During the Middle Ages, an elder who offered spiritual direction was known as a “reader of hearts.”  Today I would like to imagine, what a modern “reader of hearts” would look like.

In our world, matters of the heart, are often relegated to popular culture.  I can imagine the heart reader having an uphill battle trying to be noticed, up against the stars of say, pop music. The music, a seduction of the heart, often promises a quick fix to our need for love, personal attention and inner longing.  The reader of hearts would redirect our attention from quick fixes to the slow unfolding of life’s events, where each moment is seen less as a hindrance and more as a gift to be treasured.  The reader would remind us that the heart evaluates quite differently than the mind’s speed to “fix” the problems of life.  In fact the reader would suggest life is less of a problem and more of a mystery to encounter.  As we encounter life as a mystery, we engage with each moment to see what it has to offer.

I imagine this heart reader redirecting our attention to the not-yet-seen, not-yet-known aspects of one’s inner life.  As we slip down out of our heads, we enter the realm of the heart by asking: “What am I to see?  What am I to learn?  What do I truly feel in my heart?”

Recently I found myself agitated almost every moment of the day. I realized how pumped up I was, my mind racing, searching for something to do.  A familiar feeling, this rush of freneticism kept me caught up in my head.

I teach and preach the wonders of quieting the mind to allow the heart’s desire to come to our awareness.  Here I was caught in this rush, as if nothing had changed for me in the last thirty years.  I started asking myself: “What is really going on besides the rush, and the attachment to it?” I began to make a connection to the rush and how familiar it was, a feeling experience from when I was young.  I was revisiting the frenetic pace allowing it to carry me away.

In this frenetic pace, I allow my mind to be obsessed with details.  It “feeds” me, keeping me going without needing to stop.  Like a sugar rush, I am satiated with a false sense of feeling alive.  However the danger of relying on “speed,” makes itself known over time.  Keeping up a pace, without pausing, ultimately leads to a breakdown of some sort.  No, not in the dramatic image of being assigned to a psychiatric ward or being unable to get out of bed in the morning, but in an insidious way, freneticism leaves me, leaves us returning for more, in hope of maintaining the high.  The bottom line, I cannot access my feelings because my goal is to be high, high in my head.  To feel demands a moment, to re-collect the energy within and know what I need.  With freneticism I run out of gas.  And yet, I chase after the very thing that sets the burning-out in motion, the getting high by never stopping.

A fear of unworthiness is the motivator.  If I am constantly absorbed, I keep away the feeling of shame.  A shame pointing to my unworthiness.  Unworthiness in the eyes of others, unworthiness within myself.  A shame spoiling the fabric of life.

So is there any reason I would ever want to switch away from the frenetic pace and face the shame?  The reader of hearts, I believe, would suggest another way of posing that question.  Is not the freneticism itself bringing on shame because I am running away?  The freneticism keeps me away from the shame of never being good enough, and yet only up to a point.  By making the freneticism an addiction, I have now added a layer upon the initial shame.  I am now feeling shame because I can’t stop myself from running. I feel disengaged.  By ignoring my heart, I lose touch with my feelings.  The frantic self becomes what I know.  I wonder: Where did “I” go?  In other words, like a substance abuser, I am upping the ante.  As the new layer of shame is placed on top of the initial shame, I will then have to work doubly hard to free myself of this addiction to freneticism.

There is no way around it, freneticism calls for “pausing.”  Not just to stop and then start up all over again.  But a “pausing” which allows the time necessary to feel what I feel and at the same time, acknowledge the truth of who I am—human.  Human in the fullness of my being.  Not the partiality that shame would wish to make out of my life.

You see the problem is that shame demands I see myself as a perfect being.  In perfection nothing is off.  Everything is on.  Spot-on.  Ready to handle anything that comes my way.  In response to shame, “pausing” asks me to see myself as I am.  I can only come from the “me” I am today-not the “me” who I think I should be.

The process of acceptance of who I am is ongoing.  But the beginning point remains the same—I am who I am engaging in this world now.

Begin now, by promising yourself to pause with me in embracing yourself as a person in process.  As we learn to replace judgement with acceptance, it is the reader of hearts who asks us to remain vigilant in accepting who we have grown to be—both in our head and in our heart.