Path with Heart

Feeling Function

“To know how to choose a path with heart is to learn how to follow intuitive feeling. Logic can tell you superficially where a path may lead to, but it cannot judge whether your heart will be in it.”

Jean Shinoda Bolen

As children, we are taught to reach for the stars. To choose a path in life that will lead to “success,” which often means the one that will make the most money. Kids choose rock star, champion athlete, movie star, doctor, lawyer, real estate mogul; they want to occupy the corner office as CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Often, we choose mates for the same reason—we shoot for the one that's “going places.” We still think that having more money than we can possibly spend in a lifetime is the key to happiness. All too often, these choices lead to disillusionment and heartbreak—not always, but often enough for caution.

Here's where it breaks down—money is nice to have, even essential to have, but happiness is the business of the heart. The heart may or may not engage when it comes to money. Some people work hard all their lives, accrue a fortune, only to find out somewhere around midlife that they are not at all happy. They change mates, locations, jobs; they move up the ladder and make even more money, but they still feel empty. We cannot buy, sell, steal or trade our way to happiness—we have to feel our way there. And here's the rub—all too often in order to climb that ladder all the way to the top, we have to sell our soul and suspend our feeling function. We have to shut down our hearts—which, of course, is the only path to the goal of happiness.

There is nothing wrong with logic—evolution of the thinking brain is the very reason we have achieved so much as a species, from forging steel to creating a space station. We have developed an incredibly good thinking function. But in order to feel happy—and by that I mean fulfilled, contented, at peace with ourselves and the world—we also have to listen to our hearts—our intuitive mind. We use logic to figure out solutions to problems, but it is intuition that leads to creative possibilities for those solutions. Intuition can tell us whether something “feels right;” that is, if the path we are on is one that leads to fulfillment and contentment. If it does not feel right, then the wise decision is simply to choose a different path. If we proceed in a direction that is logical but feels wrong, we do so at our own peril. Nothing is worth the sacrifice of your soul.

                                                        In the Spirit,

                                                             Jane