Age of Heart

"The Map directed me from the Age of Reason to the Age of Heart. It was now time for the Indians to show the non-Indians how to think through the heart and not through the mind." 

    Joseph Rael, House of Shattering Light, Council Oak Books cc. 2003, pp. 115

Nonviolent Communication founder Marshall Rosenberg calls his way of speaking a language of the heart. My favorite aspect of NVC is empathy. Not only does empathy help you to understand where someone is coming from - it heals the heart. But it's not easy to do, for one thing, empathy requires full attention.

Mom thinks she is empathizing with her child. True: her mind is engaged, but not her heart.
The other day, I saw a very distracted dad repeating back what his little boy said to him. Clearly he had learned the parenting lessons on reflecting back what is said. The child kept repeating with increasing intensity that his fingers felt like they were burning. The father repeated back dutifully, "Your fingers are burning." All the while the dad's eyes were on the ingredients list he was reading. It's not easy to shop with a four year old! The child kept repeating that his fingers were burning and the dad kept mirroring back that his fingers were burning. It was an excellent example of the limits of intellectual involvement only. The child simply did not feel heard by his dad's heart.