The Voice of the Heart - A Call to Full Living

The Second Edition

PREFACE

The publication of the The Voice of the Heart occurred with little fanfare in August of 2001. It still remains a quiet book, personal to the reader’s life. Amazingly, the book has made its way into hundreds and thousands of lives, directly and indirectly, all around the world.

The first edition is being read and used in places I never envisioned—but hoped for deeply. The Voice of the Heart has reached leaders who are looking for the passion in their purpose, groups of pastors who have found refreshment in its simple truths, treatment and counseling professionals who use it to bring the people they wish to help to awareness and freedom of heart, and even a seminary that has called itself to a return to heart. The truths of the book have been used in Sunday School classes, workplace environments, core curriculum in an elementary school, family discussions around the table, between marital partners, during times of solitude of individuals from all walks of life, and by parents who wish to speak to their children’s hearts.

The book has a broad audience called humanity, and speaks to those who look to rediscover the doorway into how their hearts were created. My intent in writing The Voice of the Heart has always been to help others be who they are made to be, so they can do what they are made to do. The book’s material does not change you; only God can change you, but it aids us in becoming more present so we can experience deep change.

Not much has been altered with this second edition of the book. There are some cosmetic changes; a new cover and page layout, along with some minor editorial additions including explanations and clarifications. Most notable is the addition of a “formula” for the gift of feelings. I have used this formula for years when teaching The Eight Feelings™ and have found it consistently effective.

The publication of this edition coincides with a companion Bible study that serves as a resource to help you listen to the voice of your heart. The study shows how feelings fit into the Christian life, and how feelings can bring us closer to the God who desires intimacy with us.

THE EIGHT FEELINGS™

For centuries, people have recognized that if your heart is seen, known, invested, offered and given, then you are considered to be “all in” or “authentic.” This authentic experience of the heart allows us to answer the first question God asked mankind: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) It’s a question He continues asking us to this day. By knowing our hearts, we see and know where we are and where we need to go.

Feelings, as described in this book, are the first and most important root of the Spiritual Root System™. They help us name what we are experiencing in our hearts. Feelings bring us to the confession of how wonderfully frightening it is to live the mystery of being with God and others.

Feelings, ultimately, are tools we have been given to live fully in a tragic place, where wonder and tragedy, great loves and great losses, intermingle. Our lives cannot yield fully to the eternity we envision in this finite place. But feeling our feelings allow us to “keep heart” in the struggle of living fully, loving deeply, and leading well a life worth living for ourselves and with others.

Over the years, I have been asked multiple times, “How come there are only eight feelings?” Plainly answered: I don’t know. Perhaps only eight core feelings are all we need. You must test this for yourself. Let your own exploration of your heart be the answer.

I do believe that every human experience and expression related to feelings can be brought to core emotional experiences. There is a “bottom line” from which one can go no further, and we must name that experience or nothing will happen. Sad is sad no matter how many other ways we say it. All humans know the experience of sadness and its face is shared across all cultures and throughout the history of civilization. The same goes for lonely, hurt, anger, fear, shame, guilt, and glad.

These eight core feelings are the beginning of the expression of all human emotional experience. From these core feelings we can expand the expression to name conditions of the heart such as awe, grief, envy, anxiousness, depression, revenge, delight, and boredom.

It’s helpful to understand the feelings as being similar to the three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. These are the only three we have found thus far, and so far the three primary colors have been an amazing gift to allow us to express the astounding magnificence and subtleties of life. Out of the primary colors we have an almost unlimited capacity to mix and make tones and shades that can run into infinity. It’s truly wonderful to think about. All the expressions of color start with three primary presentations for us to use, but all true painters need to be fluent in the primary colors.

We can also think of the core feelings as being like musical notes, each core sound being distinct and unto itself. They are limited to a certain range for us to hear them, use them, and create through them. To this day, the most amazing thing is that seven notes in a scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) have not limited us with a need to repeat a symphony. They are still being written and conducted without a single repetition. The limits of musical notes in the work of a conductor can leave that person with lifetimes of possibilities. The feelings don’t limit us as much as they allow us to become aware of the potential music of our lives, our own symphony, so to speak.

Painters and musicians must accept the primary colors or notes in a scale in order to create. So why are people hesitant to accept the existence of core, foundational feelings that make up the essential design of the human heart? I believe that the struggle is threefold.

First, we fear being confined by limited emotional expression until we realize that the core feelings are only the tools of an artistic and symphonic life experience. We use the primary feelings as a way to build a more artistic and expressive life in which we experience being more present, care more deeply, and express who we are specifically and uniquely more clearly. They allow us to be seen, heard, and known, and to see, listen, and know.

Second, we have been taught to associate feelings with moral judgment against ourselves and others, rather than recognizing true feelings as created within us to allow us to face our selves. Then we can decide what we need to do with these feelings to live truthfully and behave morally. We have been taught to think of feelings as bad because of the number of people who hide their true feelings and do damage to others to avoid the vulnerability of the truth.

Feelings are not impulses that need to be controlled; they are tools that we need to learn how to use well so that we do not behave impulsively and act out without the ability to take responsibility. They are tools that allow us to live truthfully and move responsibly. They are good because they allow us to process life experience—not as a mechanical rationale of moving ourselves about like widgets, but to process life as a living, breathing experience over which we really do not have control. Feelings are required material to be able to live the human experience rather than a mechanistic objectification of our existence.

Third, feelings are good, just like organs of the body are good. They are simply a part of us, designed a certain way to do certain functions so that the living, emotional and spiritual organism can have full functioning, i.e., live fully in relationship. Your lungs are good, as is your bladder, spleen and so on. The healthier they are, the more able the organism is to live out the full capability of one’s purposes. The organ that malfunctions will signal that, “something is awry” so that help may arrive to return to the good of functioning. The organs of your body are not moral, but they are good. I think many people have been taught, sadly, that feelings themselves are wrong, when it’s the actions of being irresponsible with these feelings that cause so much harm—even when a person appears to be acting honorably while being in denial about their internal emotional experience.

As I close this preface, I wish to say how sorry I am that while the feelings themselves aren’t negative, much of life is. So much of life is about sorrow and fear and injustice and disruption and beauty achieved momentarily and then wonder collapsing. We live with memories unfinished and longings incomplete, so much so that God blessed us with tools that bring us to a life lived fully amidst the tragedy and wonder of life.

The feelings are good; they move us to the gifts that they are made to bring us in the hands of the artists who use them—the tools of the trade of living fully. The gifts allow us to have life, love, and legacy in a tragic place. I’m sorry that we need all the tools, even though I cherish their results. I still wish we only needed the one you most think you want—gladness.

But until then, I pray that you will take on the passion of living a life that will bring you to gratitude. Gratitude in a world in which your dreams will always be greater than the life you will have. I am grateful that God has given us the ability to feel because of the gifts they can initiate. I am also glad that this book holds steady in the words I still find fresh and deep; in the seventeen...