Updated: September 5, 2024
hello my name is Glenn Toby and I welcome you to the heart wisdom talk every month Master lens spring far Chicago has sponsored uh focus on different topics for the last several years and months and it's an opportunity for people that who are practitioners or certified trainers healers Practice Group Leaders to share you know their perspective on the topic around the heart wisdom you know I love the title of hard wisdom but as we're talking about not so much hard knowledge or knowledge we're talking about the wisdom what is the wisdom of the heart and so today you know it's really my excited opportunity to talk with Hector again Hector comparo you know I've known for a number of years first met him in Mexico City when masculine was doing a workshop there and Hector was really organizing everything and I was impressed so deeply about two things his ability to organize and keep things clear and that really translates now when he shares information he has a way of having it organized and that he makes things clear and what the third part of Hector's life for me is his heart is so beautiful you know so let me introduce Hector you can say a little bit about himself and then we'll start to move into this conversation Hector hi thank you so much I'm also very very happy to be here and with everyone else that is watching this uh dialogue this conversation about the heart and um as some of you may know I am a clinical psychologist I work as a one-on-one therapist and I use Spring Forest Qigong as the main tool to be able to allow people to reconnect with their well-being and let go of emotional blockages and I am so excited to be here with all of you and with Glenn it is nice to hear that introduction now you you do work so diligently on the emotional blockages inside people's lives so now the the topic for today is uncovering the radiance of the heart so when I first saw that I went whoa this should be like a three-day show you know so I like maybe if Hector could say well how did you come up with that you know that title what uh kind of sparked your interest in those words yeah well um my experience with finding peace and well-being has been like I think since the time I was born and uh as I went through the path of finding myself I encountered several uh great teachers true Masters that revealed to me that the source of all well-being of all happiness of all joy and peace was within my heart so uh this brings to mind have you seen those videos where they uh put like uh some type of Gadgets in people that are deaf and then suddenly they can hear or they put some glasses in people that only see two colors and suddenly they can see all the colors well that was my experience when I discovered what was inside my heart so uh in a way my own path and the path that I uh go through with people that come to me as clients has to do with this uncovering of Radiance a light a center that is inside all of us Wow Let's can I ask you maybe you know the word heart you know it has like so many references or so many you know is it the Heart Is it is it the mind is it could you spend a little time you know kind of drawing out what's the what's the What's the vocabulary today when we talk about the heart so that people are listening in can maybe help clarify that for themselves as well yeah absolutely thank you Glenn so the heart has been uh used as a symbol of many different things uh since Humanity first developed their language in the original cliffs in China one of the first Cliffs that appears is the gleef of the heart and for example when the Cliff of the heart is constrained they call that emotion fear and anguish when the gift of the heart is broken they call that glyph the glyph of sadness when the Cliff of the heart is imposed or is being punched by somebody else they call that glyph the glyph of anger so the heart has many different connotations and it's a very very rich concept and to me the three main aspects that I look into is the heart as the spirit of the person which includes the mind and the emotions but I focus mostly on the emotions and the heart as the seat of the Soul which is the uh part where we connect with divinity of course we have the physical heart this fabulous organ that distributes all the blood to all our cells there are ancient scriptures both in China and in India that speak that the seed of the mind is actually in the physical organ of the heart and I was so glad like some seven or ten years ago there was a study that discovered that there are memories in the heart there are neurons in the heart and when people for example have a heart transplant the new person that received the transplant from the other person has memories of the person who transplanted the heart so that doesn't happen with the brain you see so the memories about our life the things that makes us happy that makes us feel alive those memories are there in the physical heart so I see the heart in three different levels the physical the what we call in Spring Portugal and the spiritual which includes the mind and the emotions and then we have the soul level of the heart which is the pure awareness the light of Consciousness that resides in us all the Tau the highest level of encounter with the Divine so those are the three different levels and we experience them all the time as masterlin says we are multi-dimensional beings so it is a very rich topic indeed so when I hear um people talk about the mind you know could you help clarify because you use that just now is the mind you know my brain know is the mind my heart or if I say go deep into my heart do I go deep into my mind so I think more or so if you can help me with my confusion over those words of the what is the mind as it relates to what is the heart yeah so uh if we look into the different bodies as explained by our master trunulin we have the physical body and then we have