The Human Heart :
The Intelligence of The Heart
From 'The Wave' by Jude Currivan PhD
'The Wave' offers not only an explanation of how the universe is as it is, but why the world is as it is and how we can live in harmony with it and ourselves.   Above all, 'The Wave' explains the power of Love, and in marrying heart and mind it births a creative and empowering spirituality from their union.                                                                                                                                                                              
See also : Recommended Books/Authors
The Intelligent Heart
In the 1970s, physiologists John and Beatrice Lacey pioneered the understanding that the heart is able to perceive, and has inherent intelligence.  They found that not only are signals sent from the brain in the cranium to the heart, which the heart considers but does not necessarily follow, but that the heart can also send signals to the brain, which the latter does obey.

And the subsequent discovery that the heart has its own nervous system, comprising at least forty thousand nerve cells, or neurons - as many as are found in various sub-cortical centres of the brain - has led to the recognition that a two-way bio-communication system operates between the heart and the brain.

Within a human embryo, the heart forms and starts to beat before the brain begins to develop.  The earliest evolutionary part of the brain, relating to its emotional centres (known as the amygdala and hippocampus) then grows, and only thereafter is the 'thinking' part of the brain generated.

The primacy of the heart and its innate intelligence significantly affects how we perceive and interact with the world, as was reviewed by Daniel Coleman in 1996.

Coleman noted that measurements of human IQ, which determines the quotient of intellectual and cognitive abilities, do not change significantly from childhood onwards, regardless of educational opportunities and attainment.  And he also found that success in life appears to depend less on IQ and more on our ability to manage and develop our emotional intelligence quotient or EQ.
EQ relates to self-awareness and our perception of the inter-relationships between our thoughts, emotions and actions and their consequences on others.  And unlike our IQ, our EQ can continue to be educated and indeed re-educated throughout life.

Since 1991, stress researcher Doc Childre and his colleagues at the HeartMath Institute in California have undertaken and collated research to demonstrate how negative emotions such as insecurity, anger and fear, throw the body's nervous system out of balance and engender heart rhythms that are jagged and disordered.

Conversely they have found that positive emotions of love, compassion and gratitude create coherent energy signals which increase order, reduce stress and bring balance throughout the nervous system and are reflected in harmonious rhythms of the heart.

There is now substantial evidence that enhancing emotional intelligence and invoking the intuitive wisdom of the heart sends energetic signals to every cell of the body, re-educates areas of imbalance and dis-ease and facilitates health and well-being.

These new insights are reconciling with the perennial wisdom of spiritual awareness and correlate with the evidence of nonlocal influence (described earlier in the book).  By retraining our consciousness we can reshape our lives and enhance and regain well-being.
The Heart Chakra
The opening and clear expression of the fourth chakra - the heart - represents our essential re-membering of the wholeness of creation and, at its most fundamental, the difference and choice between love and fear.

The aim of the heart chakra is ostensibly sensible - it is to experience love on personal and transpersonal levels, and it is through the heart chakra that we begin to expand our sense of being and become aware of higher and greater realities.

With an opened heart, our human experience is able to consciously embody the awareness of spirit - to experience the vitality of the lower ego-based chakras and begin to connect with the higher awareness mediated by the upper chakras.

When emotional trauma causes us to close down our heart chakra, from cynicism, callousness or mistrust, this apparent refuge, our perceived 'security' from the world, actually becomes an imprisonment of our own making.
But as we awaken or re-awaken our hearts, imbalance in our lower chakras, unless resolved, may interfere with the natural expression of love.   The words "I love you" are then really saying "I want you" or "I need you".

And typically the other expression of imbalance experienced with the awakening heart is inappropriate giving, when we willingly give to others but are unwilling or awkward in receiving the gifts they offer to us.

But with balance in the lower chakras, our awakened heart then enables us to become ever more aware of our soul purpose in this life and inspires us with the enthusiasm to embody and fulfil its destiny.
The Universal Heart
The diatonic musical scale of seven notes is incomplete without the eighth note, which completes the octave.  Only when the rising scale of doh, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti is accompanied by the higher doh is it fulfilled, sounding satisfactory to our ears and feeling so to our being as a whole.

And so it should, because in a profound sense the seven chakras of our personality-based energy field are in themselves incomplete.  Only when we resonate to a higher octave of awareness do we begin to fully comprehend the wholeness of who we really are.

Over the past few years, more and more people are becoming aware of higher energy centres and beginning to directly access such transpersonal chakras.  And the experience of such expanded awareness is enabling a profound resonance with the consciousness of Gaia and that of the entire 'Soular' System to become available to us, both individually and collectively.

The eighth chakra, being termed 'the Universal heart', is the portal to these higher connections.  Most people who are beginning to feel its energies perceive it as an energy centre positioned midway between the 'personal' heart and throat chakras.  On a collective level, it is through our emerging resonance with this eighth chakra that we are experiencing our increasing collective compassion.

Energetically, it brings together and balances the trinity of energies formed by our 'personal' heart, mind ('alter major'*) and solar plexus chakras - the essence of our personality and ego-self expressed through our heart, mind and will - and raises them to a higher octave of vibration.
The trinity essence of the universal heart chakra thus combines and creates a portal to transcend the ego-self and embody the self-realisation of higher consciousness.  Unconditional love is the essence of this connection and its opening is a joyous portal of awareness and re-membering of the higher consciousness which guides our human experience.



*Alter major chakra: 

Both the sixth and seventh chakras energetically resonate with the essence of the mind of our ego-self.  When open, the sixth, or third eye chakra, reveals a more profound 'inner' view of our realities.  And the seventh, or crown, chakra accesses an expanded and clearer vision of the 'outer' realities of both our human experience and of the Cosmos.

At the base of the skull, where it meets the top of the backbone, mystics have identified a further energy centre, known as the alter major chakra, which energetically connects with both the sixth and seventh chakras.  When this is opened it reconciles our expanded 'inner' and 'outer' awareness and reveals them to be reflections of each other.

When the energies of the alter major chakra are available to us, we are ready to undergo a dramatic shift in our perception into a profound experience of ourselves and the Cosmos which transcends our personality-based perspective.

From 'The Wave' by Jude Currivan PhD  -  highly recommended reading