How the Human Heart Functions as a Second Brain

The word “heart” is an anagram for the word “earth”. Hence, the phrase “home is where the heart is”.

Did you know that the human heart is the organ that generates the strongest electromagnetic field of any organ of the human body? In fact, the electromagnetic field of your heart can be measured up to a few feet away from your body. Furthermore, this energy field changes in relation to your emotions. One thing you should know about an electromagnetic field is that every organ and cell in your body generate an energy field.

Because the heart generates the strongest electromagnetic field, the information stored in its electromagnetic field affects every organ and cell in your body. Could this be why the heart is the first organ to function in a fetus? Besides generating the strongest electromagnetic field, the heart has an intelligence of its own, which is why certain neuroradiologists refer to it as the heart-brain or the fifth brain.

According to neuroradiologists, the heart is not only made of muscle cells but also neurons. Researchers at the Institute of HeartMath have done experiments proving that the heart’s role is not limited to just pumping blood. They believe it has intelligence and plays a major role in the perception of reality.
The Heart, Brain, and Feelings

The brain and the heart are sometimes said to work in opposition. We are constantly trying to determine whether to place more emphasis on our thoughts or feelings. Rational people would say that the mind is the key to keeping us out of trouble, as the mind thinks in terms of what has the most payoff and is quite possibly the safest or most calculated risk.

The heart, on the other hand, allows us to feel what is best at an internal level that connects to our intuition. Operating with either one of these alone, only the mind or the heart, can sometimes lead us into trouble. The mind can be afraid to seek happiness outside of the comfort zone, and the heart sometimes urges decisions that are unknown and risky, but using the two in balance can bring great clarity to a person.

Follow the heart is a common phrase that is tossed around, but it is not necessarily easy to enact. Follow the heart means letting deep feelings draw us one way or another without a logical answer or obvious reasoning. This organ provides a feeling of intuition or guidance, but we must have the contentment and the confidence to understand when it is pushing us in a direction, and then act upon this with complete faith in the outcome. Our feelings are what help us to understand the world beyond logic and, therefore, they are the keys to understanding the spiritual aspects of ourselves.
The Intelligence of the Heart

Some researchers and neuroradiologists are pushing the idea that the heart can actually act like another brain, helping to guide us with a different form of intelligence. Many physiological studies are currently being done regarding the interconnection of the heart and the brain, and why certain sensations and feelings are experienced at the level of the heart. Generally, love and certain emotional states are felt at the heart level, producing different physiological reactions of the heart.

Heartbeats have been found to be affected by inner states and emotions, including a disorder in heart rhythms when we are experiencing stress or negative emotion. Conversely, when we are feeling positive, the heart rhythms are more cohesive and beat more regularly and steadily.

The nervous system of the heart contains roughly 40,000 neurons or sensory neurites. One of its roles is to monitor the heart’s hormones, neurochemicals, heart rate, and pressure information. The information of how these chemicals behave is also sent to the brain. The heart and brain are always communicating through the vagus nerve system and the electromagnetic field of the body. It is through this dynamic communication process that the consciousness of the heart can change how the brain process information. This process can also affect how energy flows in the body.

These findings indicate that the heart works with the brain and body, including the amygdala, to process emotions and incorporate emotional memories. The amygdala is the part of the brain that assists us in making decisions about incoming information and processing them based on our past experiences. This shows a link between the emotions and feelings and the actual brain and body physiology.

Other mental attitudes and stress also affect the body and our overall health, and these issues can be linked to the heart as well. Recent scientific research has determined that the emotions of anger, anxiety, and other negative feelings can significantly increase the risk of heart disease. Therefore, stressful situations and high anxiety levels negatively affect the heart as an organ.

