Born free to follow your heart

If the mind is allowed to be the master, advises Frances Wickes, it leads only to “¼the dull content, or discontent, of a half life where the mind ignores the heart or the heart is unconscious of meaning, even the meaning of love itself.” (The Inner World of Choice, p162)

And as the anthem of this chapter goes:

"Born free, and beauty surrounds you,

the world still astounds you,

...born free to follow your heart."

To have 'beauty surround' us is easy- for it is always there. It is simply a matter of our intent to witness it or not. Most beauty is lost because the mind sees equations, definitions, and titles in front of everything, boxing life into little unbeautiful, claustrophobic cubicles. So what we are after is not understanding, or truth, or a solution, but only the vision of Beauty, and to see beauty we must simply 'follow our hearts', that is when the world 'astounds' us.

           The song 'Born Free', as you may recall, belongs to the story of a young lion cub, returned from captivity to the wild by a couple of loving naturalists. There is the lesson in the movie that there is no beauty in a cage, but only in the natural, wild, uncultivated soul.

And so, to return to our theme- to be in awe, or to be 'be-wildered', as it were, is to be wild and free. It is not necessary or even valuable to try to 'know' ourselves, for we can only 'be' our natural selves. And to do that we must simply follow the natural, free flow of feeling.

To abandon the cultured mind, then, releases the wild heart, for it is the mind which creates the division and kills the heart, and such is the unfeeling death we are living- surrounded perpetually by noise, cement, clocks, false light, and all that clutters up the soul.

**

These excerpts on following the heart and aimless wandering are taken from unpublished chapters of THE WAY OF WONDER, by Jack Haas