Heart/Mind Imbalance

This morning I again wake up with a movie hangover, a hijacked imagination. As my mind launched into the familiar routine of looking for reasons, explanations and possible solutions I realized that maybe that activity itself may be a diversion. I was reminded of the verse, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23) We are created to function, to live our life on at least two major levels – the heart and the mind. There is also the spirit but it so far is hard to quantify as to where it fits in though it may be more important than the others or is at least more powerful.

I have known for some time that a large part of humanity's problem is our imbalance in our emphasis on one of these areas. I came from the culture of over-emphasis on the intellectual, the mind. The last few years I am becoming aware both of the existence of my heart and of my spirit. But my ingrained habits steer me back to trying to figure things out and formulating a solution for every problem.

The thought occurred to me this morning in light of this text that the intellectual concepts may be very important and useful to understand but are often powerless to infuse lasting changes into my life because of the lack of coordination from the area of my heart and my spirit. I have certainly seen many people who were frustratingly solution oriented and constantly babbling about their theories and what everyone should do to fix their lives but who seemed clueless as to how to actually live from their own heart and be real. Of course it is always easier to see my problems in someone else's life and this is likely true here as well.

To risk another analyzation event by my over-exercised left brain, it does seem to be an insight from this verse that our heart is the source in our life from which the rest of us receives the vital power called life that makes for lasting change in direction and habits and character. The heart operates much differently than the intellectual mind and as yet is not well understood by me. The heart certainly involves my emotions but is much bigger than that. It also is strongly affected by decisions and acts of faith-motivated obedience. There is repeated references to this that I have noticed particularly in the devotional book My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers.

So what does this mean for my current struggle. I feel convicted that my repeated choices are keeping me in a state of double-mindedness which may quite likely be blocking me from receiving life through my heart. Though God is the only source of life, my heart is the entryway through which that life flows into and through me. When my loyalties are divided between God and the world, my flesh is siphoning off the incoming life to appropriate to and energize its desires and plans ahead of my spiritual welfare. The “flesh” in me is very much a parasite consuming the life given to me by God for itself ahead of my real self's welfare.

Yes, there are two “selves” inside me – my flesh, the part of me that feeds from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the other self, the heart and identity that God implanted in me that must be fed from the Tree of Life. Since all life only comes from God, then the cancer-like “flesh” part of my soul drains off and starves the healthy part of me that God wants to thrive. It is a struggle to the death for one or the other. As long as I try to allow and encourage and feed both sides for the “benefits” I want to enjoy from both, the flesh will always outmaneuver the “spirit” and, just like physical cancer, will ultimately win the fight for my destiny. The only hope for me is total eradication of the cancerous cells through strong medication and treatment by God to eliminate my double-mindedness – my attempts to accommodate both identities.

This is what the Bible calls dying to self. This must happen at the heart level, not the intellectual level. Trying to endlessly analyze and conceptualize while avoiding the real heart work is the most effective decoy to keep us from eternal life. I feel uncomfortable to some extent even putting this down in writing as the process of writing more often engages my intellectual than my heart. But it does seem to be helpful to use writing as a means of reporting what is happening at my heart level for purposes of feedback and solidification. The intellectual is not useless or bad, it is just often over-dominant and disruptive when allowed to be independent from guidance from the spirit and heart.