Getting Your Head, Heart And Soul To Agree

GETTING YOUR HEAD, HEART AND SOUL TO AGREEBy Bill Cottringer

Oh boy, I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew here with this title. It just came to me as a very important problem to solve—the many important disagreements between the information and choices these three things lead us to act on. I believe at least part of the problem is that our heads, hearts and souls all have much different purposes and the way you see these purposes helps determines the choices you make and the outcomes you get. Think about the enormity of this statement.

What if your head is the master of either-or ego-driven, win-lose competitiveness, your heart master of compassion, cooperation and love and your soul the gatekeeper of the whole truth between these perpetually warring thinking-feeling twins? The head is being aggressive in trying to understand, predict, control and change things to your liking, the heart is being passive in accepting the softer side of things, and the soul just experiences life without these personal thinking and feeling spins. Is there any way they can agree?

Maybe the only way these three sources can work together synergistically is to not automatically consider what each tells us as being superior, over-embracing that artificial “certainty” and then acting on it fully. Maybe most important issues in life are ‘divergent” in nature—not completely solvable one way or the other and only resolvable by moving towards a more harmonious balance between the extremes, or even letting each speak its ‘mind’ when it is time? And maybe the truth has to emerge from all three sources in a moment of serendipity.

Let’s evaluate a plausible answer to the nagging question of ‘Why are we here?’ and then check it out with these three ‘truth’ sources.

More and more modern day religious theologians, philosophers and positive psychology writers seem to be convening on a common purpose we have for being here, that allows the purpose to be customized and branded by our personal signature selves and unique brain and heart prints. This is the ‘what’ of our lives that we get to choose the ‘how’ to do.

This common purpose seems to be learning, growing and improving into our best selves to actualize our potential for creating an abundant life for ourselves and others. Of course defining ‘abundance’ is where the ‘how’ part comes into play. It can include anything from this growing list: Gaining authentic happiness; achieving professional success; accumulating wealth, power, and influence; making a difference; leaving a legacy; becoming spiritually enlightened; accepting peace of understanding; reconciling wholeness; loving unconditionally; or even helping others to find their purpose and be happier and more successful in living it out. It is simply a matter of how you chose to define the ‘ abundance ’ you want, seek and get.

HEAD CHECK

What would your head say about all this? The ‘what’ of such a purpose is highly plausible, because it is a ‘one-size fits all’ prescription and yet at the same time leaves the ‘how’ to your individuality and ego-driven competitive drive to win and claim your prize. The head is on board.

HEART CHECK

What is your heart’s reaction to all this? The ‘what’ feels okay as long as you let the ‘how’ get tempered with the ‘right’ must-list things like love, acceptance, understanding, compassion, empathy, unselfish service, humility and moderation. Hmmm, how did we get this untypical agreement and cooperation with the competitive head of ours?

SOUL CHECK

The simple yes-no ‘conscience’ of our soul will say ‘go’ to the agreement of allowing the head and heart to converge on carrying out this universally adaptable purpose. And that is only so, because the soul always knows the whole truth of both the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of our purpose, as well as the outcomes.

Life is mostly about our heads and hearts remembering the whole truth, without expecting certain outcomes or being unhappy or disappointed when the outcomes aren’t to our either-or, okay-not okay thinking heads and feeling hearts. Maybe this is the purpose of our mediating souls—to make us more aware of ‘how’ we should be carrying out this purpose—by competing against our own best selves and cooperating with others so we can all get to the finish line together.

Personally I can’t think of a better outcome that both allows us to be free with our own individuality and prevents the freedom of others to be trampled for a win-win outcome for all. At least my head, heart and soul agree on this tentative conclusion.