Live in gratitude
http://AlexanderBell.org