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Mind-Seeing and Heart-Knowing

A friend once told me that magicians and mystics who spend too much time opening the mind's eye end up having a great deal of suspicion, paranoia, and meanness to them, while those who focus on the heart become more caring and compassionate people.

No heart, no soul. What would you pick?

This isn't to say that we should neglect the mind or focus on the heart at the expense of the mind, but the mind and Sight can't be the whole focus and purpose of what we do. Too many mages and magicians neglect the role of the heart in our Work, and all to disastrous ends. But! This does indeed bring to mind that saying about "if you keep your mind too open, your brain will fall out". While it's not literal, I do think that there's something to that when people try to "see" too much. Seeing, after all, is not the same thing as comprehending, understanding, or knowing.

And sure, there are costs to having your heart too open, too; I wouldn't say otherwise! But still, some people still somehow manage to do too much of the one while not nearly giving enough attention to the latter. There really are too many people in esoterica and the occult who really do indeed just focus on power, seeing, and experiencing, but not enough on the integration, unpacking, and aftercare. They think that all that counts is the former, while neglecting the latter, and down that way lies ruin! Without grounding the mind-work in the heart-work, your mind-work ends up getting your head blown right open.

When I shared this observation a while back on Twitter, someone else responded that this sort of thing reminded them of the "two wings" of Mahayana tantric Buddhism: you have to emphasize wisdom and compassion equally, or the practice won't work right. At the same time, such a view also has the idea that "mind", or "citta", combines what we have in English split as both "heart" and "mind" separately, and altogether deals with knowing and sensing and feeling all at once. Sometimes, being able to look from the outside in changes the whole game.