Heart Center of Intelligence Part 3
December 28, 2025
The Heart Center of Intelligence Part 3
The heart not only holds our surface feelings, but our most compelling emotions: the passions. Many of our passions are positive, such as the passion for health, for giving, for loving the needy, for leading, etc. But we also hold negative passions such as rage, envy, fear, and vengeance in our hearts. The heart can easily overflow with love which pours into every cell of our being. Yet negative passions held in our heart cannot remain there without infecting our entire being.
The Christian Desert Father Evagrius (346-399 A.D.) discerned eight basic evil thoughts, with one overriding thought, making them nine in number: loving oneself before loving others. Two hundred years later, Pope Gregory (540-604 A.D.) reduced these nine sins to seven which he named the Seven Deadly Sins. Enneagram scholars have retained Evagrius’ basic concepts of nine negative passions which are: Anger, Pride, Deceit, Envy, Avarice, Cowardice, Gluttony, Lust, and Sloth. These are all conducted primarily in our heart while the mind is their cognitive vehicle, and the body absorbs them.
Our heart also holds our virtues, which the Enneagram brilliantly points out, are antidotes to the suffering caused by our negative passions. The Virtue of Serenity heals Anger. The Virtue of Humility heals Pride. The Virtue of Truthfulness heals Deceit. The Virtue of Equanimity heals Envy. The Virtue of Non-attachment heals Avarice. The Virtue of Courage heals Cowardice. The Virtue of Sobriety heals Gluttony. The Virtue of Innocence heals Lust. And the Virtue of Diligence heals Sloth. Yes, these cures for our heart’s suffering are also held in our heart.
How do we connect to our virtues? We go into our heart and recall when we were recipients of the very virtue we want to channel. For example, when we need courage, we simply open our hearts to the “internal video” of the people who have modeled courage to us. Then we recall when we exhibited courage ourselves. We breathe in that feeling and embody the virtue of courage. Our soul sings.
"Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23 KJV.) This well-known Judeo-Christian scripture reflects that our heart is the primary container of our passions—all of them, the virtuous and those that miss the mark. It also reminds us of the valuable contents of our hearts and to be diligent in our caretaking of them because they weave our lives. Keeping our heart is a daily matter.
Spiritual practice: Who has left your daily life, but your affection and love for them are growing stronger?
Self-inquiry: For the people you have had to part with, do you suspect they are growing fonder of you or not?
Prayer:
Dear God, For those loved ones I miss, I am so much fonder of them than I ever was. My essence calls out to be reconnected to their essence. My soul yearns for connection to other souls. I pray to reconnect in ways that you make happen. Amen.
