Heartology - the study of the (human) heart

intersecting moment

Many times the place where one's awareness resides is an intersection of heart (feeling or non-verbal awareness and responsiveness) and mind (verbal, sometimes logical or rational and rationalizing) and spirit/soul (something outside of narrow Ego prerogatives). Even though the words are spelled differently and stem from different etymological roots, they sometimes seem to touch a a shared something. Different languages can split analytical hairs and break apart experiences or feelings into named components, but the raw sensation or (re)cognition of something may be a single, monolithic thing, rather than fragmented component facets.

The time of the primitive or early eklesia of Jesus followers involved Greek speakers and Aramaic or Hebrew speakers, among many others. But the traditions of Greek thinkers tended to split things analytically, fracturing and producing insights and knowledge; sometimes also wisdom from that base of knowledge. In modern Japanese the word 'kokoro' combines heart/mind; emotional responses as well as presence of mind. Today in English there is a conceptual split in mind-body, as well as mind-heart. But in the time before these distinctions a person was a unitary presence; all these components were taken as inseparable.

Since so much of a person's spiritual growth is rooted in one's heart, it would seem to be fruitful to develop a science of the heart, or heartology; maybe some characteristics would come from creatures other than human, for that matter, too. A beginning point for any field of knowledge is vocabulary or nomenclature. Free-association for words containing 'heart' or whose meaning is adjacent or implied of heart includes these.

heartful . heartless . encourage . dishearten . hearty . heartful. heartening . heart-breaking . down-hearted  hard-hearted . cold-hearted . warm-hearted - big hearted - black hearted . discourage .  care . careful . uncaring . careless . cordial . haven't got the heart to . sacred heart . precious heart . heart of gold

These words will carry several common threads. One of the common strands is that the person is fully open and present to the other's condition; responsive to the joy or sorrow of the other, somehow joining in or mirroring/echoing that condition. Sometimes there are mixed feelings of misgiving, but hope; trepidation but fortitude, love and hate, respect but dislike, and so on. By looking more deeply at the pool of closely-related, as well as more indirectly-related terms it is possible to collect examples of situation when these are expressed, in addition to digging into the word roots for clues to the ground from which the words have grown across the centuries. Taken all together, the context of usage and of history, the broadest picture emerges of what a soft heart and a hard heart consists of, and of the importance of breaking and healing a heart; of self and others.