Welcome, friends! I’m so glad you’re here!
Today the fourth in our series on living in authoritarian times—on how to resist autocrats from the inside out, by staying seated in our own center, in the knowing of our own heart. The first in the series is 39. The Knowing Inside, the second is 56. Thirsty for the Waters of Life, and the third is 57. Holding Firm to an Open Heart.
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To stand up to fascism, the most important thing we can do, every day, is to plant ourselves firmly in what is true.
Because fascism is, first of all, an effort to warp reality—to confuse people and turn us away from what is real. People who are seated firmly in reality do not willingly give their power away, but people who are confused are looking for saviors. So fascists manipulate people with lies and propaganda to warp our sense of reality, to make us feel helpless and overwhelmed and steal our power. Which means that the first job of resistance, every day, is seeing clearly. Knowing what is true.
But how do we know what is true?
There are many ways to answer the question. We could start with critical thinking, and how crucial it is for a free society. We could talk about how learning to judge the avalanche of media coming at us through our screens is a basic survival skill for democracy. Finland is already skilled in doing this; they’ve built media literacy right into their school curriculum, and they are training children from little on up how to think for themselves.
Or we could survey the world’s spiritual traditions and find out what they teach about what is true. And if we did, we’d discover a huge area of agreement among them all: that living in truth means treating others with respect. This is the teaching of large global religions, and it is the teaching as well of local Indigenous communities. I think for instance of Leroy Little Bear of the Blackfoot people, who says that the “ideal personality” among his people is “a person who is generous and shows kindness to all.” Or I think of Jews and Christians citing the Golden Rule: loving our neighbor as ourselves. Or how the Prophet Muhammad said, “None of you truly believes until he loves for his neighbor what he loves for himself.” Or the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who often says, “My religion is kindness.” So paying attention to where the religious traditions all converge gives us a clear yardstick for what is true, and we won’t go wrong if we follow that yardstick of kindness and compassion.
But I want to start today in a slightly different place—with an experience we all share because we all live on Earth: We are vulnerable. This dear sweet Earth provides everything we need to live well, but at the same time, life here is precarious. Absolute safety is never guaranteed. The forces of the Earth are far, far more powerful than we are. Hurricanes or fires or floods can overwhelm us. Rain sometimes falls too much or not at all. Seas can spill over and winds devour; mountains can slide toward the sea.
The truth of our existence is that in every moment we are defenseless. Yes, we have tools to help us increase our odds. We can engineer buildings to stand up to earthquakes. We can wear masks to filter out viruses—which I do in all indoor public places because I know from my own experience how a virus can wreck your life for years on end. We can practice preventive medicine; we can get our cancer screenings. We can wear seatbelts.
But nothing protects us completely. At any moment a surprise can still sneak through. On Earth there is no absolute safety. The unpredictable touches us all.
And because we feel so vulnerable, most of us spend much of our lives trying to avoid pain and grief. We tell ourselves stories to pad ourselves against misfortune, to make ourselves feel in control. We convince ourselves that if we take supplements, we can prevent illness. We think if we shield ourselves with houses or wealth, we can avoid being harmed.
And you don’t have to be rich or weird or extreme to believe these stories. They are ubiquitous. Some of them are so ingrained they are taken for granted by almost everyone. One of these “everywhere” stories is that people only get sick if they did something wrong. It’s a cruel way that our society blames sick or disabled people for their difficulty—as if sickness is an aberration, a sin, instead of something that can and will touch all of us.
Or we tell the story that poor people are to blame for their poverty. This story is so ubiquitous that it drives lawmaking and public policy. Poverty, in this story, is a personal failing, and poor people bring it on themselves through their lack of initiative or drive. So we assign a moral value to poverty, seeing it as dishonorable, and we regard poor people with contempt. But sociologists tell us that the truth is rather different—that poverty is a social choice, made by society as a whole, and that we, the richest society in the history of the Earth, have the means to change it virtually overnight, but only our judgmental story gets in the way.
But all these stories are just that: stories. Reasons we made up with our reasoning mind to make ourselves feel safer than we are. To insulate ourselves from the fear and pain of being vulnerable. The stories are brain spin—crazy, actually, out of touch with reality. Because difficulty comes to everyone. Loss and misfortune touch each person; no one is exempt.
The truth of life on Earth is that we are all utterly, absolutely equal.