Connecting the brain and the heart as its own emotional processing center is a topic that many researchers are focusing on. It has been shown that emotions experienced mentally will also manifest physically in the body, and feelings can affect the rhythms and beating of the heart. The best way to maintain a healthy heart is to not only eat a healthy diet, but also incorporate meditation techniques to balance the energy of the heart and brain.
Why the Heart Holds the key to World Peace

The heart helps us to understand the world through feelings. It allows us to understand our reality in a universal kind of way, giving us universal characteristics. This biological electromagnetic field generator allows us to understand each other at the emotional level and beyond, giving us a sense of connection to all things. This emotional connection is what creates bonding between individuals.

When we learn how to think with our hearts, it becomes easier for us to understand others and live in harmony with them. For these reasons, the heart holds the key to uniting humanity and achieving world peace.

Humanity is Waking Up to the Intelligence of Nature

There’s a heightening level of awareness within the human race with regards to nature and all that is contained within it. Everything from the discoveries of the rudiments of language in monkeys, metacognition in dolphins, self-awareness of elephants, the ability for animals to tell “right” from “wrong”, to the creation and extension of the bills of rights for animals and plants by countries such as Switzerland and Ecuador, as well as the acknowledgment of dolphins as being non-human persons.

There’s a growing awareness by humanity that nature and its inhabitants are not as primitive and simple as it may have been believed to be the case in the past. With this growing awareness, comes growing understanding of the unity that humanity has with the environment within which it exists. This sense of unity with nature is not something new and indeed has been the primary position of awareness for many societies in existence before their industrialization.

In today’s post-modern societies, there is a resurgence of that connection with the biosphere and interconnected organism that is the planet and all that exists within its domain. As more discoveries are made, greater awareness shines down on humanity’s collective consciousness and thereby, allowing us to evolve the transpersonal consciousness to a level where the ego is no longer the dominator of the Self.

Science can be a wonderful thing. It can prove without a doubt what may have been suggested in times past, but was not completely understood as being the absolute truth, which always left a bit of doubt or confusion. However, with continuous scientific discoveries occurring all the time, it is of great fortune that we are able to attain substantial data and knowledge concerning the environment and all that it encompasses.

With these new discoveries, it is being quite apparent that humans have mistakenly been ignorant and arrogant concerning the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms with respect to their levels of sophistication, evolution, consciousness, and awareness. If we were to start looking at the mineral kingdom, much can be seen from recently made discoveries.

Of course, there has been such an influx of findings that they would be able to fill up an entire book. However, just a few will be looked at in order to demonstrate the point at hand. All of the discoveries and findings mentioned within this article have been announced publicly within the last few years.

Rocks have been looked at as generally non-living, inanimate, unconscious, and completely devoid of any life-like characteristics, even though everything in nature possesses self-organization. However, stunning new evidence shows the incredible diversity of crystals and minerals after the rise of life on this planet and points to the reality that rocks, like plants and animals, have been evolving all this time, and we did not even realize it until now. This idea is being called “mineral evolution,” which is the concept that many of our planet’s rocks, minerals and crystals are dynamic species which emerged and transformed over time.

Of course, the evolution of the mineral kingdom is not exactly the same as the evolution of the plant and animal kingdoms, since minerals do not mutate, reproduce or compete like other living organisms, at least, to our knowledge. However, the vast variety and abundance of all the various minerals on Earth have changed quite dramatically over the 4.5+ billion years of Earth’s past. US geologist Robert Hazen, who led the research team for this finding, said that “for at least 2.5 billion years, and possibly since the emergence of life, Earth’s mineralogy has evolved in parallel with biology.”

This should not be too big of a surprise to us, however. It makes quite a bit of sense that evolution is all-encompassing…everything from our consciousness to galaxies, to rocks. Everything is in a constant state of be-ing and become-ing, and the condition that the various aspects of Reality are static does not find much underlying evidence. It looks more and more as if Reality is dynamic and extropic in nature.