the energy body where the chi flows well or the meridians or the chi or The Prana if you are from the realm of yoga flows that infuses all the organs with this energetic aspect in that energetic realm is for the mind and the emotions uh reside or abide we are mostly identified with that aspect of us when we say I am Hector I am Glenn we identify with Who We believe We Are which includes thoughts that are in the mind thoughts are basically symbolic constructs that associate with things in the outside so for example if I'm looking at the screen right now my mind puts up a symbolic construct that calls this apparatus in front of me computer which I learned from others so the mind is basically the thought aspects as I see it but then you have the emotions the emotion is a different deeper vibration a lot of people think that the emotions come from the mind I find that this is not so because as I have been working with different clients and also working in meditation when a child is first born and they have the first impressions of themselves they first feel and it isn't until a year or a year and a half or two years after that they begin to construct the patterns of thoughts thinking and Association that we call the mind so we first feel for example if by any case a person wasn't expected to be born or was rejected by their parents they feel that they don't think that they feel that and that feeling constructs a deep sense of identity in their body so we first feel and then we think so the feeling aspect the emotions happiness anger Joy contentment sadness is the emotional aspect and the thoughts about it the naming of the emotion the naming of the external aspects around us is the mind that's how I see it and that's how I experience it so could could you add to that um what do you think the function you know in the body in those three you know levels of heart you know not to be an organizationally focused what's your job description anyway you know if I'm Contracting out the heart what's what am I going to expect them to do for me the function yeah I mean as you say this this uh could be a workshop so um you see when the embryo is first born the heart is developed first and then the brain so what keeps Us Alive is the heart when the child is born it is born in a body that cannot survive on its own we're completely dependent on our caretakers to survive so the mind on the emotions need to ensure that the body that is completely dependent on the other that is completely helpless helpless survives so its Essence is a survival function of the bodily entity while it is at a stage in which it cannot self-sustain that is his first primary function as I see it and as I experienced it working with myself and working with people so if we receive what we believe we need to survive we experience contentment happiness satisfaction if we don't we experience fear anxiety worry anger if we lose what we think is sustaining us we feel sadness so primarily the the spiritual body that contains both the mind and the emotions the heart as the emotional body is a survival strategy then we have the third level of the heart which is our soul which resides in the physical space of the heart and we can also contact that Divinity in the top of the head too in those uh different uh spiritual centers but the the heart is the point where we connect with divinity which is our true essence and that Divinity that part inside ourselves is already full it doesn't need anything outside to be happy is already ever New Joy ever present peace unconditional love on its own so as we evolve we can put each one of the functions in order so instead of for example being identified with my mind and my emotions so that I can please other people so that they can give me the respect and the love and the affection that I feel I need but I no longer need if I am an adult but I feel that I need that instead of identifying myself with that structure which we can call the ego we can put those two functions in its place and allow ourselves to assume our worthiness to assume our sovereignty to assume our contact with the part of us the True Heart the highest level of the heart and from that sense of well-being then the mind and the emotions can become more uh equipoise can arrive at a level of equilibrium because we're no longer depending on the external to satisfy our needs or to feel that we are needing them to survive yeah so is there something that I can do there's a two sides of this question is there something that I can do to make sure that these three you know hearts or functioning well or the other side of that is how do I sort of speak you know block inside my body you know the flow of this or the flow of that or what do I do or what do I experience you know that uh that interferes with how you know it's designed to work so 10 words or less okay so to keep the physical heart healthy you need to eat good food drink a lot of water do exercise [Laughter] to keep the emotional and the subtle body healthy we need to release the blockages that have been accumulated of all of the survival emotions through the years so that we can then be able to contact to reconnect and abide in the presence of the spiritual heart and how is the soul fit in yeah so the soul is always there always present we can call it uh The Emptiness which is not really empty because you see what we call the emptiness in Qigong is truly that part inside of us that has no objects is not smelling something is not hearing something has no thoughts has no emotions so therefore is empty of objects but it is full presence it is full pure awareness that is not thinking that is always there which is unconditional love because he's not judging us but it's always presence inside of us and that is the source of the happiness the well-being the love the joy that we're looking for and where or we're looking for when we were younger