So in such a world, the only response that makes sense is compassion, not judgment. In a world where everyone is vulnerable, responding with anything other than empathy is running against reality, against what is true.
Because of course we all come to the same end. None of us gets out alive. Nature is the great democratizer, showing everyone the same door. The truth of life on Earth is that we are all utterly, absolutely equal.
There is a place inside us—underneath the stories, below the linear-thinking mind—that knows the truth of this. Let’s call that place the heart.
The heart is that spacious place inside of us where we feel more open and at peace. You know how, after you spend time in a forest or in a garden, you feel refreshed? The tangles of your mind have loosened. You feel more quiet inside, more present. You’re more ready to let things be, maybe even see the humor in them. There’s a new sparkle in your eyes. You feel more resilient, like you can see clearly again.
What is this refreshing place inside? Where life again seems wider and deeper and richer and more inviting? It’s the place of the heart, the place inside us where empathy and compassion arise.
Knowing what is true requires finding the place of the heart and letting ourselves settle there. It means undergoing that little shift out of the linear-thinking mind and into the peace and spaciousness of the heart.
There are many ways to enter the heart. Some people find it by sitting in meditation, others by walking or hiking. Some find it in the shower, as thoughts flow away with the water and a more elemental and instinctive perception starts to emerge. People can find it by going swimming or running, by gardening or knitting or doing yoga, by playing with a dog or petting a cat, or listening to music.
But however you find it, entering that more spacious place inside is key to seeing clearly. Because the thinking mind cannot get us there; it is too busy protecting us from danger—spinning stories, making plans, analyzing and evaluating, choosing, thinking two steps ahead.
Entering that more spacious place inside is key to seeing clearly. Because the thinking mind cannot get us there.
Allowing ourselves to take a vacation from linear thinking—even if only for a few minutes at a time—means allowing ourselves to drift down, down, down to that more peaceful and spacious place below the mind, where nothing has to be done right now. We leave that frantic, forward-reaching feeling in the head and relax fully again into the body. It can happen as gently as a leaf floating toward the ground. From the place of the heart we have a clearer picture of what is true.
The place of the heart is the place of clear perception.
Some people find the place of the heart by trying to be like birds. I think of Ilarion Merculieff, of the Unangan people of the Pribilof Islands up north in the Bering Sea. When he was a small child, just six years old, Ilarion would hike the six miles out to the cliffs where the seabirds lived. It was part of his traditional upbringing, he says, that he was given this permission to go by himself, even as a very young child, to visit the birds.
Tens of thousands of seabirds migrated to their island to breed—gulls and cormorants, fulmars and puffins—and at the cliffs of their island the birds flew here and there, up and down, in all directions all at once. The air was a whirring mass of birdwings.
And yet, the six-year-old Ilarion noticed, none of the birds ever crashed into each other. None of them so much as clipped another’s wings. And he wondered why.
So he worked it out in his child’s mind that the birds had access to some kind of awareness that was not like everyday thinking—though, he says, he would not have used those words at the time. And he decided he would try to find that awareness too, because he wanted more than anything else to be like a bird.
So he practiced sitting with the birds and watching them without thinking. For months he visited the birds and practiced watching without thinking. And after months of practice, he says, he could sit in this state of “awareness without thinking” for several hours. “That was when the magic happened,” he writes. “I could sense many things I’d never experienced before, and my world expanded enormously.”
The heart is the place where a deeper wisdom arises.
That awareness of interconnection, he says, is what his people call “the heart.” It’s the place where a deeper wisdom arises.
By the time I found Ilarion’s essay, I had been practicing a similar way of the heart for some years—and calling it that as well, because that’s what my teacher called it. Learning the way of the heart meant I could learn a way of being in the world that was larger than any of the roles I played—larger than being a writer or a teacher or editor or partner or friend, more spacious than any identity I might put on.
Coming into awareness of the heart felt like learning to stretch my mind outside of its usual confines—as if the inner gates had been unlocked, and now it was time to step outside the fences. Outside of linear thought the view was always larger, more panoramic. And I could breathe more freely.
Coming into awareness of the heart felt like learning to stretch my mind outside of its usual confines—as if the inner gates had been unlocked, and now it was time to step outside the fences.
My teacher invited me to try on this larger point of view as often as I could. He suggested I practice dwelling in the heart to absorb its sense of peace and clarity, to become familiar with its harmony and ease so I might bring some of it back into anything I do. “Endeavors come and endeavors go,” he would say, “but residing there can flow through them all.”