Stepping out of the mineral kingdom, we make our way to the plant kingdom. Although it has been known for quite some time that the rainforests of the world act as lungs for the planet, it has recently been discovered that they act as a heart as well. What this implies is that not only are rainforests giant carbon sinks of the planet (acting as lungs), but they may also be responsible for moving many of the weather patterns that we see all around the globe (just as the physical heart moves blood throughout the entire body).

The new study researching this subject suggests that rainforests, such as the ones in Africa and South America, create winds that circulate water around the planet. It is known that more than half the rainfall in rainforests evaporates and recirculates, which then keeps the upper air moist. New findings show that rainforests are also moving the air around them, which also has the effect of moving the water around.

It turns out that as important as plants and trees are to ensure that there is enough clean oxygen for all sentient beings on the plante to thrive and survive, they are now acknowledged as being even more important by affecting the very weather patterns of our biosphere.

Perhaps as a response to the various discoveries concerning the plant kingdom, there have been governments across the planet that have taken it upon themselves to become trailblazers in the area of plant and ecosystem rights. This higher awareness has been most recently demonstrated in the countries of Switzerland and Ecuador.

In the case of Switzerland, the Swiss Government’s Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology has come to the consensus that plants have rights and that they have to be treated appropriately. Making our way to Ecuador, we can see that the country has changed its constitution to say that nature has “the right to the maintenance and regeneration of its vital cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.” The basis of these rights “change the status of ecosystems from being regarded as property under the law to being recognized as rights-bearing entities.”

The idea of plants having a degree of consciousness is very well documented, and so it is not unreasonable for a government to come up with such a conclusion in respect to the plant kingdom. However, the perceptions of humans are not always quick to shift and change. It is demonstrations such as these which show that there is indeed a higher awareness being experienced by humanity with relation to its biosphere neighbors.

Emerging out of the plant kingdom and into the animal kingdom, a myriad of recent discoveries exemplify humanity’s growing awareness of the sophistication and higher level of be-ing at which animals exist. The latest and most well-known finding is concerning dolphins. Dolphins have been perceived as being very intelligent beings for at least several thousand years. In ancient Greece, it was punishable by death to kill or harm a dolphin.

Much mythology revolves around dolphins. However, concerning the scientific data being research and analyzed, it has been found without a doubt that human language and dolphin movement patterns show similarities in brevity. The law of brevity in human language, according to which the most frequently used words tend to be the shortest, extends to dolphins, as well as other animal species. It was observed that when dolphins move on the surface of the water, they tend to make the simplest movements, in the same way that humans tend to use words comprised of fewer letters when they are speaking or writing.

Perhaps it is discoveries such as these and others that are altering the positions of awareness that humanity has concerning dolphins to the point where they are being described by scientists as being non-human persons and, as a result, should be treated as such. Dolphins are recognized as being the most intelligent beings on our planet, after humans. The signs are numerous, such as the anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence; and studies showing that dolphins have distinct personalities, the strong sense of self, and the ability to think about the future. Dolphins are also cultural animals, which means that new types of behavior can be quickly picked up by one dolphin from another.

More stunning research has discovered that dolphins, as well as other animals such as macaque monkeys, have shown to have conscious metacognition. There is a growing amount of evidence that animals share functional parallels with human conscious metacognition. Metacognition is essentially the ability to reflect upon, monitor or regulates various states of mind, and, although this was once considered solely the domain of humans, it is now seen as evident in some animals as well. J. David Smith, Ph.D., a comparative psychologist who has conducted a study on this topic, has concluded that “metacognition rivals language and tool use in its potential to establish important continuities or discontinuities between human and animal minds.”

Metacognition aside, animals are also now known to possess self-awareness. First seen in gorillas and then later in elephants and dolphins, self-awareness is no longer solely recognized as being the domain of the human being. When most animals see themselves in a mirror, they will interpret what they see as another animal, possibly a threat, and may attack the image or be scared away. After a while, the animals habituate and ignore the reflected image entirely. However, an animal that is self-aware will recognize the image as its own reflection, which is something that requires a degree of abstract thought and cognitive association.