in the external so as we purify the subtle body the the channels where the QI flows we are able to see and recognize the part of us that has always been already full and the reason we cannot see that is because we have accumulation of uh afflictive emotions from the past in the survival aspect a survival function of the emotional body what would it look like in my body or someone else's life you know if there's a damage or blockages or you know is it when I get grouchy is that uh you know harming my heart in a way you know so what what the similar behaviors do to a person's emotional heart life yeah so I think and correct me if if I'm wrong I think that you're speaking about the five afflictive emotions that we speak of in Spring Forest Qigong right yeah yes so the emotional body as a survival mechanism has these five survival emotions which are fear which is that this is the primary as soon as the physical body comes into this world the first thing that the child experiences is fear because they are acutely aware of not being able to fulfill their needs on their own so fear then from Fear comes anger what if what I'm needing doesn't come if anger accumulates it becomes hatred which is an anger against another if the anger against another is more and more accumulated I begin to worry and become very anxious that the things that might need to satisfy me won't come so worrying society and if I continue to worry and become anxious about things and everything around me is just not working or I lose what I believe was supplying me the well-being in my life from the external I become sad and if sadness becomes more concentrated it can become depression so this is like what we would call the cycle of afflictive emotions in the emotional body corresponding to the five elements as masterlin teaches them so how do you know if you have emotional blockages you know because when you remember something you feel immediately an afflictive emotion as you re-encounter a person that did something wrong or bad to you you experience that afflictive emotion as you are trying to reach a goal and you feel afraid that you're not worthy of attaining that goal that this goal is not for you that perhaps other more lucky people are worthy of attaining that gold but not you that's an afflictive emotion afflictive emotion makes us feel small limited uh it's uh scars we feel scarcity need mm-hmm could you know you say you work individually with people using this uh material could you uh I don't say give me a case study but could you explain maybe how you go about talking to someone using this really wonderful information about the heart sure so I'll give you a very brief example so this lady uh had panic attacks every time she needed to make a presentation at work and she was a VP so she needs to make a lot of presentations because she's part of the leadership but each time that she thinks about giving a presentation she begins to perspire she her throat begins to uh become constricted she be because very nervous she begins to stammer and so on so she comes to me she tells me that experience so I asked her to close her eyes relive the experience of giving a presentation I asked her what is the emotion that you're feeling so she might say anxiety and then I ask her where do you feel it and she might say it in my throat and then I asked her what is the level of anxiety that you fear as you recall this event from zero to ten she might say 10 or 8 or 9 and then what I do is that I connect with my master I connect with my heart there is a point of Joy inside my heart and then I connect with the person are they connect with the person I can feel because she has already told me where the anxiety is in her throat and then I use the spring for Qigong movements to take out the afflictive emotion from her and then I asked her okay so how are you feeling now from the level of eight or ten that you were feeling how is it now so she can say two or one or zero and the goal is that it goes to zero so when she remembers be given a presentation she's not feeling that anxiety again that's the first objective test so to speak in the session and then the verification on the outside is that next time that she gave the presentation she didn't feel the anxiety preparing and giving it because the emotional blockage that was making her feel that if other people rejected her she was going to be a failure is no longer there we have taken that emotional blockage out of the system there are more things behind it but in essence that's what it is so so I hear you saying only two levels one is here's how you can intervene to help another but also uh here's a way that someone can what work preventatively on their own anxiety or whatever their energy blockage could be okay I think that's what you're beginning to describe is that they once they if she has to speak again she knows kind of the formula by which she can you know focus on her throat or focus on where the anxiety so you're teaching her a skill not just depend on Hector to fix me in a way yeah well you see the uh work on the emotional body is the same work that uh as a Spring Forest you can healer that you do with the energy blockages that are uh harming uh a person's organ so once you take the energy blockages in that sense the organ can regenerate but if you continue to do the same things that you did before that were the costs of your organ becoming Afflicted then you might get sick once again so in the same way let's say with this person once she was no longer experiencing this blockage as soon as at any moment in time she had a negative thought about herself then I teach her things to do with any affective emotion in the moment so that emotion doesn't accumulate again and so I have several techniques one of them which is very simple I call name accept let go so you name the emotion I'm feeling anxiety you accept the emotion you tell