Ilarion’s people go to the heart for their instructions for living. They know that settling into the heart allows people to perceive life clearly and to choose wise and compassionate ways of living. Ilarion names some of the values his people learn from the heart: “reciprocity with all living things, humility, respect for all life, honoring Elder wisdom, giving without expectation of a return to self, thinking of others first.”
Ilarion says we can always learn these values by listening to the wisdom arising from within. “The heart never guides us wrong!” he says. “Each of us has this heart that guides us impeccably correct. . . . [The heart] has love. It has compassion. It has patience. It has understanding. It has all these things, if we just let the heart do what it needs to do. . . .”
In a similar way, my teacher would talk about how following the heart leads a person toward what is true and right. He called it “an epistemology of truthfulness.” He said that the heart can guide people toward a level of truth that is not merely what is efficient or what works. “We don’t practice love because it works,” he said, “we practice love because that’s how we live in harmony with the great purpose of life.”
And what is the great purpose? I asked.
“Shh!” he said. “Don’t try to put a name to it!”
And I thought right away of the Tao Te Ching: “The way that can be named is not the true way.”
This is one of the tests for what is true: Does it give us a feeling of moving in alignment with the great unfolding of life? In harmony with the Great Heart of life?
Instead of naming this great life purpose, he talked about what it feels like to move with it or against it. Everyone can feel the difference, he said. There’s a friction that grinds away at us when we’re going in an unhelpful direction—when we go against the way life wants to unfold, against the heart. He said that aligning with the great purpose reduces that friction, helps it melt away. He said this is one of the tests for what is true: Does it give us a feeling of moving in alignment with the great unfolding of life? In harmony with the Great Heart of life?
So how do we recognize the heart? Is it in our feelings, our emotions? Is it what feels right in the gut?
My teacher always said there was a difference between the heart and our emotions. He liked to talk about how any strong emotion, even when it’s a pleasant one, gets in the way of seeing clearly. When I was feeling annoyed or irritable, or even when I was feeling strongly happy or elated, he would remind me of the difference between the mind and heart. The strong feelings begin in the mind, he would say. They arise from mental processes, not from the heart. Especially what he called the “cherished emotions,” the ones we use to shore ourselves up, such as outrage or self-righteousness, are the products of the mind. They result from stories we tell ourselves to stave off loss or grief, to convince ourselves we are different from others so we won’t feel so vulnerable. Any strong feelings we hold will get in the way of that quiet spaciousness in the heart, which is where the biggest possibilities can become visible.
The heart is simpler than our stories, different from strong feelings. My teacher called it “love.” But by “love” he didn’t exactly mean feeling affection or showing warmth toward others. He said instead that love has more to do with respect: respecting the freedom of others to make their own decisions. Withdrawing any expectations we may have for others so they can be completely free to live their own lives. And then feeling empathy for any difficulties they may face in the process. This is love as letting-be, love as empathy: love with no strings attached.
My teacher said that nature is the source of this great love, this great letting-be. He said that the life force itself is a liberating force, and it instills within each being the same drive for agency and self-governance. He said that as human beings, we share these desires with all other creatures. So those who depart from these values of respect and empathy need healing. “White supremacists need healing,” he said. “Those who embrace hate need healing. Those who fear losing privilege need healing.” They need the healing of the heart. Because the heart is where we open to interconnection, where we can embrace the truth that is hidden from everyday sight: that we are all tied together, woven into one great fabric. That we are all utterly, absolutely equal.
The life force itself is a liberating force, and it instills within each being the same drive for agency and self-governance.
In a similar way, Ilarion Merculieff says that the Unangan elders, when speaking of the heart, are talking about something different from feelings, even our most compassionate or positive feelings. The heart, he says, “refers to a deeper portal of profound interconnectedness and awareness that exists between humans and all living things.” His people try to build their lives on that center in order to make good decisions. “Centering oneself there,” he says, “results in humble, wise, connected ways of being and acting in the world.”
Centering oneself in the heart is a practice. I work at it daily. In the same way that when I was a musician long ago, trying to become proficient, I took out my instrument and practiced every day, so now I spend time every day practicing coming into the heart. Leaving behind pointed, focused awareness for a more wide-open awareness. Where feelings of wonder and appreciation become available, and a simple letting-be.
