We have all heard the saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” But is this true? The short answer is yes. But why?

Join us for this week’s reflections on “The Heart Center of Intelligence.”

All our lives we have heard to follow our hearts, but what if we did? The heart is a powerful force in our being. So, if we follow it, we are open to its emotions and pulls. But decisions made on emotion alone may be in error.

You are likely very busy today. Perhaps the shopping is finished, the gifts wrapped, and the meals prepared—but today the demands are different, and sometimes even greater. Christmas Day is the time when most of us gather with those we cherish or with whom we share some lasting connection.

Over the many years, Christmas Eve has changed for me. As a child, I could hardly fall asleep for all the excitement. There would be gifts and surprises, especially the ones from Santa! And we were excited to make the long drive the day after Christmas, to Grandma’s, where wonderful meals and family stories awaited us.

Spiritual introspection is one of the deepest dives we can take. Its essential practice is inquiry, a sincere questioning of ourselves across nine dimensions reflected in the Enneagram of Personality and the Enneagram of Soul. The answers we seek come not from our egos but from our souls.

We have all had seasons, times, and instances of introspection. We delve deeper into our own lives to see what is going on with ourselves. 

What we comprehend and grasp from our deep dive is finally combined with our soul. This union is also called embodiment. Though the soul is not the body, it works through the body just like the heart and mind. We can know something mentally and feel it emotionally, but only when we embody it does it become part of our being.

A genuine deep dive into any exploration requires curiosity, courage, and challenge, but that’s not all. A fourth ingredient is comprehension— an intuitive grasp that deepens into complete understanding. The root of comprehension comes from the Latin prehendere, meaning “to grasp” or “to seize.”

The next step in taking the deep dive is courage. 

Courage is essential when we take a deep dive into the spiritual world because it brings new awareness that challenges, inspires, unsettles, and even disturbs us. Delving deeper can reveal truths we would rather avoid and challenge our behavior or attitudes. It may ask us to release old beliefs, dethrone some of our heroes, or recognize goodness in those we once judged. A deep dive can reveal our shadow and demand that we accept what we have resisted. Yet these awakenings bring consciousness. Without them, we can sleepwalk through life, and sadly, miss the true excitement of living the spiritual life.

The next step in taking the deep dive is courage. 

Courage is essential when we take a deep dive into the spiritual world because it brings new awareness that challenges, inspires, unsettles, and even disturbs us. Delving deeper can reveal truths we would rather avoid and challenge our behavior or attitudes. It may ask us to release old beliefs, dethrone some of our heroes, or recognize goodness in those we once judged. A deep dive can reveal our shadow and demand that we accept what we have resisted. Yet these awakenings bring consciousness. Without them, we can sleepwalk through life, and sadly, miss the true excitement of living the spiritual life.

Welcome to this series of Daily Reflections on The Deep Dive.

At the Institute for Conscious Being, teachers Barbara Sloan and Erika Jobes lead an advanced study described as “a deep dive” into the nine energies of the Enneagram. Their Master’s Certification Course builds upon the foundational Scholar’s Certification, guiding students into profound spiritual insight. Those who have taken Barbara’s and Erika’s courses are enthusiastic about the depth of wisdom they encounter. Barbara and Erika not only teach the more intricate principles of the nine energies and the best spiritual practices for each, they give in-depth live interviews to people from each energy. 

It was blackberry season, so with pots in hand, my brother Trevor and I made our way to the thick berry bushes where the wetlands met the dunes. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Gulf Shores, Alabama, was mostly unsettled with vast stretches of open beaches and vegetation that reached down to the Gulf of Mexico. We were two small boys picking berries along the dirt road near our family’s cottage in the dunes when suddenly, we found ourselves running for our lives.

They called it the “pamper pole” because you might need a diaper while climbing it. At a men’s spiritual retreat, I attended in the late 1990s, a 40-foot telephone pole was a test of courage and trust in oneself and in others. We were secured with ropes and harnesses, yet fear still had its grip. The goal was to climb to the small platform at the top and leap toward a trapeze bar hanging several feet away.

When the sexual syntony, or one-to-one instinct, is primary, life revolves around a deep one-to-one connection. The focus is on the bond between two people. It is a relationship marked by intimacy, trust, and mutual knowing. This may be romantic, but it can also take the form of a profound friendship, family tie, or partnership of purpose.

When our dominant instinct is social, we are finely tuned to the order and flow of relationships around us, such as our place in family, friendships, community, and organizations. We sense hierarchy, rank, and the subtle shifts of acceptance or exclusion. Those with this as their dominant instinct can feel the energy of a room, sense who holds influence, who feels left out, and where they themselves stand within the circle.

Our gut-level feelings are most acute in one of the three primary instincts: self-preservation, social, or sexual syntony (one-to-one). We are sensitive to all three, yet each of us favors one, making it the most developed and instinctively trusted.

Recently, at the gas pump, I realized I left my credit card at a restaurant in a town an hour away. My mind raced with worry that the card had been taken. Because of the perceived loss, I was under stress and forgot to pause to enter my body. My ego kept telling me that the worst-case scenario would occur, which only heightened my concern. As soon as I remembered to drop into my body, things changed. I became aware of a gut level feeling that everything would be okay. My worry evaporated. Turns out that, unlike the ego’s predictions, the card had been turned in and the manager had it in safe keeping.

From time to time, we may say to ourselves or someone else, “I have a gut-level feeling about this.” Sometimes our minds are unclear, and even our hearts hold mixed emotions. But the gut speaks with unmistakable clarity. We feel its message viscerally, deep within our core. The viscera are the soft internal organs of the body, including the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys, stomach, intestines, and reproductive organs. When they are affected, we know it. These vital organs hold our most primitive and instinctual feelings.