Your heart knows who you are.
When you were a fetus your heart started beating before your brain was formed. It began its rhythmic, life-long pumping 22 days after you were conceived. So it knows more about you than your brain. It’s been with you longer.
What might this mean?
Maybe it means a lot. Knowing this may change every moment in your life.
If I asked, “Who are you?” where would you go to give me an answer? Probably to your brain. Your brain is full of answers: name, age, gender, weight, occupation, address, how many degrees follow your last name, and if you have a really good brain it has a record of your mobile number.
But what does your heart know? Does it know anything besides how to pump blood?
The old Indo-Aryan language Sanskrit has a word that means heart:
hridaya
According to Sahajananda, the main founder of Hridaya Yoga, it is your heart that can really answer the question: “Who am I?”
As mentioned above, your brain has lots of answers to this question, but the heart’s answer is simple. In an article on Uplift titled Thinking With the Heart, Johanna Bassols wrote:
The heart does not send information through an egoic filter. The heart knows your past, your present, and your future. Its intelligence does not care about your egoic constructs. The heart simply speaks from a completely neutral place.
Your brain is busier than an international airport. Thoughts come and go through the neural runways you’ve created with the persistence of an angry swarm of bees. Their egoic buzzing drowns out the silent heart with its timeless message.
The book of I Kings 19: 11–13 records a moment when the prophet Elijah experienced a hurricane, an earthquake and a fire. But God (Universal Wisdom) wasn’t in these things. When all the furor died down Universal Wisdom spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice.
Your brain can be like a hurricane, an earthquake and a fire all rolled into one — a confusing conglomeration of speed, upheaval and heat. In contrast, ancient Eastern wisdom teaches that your heart connects you to the spacious peace of universal, pure consciousness.
You still need your brain. The heart can’t read train timetables or help you quickly assemble the ingredients for a stir-fry when unexpected guests arrive. But it’s your heart that can guide you in ways that are beyond the brain.
Sahajananda recommends you sit somewhere quiet, tune into your heart area, dwell in the pauses between the breaths you take, and ask your heart:
“Who am I?”
Then listen for a still, small voice.
Your heart is a portal to the silent, eternal witness beyond thoughts.
With love, Marlane
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