Ways to Grow the Heart

How the Heart Grows

"It has been said above that the heart is like a garden, requiring cultivation. Cultivating the heart opens a person to God and His influence. The metaphor of the Garden of Eden comes to mind."

We may have heard of the Utopian type of society or a paradise.  When people yearn for a return to Eden, or a lost paradise, we may say that they are yearning for a return to a state of heart.  Eden is described to be a place of heart, of purity and wonder where God dwells with humankind in oneness and love.  This is the place all humans will dwell with one another in peace and joy, this is humanity's and God's wish for the future.  How do we go about accessing this type of realm of heart within and begin to live in the garden of heart with God?


Each body part was designed specifically by God with a purpose.  The heart was designed to grow naturally through the living for the sake of the other or other-centeredness, through experiencing love in the family.  In order to cultivate the heart and love, family relationships are paramount. 

Within family life, people will experience four "realms of heart"" as children, as brothers and sisters or friends, as a spouse and as a parent.  These provide the natural environment and challenges for the heart to grow.In the beginning, God's ideal was after His first children individually grew into maturity and become perfect, that they would become one through a direct blessing of God through holy matrimony and they would become absolute parents having God's same heart and qualities. 

Yet, we know somewhere this did not happen and the family became distorted burying the heart under layers of self-concern or self-interest.   Through the fall of Adam and Eve, man lost three kinds of love: True parental love, true marital love and true love of Children. 

Also, through the fall we were deprived of ideal families.  Man was degraded from the original quality that was God's expectation.
 

Religion is literally a “re-binding” of the severed ties with God, and its practices are to restore the love relationships that should occur naturally through and in families centered upon God.

Let it be said that the family is such an indestructible vessel of love that social scientists have thrown  up their hands trying to find replacements for an institution that seems now almost inherently dysfunctional.
 

The power of the family to raise viable human beings has been diminished but not destroyed by the effects of the fall. The place where people learn the most about love in life - the place where their hearts’ urges are most nurtured and well-satisfied is still and will always be the family.

Is an orphan raised in an orphanage able to practice the three types of love the same way as a child born into a home where both parents and siblings reside?

God remains deeply sewn into the fabric of the family. Flawed as it may be by the distortion and misdirection of love, the family remains God’s indispensable instrument for schooling people in what it means to be human—what it means to live according to the loving dictates of the heart.

If this is true, then we can see why anyone who wants to destroy God's ideal would first attack the foundation of the family through the three great realms of heart through separation of parents and children.

Besides the family, there are other means of accessing and cultivating the heart. We will cover a few of the major ones: Prayer and faith, loving others, following good mentors, service and suffering.

Ways to Cultivate the Heart

1. Prayer

2. Faith

3. Loving others

4. Loving family environment

5. Service

6. Suffering

1. Prayer

Prayer is a direct encounter with the greatest Heart of all, that of the Creator. The abstract “He and I” becomes an intimate “You and I” experience. Prayer is like pure oxygen for the heart. The source of the impulse to relatedness, God can renew our stores of care and concern that others need and deserve from us.

Meeting with Him enlarges and refreshes our perspective towards other people and the meaning of the tasks awaiting us. It clears the surroundings of the heart to bring others more clearly into focus. Receiving God’s guidance, inspiration, or admonishment strengthens and enlarges what is original and true, while that which is false and petty melts away.

If we imagine the inner heart as being a muscle like its physical counterpart, then the divine encounter in prayer is as if God’s great Heart enters one’s own and forces the walls to expand outward.

Our vision, scope of concern, and capacity for caring expand. When prayer ends, the heart tends to revert to its prior state, but it is never quite as small. Like a muscle, it is now a bit larger, stronger, more pliant and more readily stretched to contain God’s love in the future. If prayer is frequent and accompanied by action, this effect occurs over and over until it becomes big enough for the divine

Heart to become a permanent resident.

