Minds Are Opened Only When Hearts Are Opened
'Open Heart, Open Mind: Conversing with the Soul'
Dr Andrew Powell
I shall start by describing a way of being without which no soul-to-soul conversation can take place. It is also a way of doing, in that it carries intention, so there is movement to it. Indeed, there is twofold action, one in relationship to self and one in relationship to the other. However, the outcome, when these two actions are accomplished, is that self and other become aligned.
This kind of connection between self and other is rooted in empathy. Empathy, as I am going to use it here, is not to be confused with projection, in which a person, however well-intentioned, while supposing themselves to be attuned to the other has unwittingly confused what he/she feels with what they imagine the other to be feeling. Empathy is the capacity to put oneself in the shoes of the other, to see, as far as it is possible, the world through someone else’s eyes.
The capacity for accurate empathy develops in the first year of life. We know from fMRI studies how from babyhood onwards, mirror neurons in the pre-frontal cortex and somatosensory areas of the child’s brain are activated by mother-child interactions, enabling an imaginative comprehension of the inner world of the other (Keysers et al. 2010). We also know how what is called ‘Theory of Mind’ fails to develop in children with autistic spectrum disorders, very possibly due to a failure of this kind of neural processing.
Psychopaths, perhaps surprisingly, have a capacity for empathy. A torturer knows that a person may bravely face his own death where the threat to kill his family is much more likely to have the desired effect. But psychopaths are not in touch with what it means to love, and so their empathy is coldly clinical and used in the service of manipulation.
For the majority of us, who are in touch with both our conscience and our emotions, the consequences of empathy are very different, for empathy is the prerequisite of love in its
Dr Andrew Powell
I shall start by describing a way of being without which no soul-to-soul conversation can take place. It is also a way of doing, in that it carries intention, so there is movement to it. Indeed, there is twofold action, one in relationship to self and one in relationship to the other. However, the outcome, when these two actions are accomplished, is that self and other become aligned.
This kind of connection between self and other is rooted in empathy. Empathy, as I am going to use it here, is not to be confused with projection, in which a person, however well-intentioned, while supposing themselves to be attuned to the other has unwittingly confused what he/she feels with what they imagine the other to be feeling. Empathy is the capacity to put oneself in the shoes of the other, to see, as far as it is possible, the world through someone else’s eyes.
The capacity for accurate empathy develops in the first year of life. We know from fMRI studies how from babyhood onwards, mirror neurons in the pre-frontal cortex and somatosensory areas of the child’s brain are activated by mother-child interactions, enabling an imaginative comprehension of the inner world of the other (Keysers et al. 2010). We also know how what is called ‘Theory of Mind’ fails to develop in children with autistic spectrum disorders, very possibly due to a failure of this kind of neural processing.
Psychopaths, perhaps surprisingly, have a capacity for empathy. A torturer knows that a person may bravely face his own death where the threat to kill his family is much more likely to have the desired effect. But psychopaths are not in touch with what it means to love, and so their empathy is coldly clinical and used in the service of manipulation.
For the majority of us, who are in touch with both our conscience and our emotions, the consequences of empathy are very different, for empathy is the prerequisite of love in its