Why Renaissance of the Heart?

By Mary Pellicer, MD

When Nancy and I began our healing practice (Ceitllyn joined us a bit later), we faced the decision of a name—what to call ourselves and our healing practice. One of the main reasons we were out on our own was that we had been called very strongly to focus on the heart as the center for our healing. Though this seems totally obvious to me now, at the time it wasn’t and much of the healing work we had been doing was much more mind centered though we did not realize it. I thought and thought about the perfect name and wrote down lists and searched out words in the dictionary and thesaurus (notice how mind-centric this approach was). Nothing seemed quite right.

Then I had a dream—one of those incredibly vivid dreams that I have had only very, very rarely. In this dream I was shown the world and each sphere of society—education, business, government, religion, family, etc. I realized that each sphere of society was full of human beings who, like me, were largely governed by their minds—that thinking, rational, logical part of our consciousness that we humans prize so highly. Thus, each sphere of our society is also in essence mind centered. What if, I was asked in my dream, what if each of these spheres of society was heart centered? What would that look like? ….And there before me the world changed.

The first thing to go was war. War is not possible if the majority of people govern their lives from a heart centered place, from a place that accepts others and forgives. Then the schools changed and the companies and corporations and the government and even the churches. If the majority of us were running our lives governed by our hearts, all of our endeavors would change. Kindness and patience and care and respect would be the order of the day and much of what plagues our institutions would vanish. Wow! And then I was given our name. What this world needs, I was told, is a renaissance of the heart—A rebirth of our heart centers as the governing force of our lives. So, we became Renaissance of the Heart, a group dedicated to doing our small part in guiding people back to their hearts, back to their centers.

This is not to say that the other parts of our consciousness, our minds and our bodies, are not important and do not have very important roles in our lives. However, within us we need a conductor of the orchestra, a leader for all the various parts of our consciousness that pull us this way and that. That is the role of our heart center, the part of us whose job it is to connect with other people and to connect with the Divine.

An interesting exercise to try: look at various situations that you find yourself in and see if you can tell if your actions are being governed by your mind your heart or your body. Notice the consequences; see if you can imagine how things would be different if you were governed in that situation from a different part of your consciousness. Next time I'll explore more about how to tell if you're in your heart. Have fun playing.

From my heart to yours,
Mary