yourself it's okay for me to feel it's okay to feel this anxiety and the third one you just stay present with the emotion and you tell yourself it's okay to let you go no Afflicted emotion can last for more than 90 seconds physiologically in the system it is impossible for it to last more than 90 seconds so why does it last more because we judge our reflective emotions we repeat to ourselves the victimizing stories about why we're feeling this way and we blame ourselves or others when we're feeling those emotions so this uh small technique that I gave you the simple technique that I gave you allow us to cultivate what masterlin teaches us again and again which is unconditional love kindness and forgiveness for ourselves so that when any emotion comes to the foreground we can relate to it with full acceptance and kindness and when we don't judge it and we are just present with it the emotion is just gonna come like a wave and it's going to merge back into the ocean of Consciousness where it came from and in that way we prevent the accumulation of emotional blockages in our body of course nothing would work if we're not doing our Spring Forest Qigong movements because Chi is the driver force that allows the blockages to flow out but that's in essence uh how we can prevent them yes I I hear you kind of talking about like it can last 90 seconds and how come it goes longer I kind of go well it's because I feed it you know I want this anxiety to continue so I'm going to keep doing things that keep the anxiety alive and well you know and I think that's what you know a lot of folks that I Know Myself included how do we feed those kinds of afflictive emotions as opposed to you know maybe the word is mindset could you speak more to them what is the mindset that you might have in order to address The Afflicted emotions yeah Most Wanted uses a beautiful word from his Chinese tradition which is Wu way Wu way is The Stance of complete unconditional acceptance uh there's a beautiful story of a Master Gardener that he had a touch of gold so whatever he touches all the plants and the flowers flow uh beautifully so there was this student that traveled around the world to find the master he finds the master and he asked the master okay so what is your secret and so the master says well my secret is I dig a hole in the ground I plant the plant on the floor I cover it I water it and then I don't touch it and he said well that's it yeah but everybody does that and he says no he said you see most people come the next day and begin to poke at the plant to see if anything is coming up then if it's coming this way they try to correct it this other way and then they change out of place because it's not working and then they worry about the plan so I just let it be and so it's the same regard towards our emotions the regard of wu-way which is unconditional acceptance and unconditional love when we can regard our heart emotions that come from our heart from that stance of unconditional acceptance and love the emotions feel free to appear to let us know what is happening with them and then our emotional body can grow it doesn't stay as when we were six years old or teenagers or you know it grows up to be able to deal with the different flavors of the emotions as if it was a rainbow and not ourselves clubbing them down because we feel bad about them every time they come so conditional acceptance is the primary mental framework if you will regarding our emotional uh you're already in our emotions yeah so so I hear you saying a little bit that the body knows how to heal itself or to function very well and then your image of planting and then coming back and poking at it then it seems like then I start using my head my brain is it working is it growing where is it happening what should I do rather than saying what go back to you what let it go come back to your heart let the natural system that she development in the heart does that make sense that the entrance of the mind to think about how to fix everything versus going to the heart and allowing the body to respond as it's uh conditioned or instructed to do yeah yeah exactly and you see uh when we were talking about the primary role of the mind and the emotions as a survival strategy where did we learn to speak about ourselves who taught us to talk to us this is my psychoanalytic background but yeah our parents and the environment did so if we felt that being happy was unknowing my caretaker I'm I I my joy I might um okay I I might uh judge sorry I might judge when I'm feeling happy and I feel I'm not worthy of feeling happy if I feel angry and my care traker says oh shut up oh Boys Don't Cry Oh Baba then I say okay so this is dangerous for me I shouldn't feel angry because if I'm angry my caretaker is going to become upset and I'm in survival danger this is a life or death situation for the child so every time that anger comes up or anxiety or sadness we are all different there is a part of us that say no don't feel that because if you feel that means that you are not worthy of love means you are not a good person means you're not worthy of the goodness of life means that you deserve to be rejected that you deserve not to thrive that you deserve not to be healthy so as we practice unconditional self-acceptance regarding our emotional body that other voice becomes quiet because this poor other little voice from infancy is just looking for love and acceptance but we can tell her no worries I'm gonna give it to you there's nothing you can do that is going to be rejected by me yeah you can behave however you want to see I'm here so when you're not no so I love you and so when the Mind goes ahead the brain starts thinking differently I'm not deserving I'm not this then you what go back to your heart in the heart the body doesn't reject you it doesn't judge you you know accepts you as you are the brain has some other opinion