Heart Based Thinking

I am inspired by Stephen Buehner's book the "Secret Teachings of Plants" and his perpective on biognosis which mean's "knowledge from life" as a tool "to learn through directly from the world and plants." It can "articulate about who and what human beings are or the world of which they are a part." This way of being "is intimately concerned with things other than the mere extraction of knowledge from the heart of the world. It is concerned with our interconnection to the web of life that surrounds us. It is concerned with wholeness, rather than a focus on parts."

This mode of cognition is ancient and crucially important for us as a species.  There are two things Buehner says we must accept.  The first is easy. ".... we must accept that Nature is not linear which is easy for us to accept. " The second thing Buhnear says is that we must accept that heart as an organ of perception. The hard thing is to accept the heart as an organ of perception.

We have been raised to not accept this. We are educated based on straight lines and easy figures and are taught in moral terms of good and bad. Economics is the driving force of our society and though we may not like it we spend many years of our lives knowing no other world.

The heart based approach is a bottom up method but that's only the start. We have to think of knowledge as being learn with what we are intimately concerned about. It's expansive. The knowledge goes with heart relationship and then we can let our heads thinking about the connections, but not too much.

Doing this will be difficult at first according to Buehner because your heart's ability to "think" is much less practiced in Western culture.

But patience is what Buehner stresses. You can't walk before you crawl or run before you walk although many succeed at a cost. You can't gain wisdom without losing your previous perspective of the world. You can't gain without losing something but when you lose something you gain another. You can't change the world but you can make your own.

This knowledge was used before science and is useful. A witch doctor, an herbalist or a witch may not know the specific chemical in the plants he makes into medicines  but he has a relationship with the plant and understands how it can help people.

The idea of scientific method is useful as a model but it doesn't work in systems. Scientists have called this mode the reductionist approach and it has been used by every academic profession in the world. However, physicists have long abandoned the reductionist approach to science because they have discovered the laws we have laid down do not work as a whole. Stephen points out that plant medicines don't have the side effects that medicines based on those plant have, because the plants have compounds that counteract the side effect of the substance used. For instance, one compound is used to make aspirin, this compound was discovered from the bark of the willow tree. Herbalists had been using the willow tree bark as a pain reliever. Well the willow tree bark contains many compounds that besides the willow tree compounds. I'm sorry I can't remember the compounds name at the moment. Well aspirin can irritate the stomach but the herbalist extraction of willow bark doesn't because contained with the medicine our compounds that counteract the stomach ache. It's not that scientists are stupid, because they are not, and many have done great things its just that as a people we have to accept the metaphor and unscientific when it concerns the whole system. This can't be done with the head though it can only be done with the heart and the primary organ of thinking.

 I think this Heart Based Thinking can be used for things other than plants and personally my perspective on the world has changed since I've started adopting it. As an aside: I come from a rational background, but the understanding of the world and things I've learned most have come from the heart's experience in the world. It's led me to understanding and paths that my head said were impossible. For example, being an English teacher or traveling the world or studying herbalism.