It’s a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind. – Naguib Mahfouz
Our ego, the central processing center of consciousness, endlessly pressures our logic into abandoning the truth in our hearts because it likes to exert and maintain control. This is reinforced culturally: first, through the Newtonian-Cartesian split between mind and body, and second, because we value intellect above all other ways of knowing. This has been further exacerbated by specialized scientific conquests that led to further compartmentalization and reductionism. The head doubts that knowledge can be obtained anywhere but the brain, but the heart actually sends considerably more signals to our brains than the other way around. The heart actually wants to lead the way.
Our skepticism is the greatest obstacle between our heads and our hearts.
We’ve all done it, as our ego shoots off the small voice in our head that doubts, we let that voice drown out the one that comes from our heart. Our hearts hold all things to be possible: not a ‘believing’ they are, but rather a ‘knowing’ they are. The heart is free from the restrictions and limitations life experience teaches our brains. And the ego is entirely dependent on life experiences for its knowledge, so in this way, we could say the ego exists in the past, rather than living in the moment or allowing for leaps of faith in the future. Our hearts know better – adhering to a much more expansive reality and openness to possibilities than our brains will ever allow.
Skepticism is a defense mechanism we utilize in avoidance . . .
Skepticism keeps the heart on lock down; it shuns all messages from the heart as outside the realm of possibility. And usually, it chooses to do so because of unhealed wounds or an overt reliance on logic alone, which is itself indicative of past betrayals of the heart. We scapegoat skepticism so we don’t have to show up fully, either for ourselves or anyone or anything else.
Maybe you’re someone who has reason not to trust or be open? . . . which is all the more reason to start with an open heart. People who can’t trust others or life to ultimately be supportive, are usually people who can’t be trusted because their hearts are closed and they treat relationships and experiences as transactional. Keeping our hearts open to life, means stepping into the inner peace at our Essence that is based on the absolute belief that we’ll be okay, even if someone or something has the potential to hurt us. What most of us don’t realize, is that adhering to skepticism, we project the energy of doubt into our reality. We’re always going to end up getting exactly what we expect, rather than manifesting the impossible, when we shut down our hearts.
We can’t be fully actualized beings when skepticism is present.
By abandoning our skepticism and subsequently that energy projection, we unconsciously give others permission to abandon theirs – hopefully, they follow through on the invitation and we can all step into the fullness of honest, wholehearted exchange. But more broadly, abandoning our skepticism allows us to not only open our hearts, but to actualize ourselves fully. Any kind of blockage, between our resources of body, mind, and spirit, undermines what’s possible.