As fascinating as these things may be, new research has discovered that several species of animals, such as monkeys, wolves, coyotes, elephants, chimpanzees, rodents, bats, and whales, have a sense of what is called “morality”, in that they are able to subjectively tell “right” from “wrong”. In a series of studies, scientists have found that monkeys and apes can make judgments about fairness, offer altruistic help and empathize when a fellow animal is ill or in a difficult situation. The existence of a conscience is also apparent, and remembering obligations also exist. Even when there is no obvious reward for an altruistic action, chimpanzees were still observed as willing to help others. The conclusion of this observation led to the statement by one of the researchers that “chimpanzees spontaneously help both humans and each other in carefully controlled tests.”

Perhaps the most interesting point in this discovery is that everything else being equal, animals such as chimpanzees prefer to reward a companion together with themselves rather than just themselves alone. The act of giving by the monkeys is self-rewarding and can be said as being a demonstration of the interconnected consciousness of monkeys, just as humans, within their interconnected transpersonal consciousness, will experience the same effect. As the old adage goes: what you do to another, you do to/for yourself.

Language among animals is the one final demonstration, at least in this article, of the elevated level of consciousness and be-ing in other aspects of nature. It has been recently found that the rudiments of language exist among monkeys. Certain monkeys that have been studied have been seen to combine the same calls in different ways, using rules of grammar that turn sound into language. Alban Lemasson, a primatologist at the University of Rennes in France, has stated that “this is the first evidence we have in animal communication that they can combine, in a semantic way, different calls to create a new message.”

As it stands, it seems that humans are no longer the sole users of language in the sophisticated manner in which we use it. Although nowhere as complex as the syntax of human beings, monkey calls are more advanced and complex than we have ever previously been aware.

All these discoveries have occurred within a few years and are demonstrative of the incredibly accelerated rise in awareness that humanity is experiencing with respect to the level of consciousness of the various aspects of nature, as well as how primitive nature and all its various aspects seemed to be in times past. There is an awakening to a more intelligent nature than has ever been previously acknowledged. This is a step towards a new age in which humans and the rest of nature will hopefully have a more symbiotic and unifying relationship, and more respect will be given to the environment. Baby steps, for sure, but baby steps towards a positive future, nonetheless.

This Is Our Realm

This is an important point to remember. This is our current and very real realm of existence on this planet. Our home. Contrary to what we’re being told, that we’re a curse on this planet, we’re supposed to be here. Many feel helpless, especially in times of confusion and spiritual distress, but they needn’t be. This is rightfully our world to peacefully dwell in, no matter what physical, spiritual or dimensional energies assail us.

This is something to take great comfort in, but it does require awareness and vigilance.

Number one, we need to be as fully awake and aware as possible. This is where true knowledge and education come in. People have usually helplessly relied on religions and belief systems for protection and the forms of so-called redemption they offer up. The giveaway as to the futility of that, unless there is a real faith involved that surpasses the dogma and hierarchy, is the disempowerment it carries for the individual. People cling in desperation to rituals from hail Marys and confessionals to repeated prayers into the unknown for their safety and security in the whirling energetics to which each of us is subjected.

Fundamentally, I’m (not) sorry to say, it is flawed to the bone. The challenge in this life is to come fully alive and activate in our fullest nature, something that isn’t taught and is in fact denied within this matrix of deceit that has been engineered by the very same forces they are inadvertently giving obeisance to and expecting help from.

It may appear to be the ultimate conundrum for a confused inhabitant of this world, but there’s no need for any confusion. The solutions are always simple. The challenge is to wake up fully as to who we are, then everything becomes clear.
The Battle for Our Souls Is Real

There’s no question life is a challenge, a school of learning if you will. Just as your very body is in constant warfare to maintain its health and well-being by fighting off viruses and bad bacteria and the like, so our spirits are engaged in constant warfare. Everything in and around us attests to this.

