I’ve been thinking a lot lately. And, wondering if that’s such a good idea. The mind is a cunning suitor, makes me feel brilliant, informs me I’m important and special and right about ohhh so many things. I’m lucky. Mine is exceptionally agile, negotiates curves well, plucks me from dangerous waters, and creatively constructs the pretty future that I expect for myself. When you have a strong mind, it makes you believe you need to do something big with it.

But it’s cold. And has no respect for my time. This restless companion keeps me awake at night, nagging over something I should have done. Or did wrong. It complains about the way I look. It whines that it doesn’t have enough. It never seems to be satisfied. Or it’s so smug…and really loud. Then, just when I’m ready to give up on it, demand it shut up, my mind does something miraculous that makes me fall in love with it all over again. I’ve seen it perform great feats of magic. It’s given me beautiful words to say at the proper time. I’ve harvested diamonds of cultivated knowledge from its fertile soil that I didn’t even know were there. Still, I give it much too much power over me.

I’m not alone. I see many people’s foolish minds choking their spirits. I witness the worry, the fear; the callous lies it whispers to them on street corners and in elevators, or over lattes at Starbucks. The mind summons our fears, incubates them in one of the seven deadly sins, and then sends its newborn disciple out into the world to build monuments to it. Through the mind and its shadow thoughts all the suffering in the world is birthed.

Waiting patiently for me to notice through all of this self-absorbed chatter is my knowing heart. I wish I had the courage to spend more time with this quiet sage. To listen to it’s soft beat of clarity and purpose. My heart knows that I’m perfect. It loves even the cruelest stranger on a rainy winter night. It is happy all the time. It wants for nothing because it understands I have everything I need. And unlike my racing mind, it is content in stillness and the sacred truth within. It never lies. It only loves.

The mind constantly conspires against my heart because it recognizes its death in it. It makes me believe that my heart can’t be trusted; that my worth resides only in its own polished intellect. But experience has taught me otherwise. My heart gives me the courage to make bold leaps across treacherous canyons of fear. And it is in these uncertain leaps, I am given back to myself and born again. I’ve always been happiest following my heart. When I act from this place of light, the crust of others’ expectations crumbles from my being and I remember who I really am.

I like my mind. There’s not another one like it on the planet. And I’m fascinated by other dancing minds for that same reason. But it’s a raucous child, grasping, intent on staying within the narrow walls of its inexperience. My heart is the wise elder, quietly revealing the possibility waiting beyond these walls. So in 2008, I will entertain my mind and love it for all it does for me. But this year, particularly this year, it is my heart that will define me and determine everything I will become.