ability to love

Myth: Children's Intellectual Abilities Are Independent of Their Ability to Give and Receive Love
©2000 Meryn G. Callander

Fact: The physical heart is the seat of many important human qualities. Our perceptions, mental and emotional attitudes, immune system, reaction times, and decision-making abilities are all directly related to the health of our heart.

The higher perceptual faculties in the brain perform better when electrical rhythms produced by the heart are balanced and harmonious. Positive feelings of love, care, appreciation, and compassion create balanced and harmonious heart rhythms. Balancing head and heart, we develop wisdom, power, and integrity in making choices and communicating. By consciously loving, we harmonize the foundational heart energy in ourselves and in our families. Sensitivity increases, communication grows clearer, and understanding develops.

The affairs of the heart are directly connected to the brain and it's the heart's natural intelligence that must be unfolded for the brain to operate with greater efficiency. Joseph Chilton Pearce, Evolution's End

The mind represents only a portion of available human intelligence. Intuition is from an additional octave of intelligence that is introduced to the mind through the heart frequencies of love, compassion, appreciation, etc. This intuitive heart intelligence amplifies creativity, problem solving, and accurate choices.

The heart-brain dynamic plays a profoundly important role in our intellectual and creative development, and determines the nature of our family and social life. Discovery of it offers a new perspective on the meaning of intelligence in general and should surely revolutionize our concept of the word "love." The Institute of HeartMath has indeed lifted heart intelligence and love "out of sentiment and into biology" through brilliant, innovative research. Joseph Chilton Pearce

We want to explore, learn, and be creative when we are "in the heart." When we are "out of heart," frustration, anger, boredom, self-pity or anxiety take over. Problems appear to be unsolvable. In a state of anxiety, anger, or fear, the brain cannot make an appropriate response. Children are more responsive, and listen and learn better, when they are in heart. Love imparts heart intelligence--increased perception and intuitive understanding. When children don't feel loved and don't know how to love, their intelligence is restricted and so is their ability to select appropriate responses to life's challenges.

While DNA has coded within it the basic patterns for brain development, DNA does not determine all our neuronal connections. The latter form through experiences and environmental influences. When children lack love, are continuously over-stimulated, fearful, or worried, they become preoccupied with the internal stress. Their ability to adapt diminishes. As they become conditioned to stress, the brain's neuronal patterns are set in stress response patterns.

Children who lack love have a harder time learning. In a nurturing and caring environment, children love learning. Love is felt in the area of the heart. The physical heart responds to love and this can be measured in the ECG (electrocardiogram) and in HRV (heart rate variability) rhythms. Feelings of anger, worry, frustration, or stress causes heart rhythms to become unbalanced and disordered. The creative faculties are shut down, causing the brain to operate less efficiently. By relearning to generate loving and appreciative feelings, heart rhythms return to balance; and adaptability and creative learning resumes. If children are to hold positive and hopeful feelings about the future, they must experience the love that is essential to their balancing the complexities of modern life.

Howard Gardner, author of Frames of Mind, notes that while the word "intelligence" has a positive connotation in our culture, there is no reason to believe that intelligence will be put to good purpose. Logical-mathematical, linguistic, or interpersonal intelligence can be used for good or for ill-motivated or downright destructive ends.

It is on these grounds that Joseph Chilton Pearce asserts that love proves to be our principle survival intelligence. The intelligence of the heart enhances all other aspects of intelligence for the good of the whole, as the heart always and inevitably strives for a holistic intelligence.

Heart intelligence, like all intelligences, must be developed. The good news is that learning to love is not only the "cornerstone of all higher forms of intellect," but it is a learning we can undertake at any time of life. The more you practice, the easier it becomes to access heart intelligence. As heart intelligence expands, the brain's intelligence becomes more complete in actualizing its potential for fulfillment. Children who learn to love develop a more complete perspective of life, are able to make wiser decisions, care for themselves and others, and pass the understanding of how to love onto their children.

Harmonizing heart and brain through love is what can establish a complete intelligence, a complete self, where a child can look at life and realize there are no dead ends, there are always possibilities. The greatest gift a parent can give a child during all the ups and downs of life is love Joseph Chilton Pearce, from the Introduction to Teaching Children to Love

What is psychology?- Looking for a black cat in a dark room. What is psychoanalysis? Psychoanalysis is looking for a black cat in a dark room -- in which there is no cat -- but finding one anyway.

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