Once we accept this condition and stop trying to escape it into some fantasy world of temporal false peace and seeming security, things become clear and a heck of a lot easier.

But that realization of our personal role in this comes with a price. It requires a change in lifestyle, an alteration of personal goals via a greater understanding of who we are and why we are here.
So If This Is A Battleground, What Is Our Defense?

It’s not outside of us, although there are helpful energies and even entities that do play a big part of this. It depends first and foremost on our personal spiritual state, our decisions, and the resultant actions.

Religion plays on this aspect that our subconscious is aware of by channeling fearful, subservient humanity into all sorts of rigamarole designed to keep our full self-awareness subdued. Just as they play on our innate knowledge that there is much more to life than meets the eye by claiming they have the portal to spiritual satisfaction, they mimic and subvert on many levels in order to keep our spirits quelled and minds entranced.

Remember, contrary to the religious meme, all of this has nothing to do with pleasing some kind of usurping archontic god figure. That is perhaps the biggest lie of all in the entrapping religious paradigm.

The fact is, you are your own self-protection. By fully being who you are you will experience a form of protection that is absolutely wonderful. And if you need help at some point, it will be available to you. You’ll find out more about this as you more fully awaken. There’s much to learn but it won’t be handed to you. Part of your activation is to continually seek and find.
This Is Our Home – Enhance and Defend It By Fully Being You

This brings us straight back to the power of the awakening the planet is now undergoing. It’s the awakening of each individual self, soul, and spirit to its true nature, its rightful place in the grand scheme of things. Its natural state is confident, courageous and compassionate, qualities denied by social and spiritual engineers alike.

And that is why it is denied. It flies in the face of everything the “dark” forces that seek to control us through ignorance and denial of truth represent.

This is not confined to just this planet, but being spiritual beings here within these physical bodies has very important significance. This is our current dimensional reality as long as we’re somewhat confined to these magnificent creations we live within. That makes this current world we’re inhabiting ours to nurture and protect in a sense, being so intrinsically connected to Gaia-Sophia, our living planet, and part of this glorious play we’re each experiencing.

Ours is to each do our part, fully, which requires detachment from the illusory nature of lower dimensional thinking and perception. Our full nature is an intrinsic connectivity to all of the Universe, but especially this earthly realm which is ours to love, preserve and protect.
Seek and Find

Find your way through the maze, whatever you do. Better yet, transcend it. You will once the awakening stirs in your soul. If you haven’t yet, ask for it with a whole and pure heart.

It’s there for the asking. The thirsty heart will never be unquenched. And each one who awakens contributes to the energetic explosion that helps make it that much easier for others. Then assume your rightful place and take your stance, confidently.

There’s a glorious world waiting to be discovered by anyone willing to do so.

See you there.

Human Evolution is driven by Consciousness Say Researchers

The mind and the brains are one and the same. There is no separation. In fact, consciousness itself is merely a bi-product of our central nervous system. It’s almost inconsequential. That’s lucky for us, isn’t it? We get to experience all the colors, tastes and sounds of the world, but as Shakespeare said, in the end, it is all just “sound and fury signifying nothing”. This is the common assertion from modern science – consciousness is a sideshow of biology, unimportant and playing no active role in the development of human physiology. Biology creates consciousness, not the other way around. So they say.

We’re just cogs spinning in the machine, waiting to break down. After that, it’s lights out, and in the end, our consciousness has played only a small part in our fleeting proceedings.

And yet, our experience of the world doesn’t really reflect this position, does it? Consciousness feels central to who we are. We are immersed in it when making complex choices, and the experiences we have can be so emotive or profound that they lead to a spiritual awakening which can transform our lives. Furthermore, we can decide to make that happen. We have the choice. We can direct our consciousness at ourselves and alter how we perceive the world around us.

So how, then, can the scientific community so quickly dismiss consciousness as a mere product of biology at best, something which has little effect on us as individuals or as a species?