Of the many kinds of prayer, the most valuable from the standpoint of heart development is that which focuses on the needs of others, for this is the prayer of true love. “He who prays for his fellowman, while he himself has the same need, will be answered first,” states the Talmud (Baba Kamma 92a).

 Another valuable prayer is one of offering something back to God. Thus, many religions emphasize praising God in prayer. The prayer of gratitude for a beautiful sunset, a rain-washed morning with an upcoming sun, children’s laughter, birdsong—such a prayer goes like an arrow into the heart of God and brings forth an almost electric response.

Reverend Moon has counseled that the way to feel closer to God is to practice offering thanks for all circumstances. There are many kinds of other worthy offerings in prayer. Seeking to please and comfort the Creator—the way an elder child seeks to comfort a weary parent—may be particularly precious. “Let me help you with your burden, your cross”—what could be more touching for a parent to hear? About his ordeal in a North Korean prison camp, a punishment for preaching about God in a

Communist regime, Reverend Moon relates:I never complained [in prayer]. I was never angry at my situation.  I never even asked His help, but was always busy comforting Him and telling Him not to worry about me.  The Father . . . already knew my suffering. How could I tell

Him about my suffering and cause His heart to grieve still more? I could only tell Him that I would never be defeated by my suffering.

2. Faith

 

It is faith that supplies much of the courage that allows us to “take heart” and continue trying, giving, and loving. Without faith, we “lose heart”; the heart closes down and hides itself. Faith represents belief in what is not yet apparent. In the words of St. Paul, faith is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11.1). It is seeing the sun behind the impenetrable clouds and hearing the sweet birdsong of spring beyond the howling winds of winter. It means trusting in one’s own and others’ potential for goodness, the capacity to change for the better, and to grow in goodness.

It entails confidence in heaven’s support and protection for worthy endeavors against all practical odds. It involves belief in the power of true love, just as such love “always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13.7).

The practice of faith fortifies the heart’s ability to lead with its unique sensibilities. This means practicing trust in one’s intuition taking a measure of risk to pursue an inner prompting. Sometimes it entails believing in people when there are good reasons not to.

Blaise Pascal said, “The heart has reasons that reason knows not of.”

Taking the risk toward loving others in the faith that they, like oneself, have a heart that yearns for connection is almost always affirmed by the response of the other.

 

3. Loving Others

A most basic mode of cultivating the heart is to have warm relationships with a wide range of people. This is commonplace in traditional cultures, where extended family and village life bring the individual into constant contact with all age ranges and personalities. Between siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles and grandparents, every age from infant to the very elderly is represented, and there is little opportunity to restrict oneself only to peers. Because one also cannot readily escape those with challenging personalities, people learn how to get along and through time may learn to appreciate the value of types of people they don’t have a natural affinity for.

Expanding one’s parameters of love is always a heart-growing experience. Approaching neighbors for a conversation is sometimes a real challenge to the heart. It has been said in modern times, “we can put a man on the moon but can’t walk across the street to greet a neighbor.” Talking one-on-one with respect and ease to a person from another race, another culture, another background, is an exercise in heart-stretching.

Sometimes the institution of marriage is a place where a person is called upon to love in places and ways he or she never thought possible before. Often, people find day-to-day life with another person to be very different from what they imagined when they first wed. Learning to love someone of the opposite sex, who is very different in physical, emotional, and mental make-up, is a heart stretching opportunity. As mentioned earlier, all the relationships in the family are opportunities to gain new ground in different “realms of the heart” (See Chapters 14-18).

The greatest expansion of the heart is to love someone who has acted like an enemy. Indeed, sometimes people we initially dislike and have conflict with wind up being our best friends as the excitement of the heart’s expansion overwhelms us.

One woman had such an experience with a neighbor:

 

Her children had been rude to my children numerous times when we were new in the neighborhood, and she herself was unfriendly. For a long time, we never waved to one another or greeted one another. Finally, I decided to love her in spite of it all. When I raised my leaden arm to greet her, it was hard, but when she smiled back, it was like electricity. I got a jolt of joy far exceeding anything I felt when I greeted my other neighbors. All I wanted to do was greet her again and again and again. I loved her!