so to speak but the heart doesn't so more and more if you're practicing going through a hard practice going through a heart practice going to a heart go deeper into a heart for me like The Emptiness is like now I'm ready for the heart to take me someplace I've eliminated me all my brain stuff I'm empty from my brain thinking and now I'm now I'm opening to The Emptiness so I can receive that the blessing the depth of the heart in order to have this kind of love for myself inside does that ring true for you absolutely absolutely lame I mean and I I believe that you are also talking about the importance of regular practice because you see this uh this way of addressing our emotions on ourselves is not a technique like a mental technique you can say the words I'm feeling like this it's okay blah blah you can tell to your emotion I am here for you uh you're not alone I love you but if the words don't have feeling it's just as empty as an affirmation without soul it will not do the work so where does that true power of the heart the unconditional love come from it comes from us practicing the spring forcing movements that take us to abide in the space free of judgment that we call The Emptiness pure Consciousness pure Stillness where we can observe our body as it is moving and we can just be with our body present so this in itself is uh deep and genial from the early Spring Forest econ Masters way of us beginning to de-identify with the body we are observing the body as it moves we are observing the breath as it flows we are observing our thoughts as they come up and we can also observe our emotions as they appear like as we do in the Five Element movements so as we begin to take distance first in the active movements and then when we sit down and we practice sitting meditation and we focus on the heart we focus on the joy that we practice during the five elements movements or the happiness or the contentment or the gratitude that portal of high level emotion takes us immediately in charge with our soul with a true heart with our true being and from there we are able to observe the thoughts that come in meditation and the other emotions that come in meditation and come back to the center come back to the center come back to the center therefore as we learn to step out slowly I always recommend this to uh the people that are working with me you need to come out of your contact in meditation slowly just don't open your eyes and begins you need to maintain the connection with the center of well-being and peacefulness within and as you open your eyes you're still there you're still connected you haven't lost it then as you move throughout your day and you use these techniques you use them to pause and reconnect with that state that you have been cultivating daily during your spring foresting on movements and sitting meditation so this allows you to reframe completely the way you react to yourself and the way you respond to the external happenings in your life I like the way you talk about the need for practice I know with the movements in Chicago you know those are like for the external the body and then the meditation is to go deeper you know into your heart so I I read a long time ago that the definition of a spirituality was the art of coming home and so it's like what you're saying about practice is almost like when the world is impacting me in different ways you know and I'm responding to what's happening in that world that's impacting me what tools do I have to come home to myself to balance the heart the hearts so always being aware that my world is going to impact me I'm going to have an interaction with it but I have a solution or I have a way of healing I have a way of balancing myself as you're talking about in the emotions so all we gotta have the tool to come back I had a tool to come home I had the tools to meditate so it's not just I got this down and every no it's like the world is going to be impacting you kind of like all the time and then so how do I be aware of what's happening to me as this happens and that happens that it has a fact on both our physical body but certainly our emotional body as you describe and then you know the impact on the rest of her life the practices so one last question this is maybe not a fair one I don't care no I I hear Western medicine talking more frequently about broken heart syndrome someone can be overpowered by grief you know they have a broken heart you know there's a label coming out oh you're suffering from a broken heart syndrome so just as I say that what's your first thought just about that phrase a broken heart syndrome yeah I haven't heard this uh spoken in those words but what comes to my mind as you as you mentioned that term I think that this person suffered a loss of a relationship with another that was meaningful and was giving them joy and love and even meaning to their life and this other could be from a pet to an activity for example let's say that you are you ski in the mountains and you suffer an accident and you can no longer ski that's gonna break your heart or you had this relationship with another person that you loved and he or she left you or the relationship didn't work out so your heart breaks so this breaking of the heart to me has to do with the afflictive emotion of sadness which includes both uh the morning process the grief process and it can include depression too so when the heart is broken we feel or that's how we call it we feel the acute pain of that which we thought was bringing us fulfillment no longer being there and most of us feel that that was the only source of that fulfillment and that but I must what I'm saying must be true because I hear the the sound yeah it's the alarm alarm yeah so it's by me is my neighborhood screaming that's all yeah so come to the rescue somebody come to rescue yeah so we feel the acute pain of having lost something that