“The longest distance in my spiritual journey is from my head to my heart.”
That is a good aphorism; it carries truth, weight and meaning. To have an idea move from my head to my heart seems to take a long time and is often difficult. But it is necessary. For so long as a thought is a thought, nothing will happen; to become actionable, the idea must migrate down to the heart and create some emotion. It is the heart and emotion that gives an idea energy.
We learn this first in our drinking.
For many years, I had the head knowledge that there seemed to be a problem. But it took forever to transmute the knowledge of my drinking problem in my head to an emotion in my heart; from a fact that was interesting to an emotion that demanded action. The fact had to have feeling.
The fact was, “I had a problem with booze,” and the feeling was, “I am desperate.”
The fact that I had a problem with booze did not stimulate action; I did not act until I had the feeling of desperation.
Moving my drinking problem from my head to my heart gave me the motivation to attend my first AA meeting.
But when I arrived at AA, I faced another journey, a longer journey. This journey was the distance between my knees and the floor, the spiritual journey from self-willed independence to surrender to a Higher Power.
First I came to understand the idea that I needed a psychic change, but I had to move from an intellectual appreciation of the need for a psychic change to a heartfelt abandoning of myself to a Power greater than myself. The difference was standing in defiance and kneeling in prayer. The distance was the space between my knees and the floor.
And I just measured myself. The distance from my head to my heart is 12 inches, and the distance from my knees to the floor is 24 inches; twice the distance. No wonder it seemed long.
The distance from my head to my heart is long, but the distance from my knees to the floor was even longer.
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