This is how we learn to know what is true: We take a break from the thinking mind so we can open to larger possibilities. We come to the heart so we can see more wide-open views. And we do this repeatedly, day after day, so that we can live from the empathy and letting-be of the heart.
When people are living in balance, the mind follows the heart. It acts in service to the heart. The mind uses its great powers for the common, connected good; it figures out how to solve the problems that keep people apart. Our society has it exactly backward; we lead with the mind and elevate linear thinking above all else. Western society is characterized by rationality divorced from the heart. The rational mind without the heart has lost its moral compass: its compassion.
When people are living in balance, the mind follows the heart. It acts in service to the heart.
Thinking processes that are disconnected from the heart only lead to strong feelings and implacable positions, to self-righteousness and digging in of the heels. To greater separation. Because without the heart, we forget that we are all connected and that we are all alike—that we all face difficulties and we all wish to be respected and to live freely. We forget that we are all utterly, absolutely equal.
But when we place our minds in service to the heart, life turns right side up again. We can lead with empathy and letting-be. We can see more clearly. We become willing to move with how things unfold, and so our lives start to fall almost by themselves into alignment with the greater flow of life. We experience less friction. We act with more simplicity. We become more humble, and more wise.
So I encourage each one of us, especially now, when forces of hate are trying to gain control, to cling with fierce loyalty to your own heart. To spend time in a forest or a garden, or in gazing at the sky or sitting in meditation, or whatever works for you to find that quiet, open place in your own center. To spend some time like this every day so that you become proficient in finding your way to the heart, even under the pressures of daily life. In this way the spaciousness and truth of the heart can grow in your awareness, can become your daily guide and your unshakable foundation for living.
I bow to the Great Heart within you.
Namaste.
What’s your favorite way of entering the heart? How do you feel when you settle in the heart? What does finding the heart make possible in your life? Let us know in the comments!
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For digging deeper
All book links here point to Bookshop.org, where you can order books online and support your local independent bookstore with your purchase.
To learn more about my teacher, see my book Tamed by a Bear: Coming Home to Nature-Spirit-Self (Counterpoint, 2017). There I tell the story of how we met and offer a journal of our first year of working together. (If you use my author link to purchase at Bookshop.org, I get a tiny bit extra. Thanks!)
Many people talk about this shift out of linear thinking as a shift from left-brain activity (rational, linear, step by step thinking) into right-brain activity (sensory, instinctual, holistic thinking). I suspect that the language of brain activity tends to keep us focused on what our minds are doing instead of on our hearts or bodies, so I don’t use that language. I leave the brain talk to actual brain scientists, such as Jill Bolte Taylor, who brilliantly lays out the shift from one kind of awareness to the other in My Stroke of Insight (Viking, 2008). A neuroscientist and philosopher who traces how devotion to left-brain thinking has shaped Western culture is Iaian McGilchrist in The Master and the Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale University Press, 2009). He argues that Western society is doing out-of-balance things because we forgot that rational thinking needs to serve the more holistic perception of the right brain.
Ilarion Merculieff’s comments come from his essay “Out of the Head, into the Heart,” Humans and Nature, June 16, 2017, and his Google talk, “Mother Earth Speaks: Talks at Google,” December 6, 2020.
To see how Finland has placed critical thinking and media literacy into its school curriculum, see this great story: “In Finland, Classes in Recognizing Fake News, Disinformation,” CBS Sunday Morning, September 29, 2024.
On the voices for compassion from religions around the world: Leroy Little Bear (Blackfoot), “Jagged Worldviews Colliding,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, edited by Marie Battiste (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2000), 83, available from the Government of Alberta’s cross-cultural school curriculum Walking Together: First Nations, Métis and Inuit Perspectives in Curriculum in a pdf reprint you can download here. The Golden Rule in Judaism comes from Leviticus 19:18: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In Christianity, Jesus said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31). In Islam, the Prophet’s words come from the Hadith: Sahih Muslim 45. For a Buddhist’s reflections on the Dalai Lama’s words, see this Psychology Today post by Tara Brach: “My Religion Is Kindness.”
The Charter for Compassion is a worldwide movement to encourage individuals and communities to “embrace compassion as a guiding principle.” It was initiated by religion writer Karen Armstrong, who after studying many religions, concluded that compassion is the unifying principle.
For a clear-eyed look at all the ways that poverty is a social choice, see Poverty, by America by sociologist Matthew Desmond (Crown, 2023).