we felt was giving to us all of that the thing is that truly speaking the source of that was not the other person I mean I know this sounds sure yeah sorry about that everybody's everybody everybody says that [Laughter] it's true get it until we begin to give to ourselves the acknowledgment that the other person was giving to us the acceptance that the other person was giving to us the kindness that the other person was giving to us the love that the other person was giving to us when we recognize through the practice of Qigong and she infused meditation when we begin to behave in ways that are kind and accepting of ourselves then this part of us that was needing the other looking for the other half this is such a great metaphor in the modern world and looking for the other half I'm looking for the one but if the one goes then we believe there's not another and if the other half goes then we're still empty and we need to look for another half that might not feed us greatly as the other one fit and then we're on the look on the outside but when we take the route of coming home as you so beautifully explained we can first heal the Broken Heart the morning process includes shock anger and sadness resistance that what we loved is gone then acceptance that what happened happened to us and finally give a new meaning to that event so if a broken heart is going to bring me back to myself awesome the trick is to allow ourselves to go through the process of a broken heart because the morning process is not something to get rid of the morning process as I have experienced it with people is how the heart heals if you break an arm you wouldn't be expecting oh my God how come it hurts why do I have a cast well because the hurt and the cast are part of the healing so the mourning process is the same so it is so different to deal with loss from a space from our regard of self-activity and kindness to regarding the morning as nobody's gonna ever love me this is not for me all women are the same all men are the same I lost the one I'm never gonna find it and so on so we just elongate the period of mourning for months and some people for years until we can recognize that fountain that stores from within that's that's how I see it that's beautiful Hector thank you say in the time that we have could you lead us into a you know meditation great fun fantastic seven minutes yeah thank you yes yeah so thank you so much Glenn it's always a delight to talk to you to be with you and with Katrina too so um I'm going to guide us in a meditation uh to the heart and we're gonna be using the three hearts the physical the emotional and the subtle one the connection with our souls so I'm just going to ask you to be you know posture where you can be comfortable and when your spine can be elongated so that your awareness is present here and now your hands can be positioned in an open way facing down on your thighs or knees and you may gently want to close your eyes and as always We Begin by focusing on the first plane the physical plane so be sure that your shoulders are relaxed and take three deep breaths breathing deep and breathe out long breathing deep breathe out let go breathing deep and breathe out long continuing on the physical plane I'm gonna ask you to position your right hand if you are right-handed or your left hand if you're left-handed in the center of your chest where your heart abides and try to sense how that feels like can you sense the warmth in your hand can you sense the movement in your chest can you sense your Beating Heart as you are there gently Softly smile this is again a physical prompt but focus on the point within the center of your chest where the joy appears where the contentment flows where happiness pure happiness abides when you smile and focus there be present with that Joy if the joy subsides gently smile again reconnect with the joy now you are abiding in the second level of the heart pure emotion that is not dependent on anything you're thinking do you smile you connect it with the essence of joy in the heart and if you lose contact because you think about another thing or you get distracted you smile again and you focus on the point in the center of the heart or pure ever New Joy arises as you breathe in breathe in joy towards the heart as you breathe out expand that loving joyful presence as of your body he uses contact with that Joy smile again being touched with the ever present joy in the heart and stay with it as you focus more and more in that Joy you're gonna realize that behind the joy observing The Joy being present with the joy allowing you to see the joy there's this pure enveloping awareness that is just conscious of the joy present with the joy allow the joy to become the light that makes you aware of the presence of the soul in your heart thank you mine again become aware of the gentle flow in your breath keep the inner smile and gently open your eyes now as you're looking outside keep your focus inside in the inner smile it doesn't need to go anywhere it is ever present and this is another way in which we can reconnect to that Center throughout our day if you feel that the energy was strong and you feel you need to now you can rub your hands and massage your face three times and gently pop your head thank you and gently massage your ears three times and you can just keep smiling so this was just a small taste well well Hector I'm still smiling and I'm smiling at you for this wonderful time that we spent exploring a very expansive expanding you know focus on what what is the heart and the different aspect so I'm glad that you're guiding us to lead into more understanding so those that have listened to this please continue in your meditation if you wish or come back to it when you need to so I hope you have a a good evening a good morning wherever you may be and stay connected good night thank you so much good night