The truth is, it can’t.

Your Thoughts Define You

Since the 1970s, there has been a growing movement among consciousness researchers. Stalwarts of a purely materialistic view of consciousness such as Christof Koch, have had to reassess their perspectives on what awareness itself is, how it is produced, and what it means for us as a species and the universe as a whole.

This movement has been fueled by a failure on the part of neuroscience and psychology to prove the mechanical, biological underpinnings of conscious thought. The truth is that after centuries of inquiry we are no further forward in explaining how consciousness works. In fact, we may now be further from a solution than we were a few decades ago. At least, then we could say that we just didn’t understand the brain well enough and that, once we did, we would be able to explain why we are the way we are, why we think what we think, and why we feel the way we feel.

But no evidence has been forthcoming. The scientific community stays largely silent on this lack of evidence, hoping that eventually some proof will be found to support the accepted and materialistic view of conscious thought.

This is starting to change. With every passing year, an increasing number of reputable scientists such as Sir Roger Penrose come forward, telling us to rethink consciousness. Indeed, there are several exciting theories about how consciousness could be central to everything, that it could be affecting us as individuals and a species. Quantum Mind, the idea that consciousness actually creates reality itself, may be an extreme reaction to this shift in perspective, but there are newer theories which could be just as revolutionary, requiring no leaps of faith, and could force us to reinterpret consciousness as a powerful agency which can actually shape who we are and what our species is through the power of thought. In this way, consciousness may be primary and could actually alter biology through the decisions we make.

Beyond the Individual: Consciousness as a Force in Evolution

A recent debate between Deepak Chopra and Richard Dawkins illustrates the divide between materialism and this new form of duality perfectly – that mind and body somehow coexist and are both intertwined while having distinct qualities of their own. What’s most fascinating about this debate is that Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and argues a strict Darwinian interpretation of consciousness. In short, he proposes the status quo: We are conscious because the genes which create our brains have survived through a process of natural selection. They have survived because consciousness gives us an evolutionary edge – to be able to plan, anticipate and think creatively etc. Consciousness is created by biology, and this arrow of causality only goes in one direction.

A good summation of the debate was written up by Stuart Hameroff, but while plenty of people have cause to be skeptical of Deepak Chopra’s ideas, he may actually have a point. You see from Dawkins’ perspective consciousness is created by biology, therefore, it cannot have any effect on biology. This is the strictly materialistic view. However, there is evidence which suggests this might be incorrect.

For example, stress is a major killer. It leads to high blood pressure, heart disease, and there is even some evidence that it can cause or exacerbate cancer. But, if Dawkins’ theory is correct and biology controls consciousness and not the other way around, then we should not be able to affect our own biology through sheer will. And yet, through relaxation techniques, we can lower our blood pressure. We can make a conscious decision to exercise or reduce our caffeine intake to lower our stress levels. These are common conscious decisions which alter our physiology.

Taking this one step further, a physicist is claiming that consciousness doesn’t just affect our individual biology, but that it may have the power to change both personal and species-wide evolution. In a recent research paper, Professor Beichler of the International Academy of Consciousness argues that just through thinking, the neuronal connections within our brains change. This describes consciousness as the actor, not the subject. In this way, consciousness is altering biology, not the product of it. This explains how people can change life-long habits or transform their personalities for the better when choosing to do so. The brain is essentially rewired, and consciousness is the electrician.

There’s one more profound implication of this perspective. A position which completely contradicts Dawkins’, placing consciousness at the center of everything we are. Numerous studies have shown that changes in brain physiology can directly alter the body’s DNA through a process called epigenetics. Recently, an article in the Scientific American reported that a person’s DNA could be changed simply through meditation. If this is correct, then consciousness itself could change our genetic makeup. If these genetic changes are then passed on to future generations, it could transform the evolution of our species.

The question is, where are our thoughts leading us?