Over the course of centuries, the great mass of humanity has become more and more stubborn in its refusal to see what is in front of us.  As we plunge further into times of chaos and uncertainty in the arenas of government, financial institutions, geophysical lurches and war with each other, it often appears that there are no limits to the vast numbers of strategies we will employ to avoid dealing with what is in front of us.

“What luck for the rulers that men do not think," said Adolf Hitler.  And he was right.  Vast numbers of his citizens were willing to abandon common decency in exchange for the false promise of establishing themselves as a superior race.

When we do not think, we abdicate our communal power to outside entities that we strangely convince ourselves that we can trust.  We do this despite their frequently repeated behavior that  would, if we thought about it, convince us of their unworthiness of our trust.

We have made this mistake with our governments, our religious institutions and our banks.  It is amazingly clear that the more we have ignored their abuse of our trust, the more that they have abused that trust.

What payoffs do we have today that encourage us to remain such a collectively unthinking body of humanity?

For maybe most people, the reason we have not demanded more accountability and fairness from these institutions is that we have communally felt little in the way of responsibility or power ourselves.  Why would we complain about something over which we have no apparent control?  “Let someone else be responsible for how our government is running; I’ve got to find a way to feed my family and stay sane.”

We con ourselves into the notion that we are the most affluent and free society that has ever existed.  In deluding ourselves in this way, we ignore the financial and moral bankruptcy that stares us in the face.  We would have to sell all the land and all the structures on it twice over to satisfy our national debt.  We are afraid that our governments will imprison or disarm us.  We fear that if we do not show up for weekend services that some god will damn us to eternal torture.

The time is at hand for us to be willing to think and to respond to what we witness.  For this to be of lasting value, it is important that we change the way in which we think: that we think with the heart.  To some, this may seem as foreign as trying to smell with your ears.

Communally, we have been thinking—or avoiding thinking—with our heads.  Look where it has gotten us!   If we understand that the heart—loaded with neurons just like the brain---is the part of us that we are wise to empower with the responsibility for thinking, then we are certain to do better at it than we have over the cent

The mind has conditioned us to see it as who we are.  What is in front of humanity now more than ever before is the task of relating to ourselves and each other from the level of the heart.  The mind has proven to us over and over that it does not want to think about that which challenges.  It does not relate to love and happiness, but rather is based in fear, control, and dissatisfaction with life as it is most of the time.

So many have allowed themselves to be defined by how our governments, religions and financial institutions have defined us.  We have seen ourselves as weak, frustrated, unworthy or contemptible.  What if we have the courage to do something so audacious as to define ourselves?

Let me prove the importance of all this to you:  Take one day, maybe the full day tomorrow, and choose to live it from the heart.  See your true self AS your heart and your soul.  And see yourself as deeply connected--in a way that the mind could never understand—with everyone and everything else that has ever been created.

Trust that your soul is eternal, that it lives on after your body vehicle has returned to dust.  In trusting in this way, you wipe out any possibility of fear.  What is there to fear if you know that the true you lives on?

Live from the heart for just one day.  You might just like it enough to do it every day.  This is one way of defining the process of spiritual empowerment, one way of opening ourselves to enlightenment.