 

4. Loving Family Environment

 

Hearts are also cultivated through imitating noble examples. Parents, teachers and other elders and superiors play the most meaningful roles in this.

 Adolescents for example look to their parents and grandparents for values far more than to pop stars,

 politicians, sports figures or religious leaders.

 

The teaching and example of parents and other authorities are a potent force shaping conscience (see Chapter 5), but their influence is of a slightly different kind regarding the heart.

Research points to the fact that young people pick up the moral feelings of their parents more than their words. For example, when young Jessica heard her father talk about respecting the national flag

5. Service

Service is a powerful instrument for conditioning the heart. Religion has prescribed it as a vehicle for spiritual growth for the millennial, and it is being newly discovered in schools as character building. Its impact has several dimensions. It fosters empathy, through contact with another who is in need and experiencing a common humanity.

It cultivates a sense of personal value and meaning. Some experience themselves tangibly as instruments of divine love and assistance in the lives of the ones being helped. It counteracts false pride, when in the course of service a person finds herself doing what she had considered menial or lowly work. It also has a magical power to bring participants into oneness of heart, as they see each other being used for goodness in this way.

Those serving perceive how others may suffer more than themselves and this engenders gratitude. They notice how others suffer apparently unfairly, and this provokes a healthy soul-searching to make meaning of this and decide how to respond to this larger issue. They witness how some may bear their sufferings nobly, and this brings admiration and humility. It is a rare person engaged in service who does not affirm the statement, “I received more than I gave.” What one receives is a life-giving, heart-stretching experience.

6. Suffering

Suffering is another way to develop the heart. Everyone experiences suffering in life. What people do with their suffering determines how it affects their hearts. Suffering can either embitter a person, making him or her resentful and angry for years on end, or it can refine the character into one of shining beauty, revealing and strengthening the heart.  Suffering can be a great teacher—perhaps the greatest teacher—but only if the person is able to make meaning out of suffering.

The twentieth century witnessed a crisis of meaning that shook the world to its foundations. One of Reverend Moon’s greatest

contributions and greatest strengths is that of a meaning-maker. Born during a famine, undergoing Japanese occupation of his country and being arrested and tortured as a resistance fighter, he then experienced a communist takeover of his native land and was imprisoned and tortured by the communists for talking about God in public.

The Korean War claimed most of his relatives, and he fled South as a refugee, only to be so poor as to have to live in a house made out of U.S. army ration boxes. “As I look back,” he said, “I am reminded that my life has never been easy. My life has been intertwined with the suffering history of our people and the numerous difficulties that our people have undergone in the midst of the great powers.”

Yet he found meaning in all this suffering. Korea, he felt, had a special message about God’s suffering heart to give to the world. If his and his country’s suffering could be offered to God, it could pay the price for a rebirth of religion.

The great religious leaders all suffered, and their hearts were anointed by God because of their sufferings. Making meaning out of suffering—offering it to God and using it to identify with His sorrows and the sorrows of humanity—plunges through the layers of distortion and selfishness encasing the heart and brings forth its fountains of true love.

These are but a few examples of how the heart grows. Growing the garden of the heart may require a lifetime of investment, but no goal could be more worthwhile. Growing the heart enables a person to practice true love, which is the fulcrum of a fulfilling life. Because of its centrality to human existence, educating the heart in true love should be a prime concern.

However, trying to develop the heart without the guidance of the conscience may easily lead down the road of following the emotions rather than the heart. The heart needs the conscience and also the will—the taking of responsibility through action—to pump life into its growth. While the heart is ascendant, it cannot be developed properly without the aids of the conscience and the will.

Return For Tommorrow's Post: How Your Heart Can Mirror the Creator's Part 1


From the Textbook: Foundations of Character Education