Why the heart tilts a little to the left
Perfect symmetry is rare in the natural world. The human body and the body politic are both best-served when the heart beats a little to the left.
What I learned about the heart in school
In elementary school I was taught to put my right hand on my heart as I pledged my allegiance. My heart is on the left, I was told. I have been thinking about this lately, the heart being on the left. The right hand connecting to the heart. The balance of left and right.
I learned from other kids in elementary school how to use racial slurs, how to make fun of people with disabilities, how to identify the other and use their suffering to try to feel better about myself. How to fit in by casting out. I have had fear and shame turned against me, too. Kids are great at that shit.
Call me a dreamer, but I like to believe we can all outgrow othering, in spite of what we see on social media.
I was in fourth grade when the United States recognized Black History Month in 1976. I remember that year mostly for the Bicentennial, because I received commemorative stamps, books and two dollar bills as gifts from my living ancestors. Civil rights were not front and center in my childhood. But we were taught about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his role in the civil rights movement.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
King’s “arc of the moral universe” quote is second in belovedness only to his “I have a dream” speech. But is it true? Or does it just feel good to believe?
The moral arc of the universe bending towards justice depends on us — to desire, and to strive for, that trajectory. To me, the past election cycle seems to point to an unbending of the arc, if we are to include compassion and empathy as relevant components of morality. Although the margin was narrow, we the people elected an authoritarian who is actively trying to unbend the arc.
I have come to believe that the right hand, without the heart, is a dangerous idea.
I think a good barometer for which way the moral arc is bending is in how humans treat one another. Is it with love and empathy, or with distrust, hatred, and indifference?
We have certainly all heard the “first they came for” quote by now, and perhaps felt a chill when contemplating it.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
Have they begun? The promised ICE raids are separating families. The purge of political opponents is chilling. The administration blaming the recent airplane crash with a military helicopter in Washington DC on DEI hiring. They are turning us against positive words in our own language? Diversity. Equity. Inclusion. Social Justice.
When do we speak up? Or, more importantly, how?
I have come to believe that the right hand, without the heart, is a dangerous idea.
An anatomy of the human heart
Although the heart is behind the sternum in the center of the body, it tilts to the left a little bit.
Our heart's left ventricle is larger and more muscular than the right one. It pumps blood to our entire body, whereas the right ventricle pumps only to our lungs. The left is bigger and heavier, causing it to tilt leftward.
The heart also has an anatomical feature called the "cardiac apex," which is it’s bottom tip, formed mainly by the left ventricle. This apex naturally points down and to the left, contributing to the heart's leftward orientation.
Here’s something cool. Our left lung is a little smaller than the right, making room for our heart.
Perhaps god created the human body as a template for our politics. If the right and left don’t work together, the system is thrown out of balance and perishes. We can’t survive in half a body.
So hear me out. For the moral arc to bend towards justice, the heart of our culture needs to tip slightly to the left.
A political history of sides
After millennia of side-lessness, it was the French Revolution in 1789 that brought us sides.
In the French National Assembly, supporters of the king sat on the right side of the chamber, while supporters of the revolution sat on the left. On the right were those who supported the traditional monarchy, aristocracy, and church (conservatives). On the Left were those who wanted radical change, including democracy and secular governance (liberals).
The true coup happens in the minds of the people, not in the buildings where government officials perform ceremonies.
On the Right: Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Church.
How is it that the right today still wants what the right wanted as they were being hacked to pieces in the French Revolution?
“Make America Great Again” is a mantra that conservative-identifying people can project their own grievances onto, a placeholder for anger. For monarch Trump and his aristocrats, “great again” is a return to the era of robber barons. If we get rid of anyone who demonstrates the weakness of compassion, enriching the rich will be far easier.
The church is in cahoots, conivingly convincing its indoctrinated masses that god wants this idolatry and cruelty. The leaders at the top get the benefits of the aristocracy, the rest of us get to believe in a future heaven. The right has hijacked the Christian Bible and weaponized it. To believers it is an authority that can’t be questioned, the actual words of god. The clergy decide how those words are interpreted, and which ones to emphasize to keep their followers agitated.
Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors.” ~Joseph Campbell
Pretending to be on the side of Jesus, conservative politicians can veil their greed and selfish intentions. Outright lies quickly turn into conspiracy theories. It is a small step from believing everything in a bible to be true, to believing there are lizards disguised as humans drinking the blood of children.
The true coup happens in the minds of the people, not in the buildings where government officials perform ceremonies.
The right has the bigger lung, the louder voice. It has enthusiasm, but lacks heart. Lying and name calling and greed are celebrated. There is a narcissistic child at its center, pulling the levers to see what they do. Or at least, how they will break.
All of that said, a right that is balanced by a left is positive. There are parts of culture and society that we want to conserve. Whatever is great about America’s past is worth saving and celebrating, especially when it is bending our moral arc towards justice.
On the Left: Radical Change, Democracy and Secular Governance.
The podcasts I listen to are left leaning, like our hearts. The voices of people I respect have been telling me that the Democrats (liberals) are rudderless, and have lost their bearing.
Because we have the bigger heart and smaller voice on the left, we have an uphill battle to win people over. Even in an increasingly complex world, trying to convey nuance is a handicap. Yet nuance is a necessary component of stability. Perhaps we just need to convey nuance in a simple way.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s arc of the moral universe bending towards justice is a powerful idea because it gives us hope, perspective, and direction. It may or may not be true historically, but it gives us a rudder. It gives us a compass. It contains multitudes.
The left is losing the battle of words and memes. The words diversity, equity, and inclusion are being denigrated by the right. Words of compassion. The right has compressed these meaningful words into the letters DEI and tarnished them with false narratives. Meanwhile real human lives are being harmed.
Inclusion is what the heart wants. We want to be part of a group. A church, a political ideology, a movement, a sports team. Our anxious, fearful selves seek the exclusion of others. These two parts are evolutionary traits, which can be integrated or exploited.
While the right ventricle is pumping the lungs up with anger, the left ventricle is desperately trying to keep the rest of the body alive.
Corruption runs through the whole political system. Greed is like water, flowing downhill into any crevice it can find. It takes a special person to seek political office and simultaneously be resistant to avarice. Money finds its way into everything, and subverts the will of the people.
Our system forces politicians to rely on money from big donors. The aristocrats. In this conflict of interest, compromises are made. Justice is sacrificed.
When politicians won’t admit who they serve, their word becomes meaningless. I feel that part of the problem with the left is that they are trying to serve two masters, the people and greed. The right only has greed. That means they can feel authentic, even when they are lying. They serve the corporations while redirecting the anger of the people towards the left. The lefty politicians have to thread the needle of serving the people without angering the corporations. They are left with nuance. How to explain the complexity of serving two masters?
The left needs honesty, because the heart is a symbol of truth. Tell us how we can change the corrupt system while being funded by it? Let’s get to the heart of the matter.
The balancing of opposites
As a practitioner, I look to the teachings of yoga for guidance.
Yoga is a practice of balance. In the pop way that many people think of yoga in the west there is, of course, balance in the postures. Standing on one leg while doing something aesthetically beautiful or acrobatically complex with the other, and then posting it on social media. The yoga that we see with our eyes.
Beneath that superficial layer, lies thousands of years of spiritual and philosophical technology and debate. Yoga is alive with conflicting views on how to practice, which form of god to devote ourselves to, whether to be a householder or a renunciate, what enlightenment is. There is a left-handed yoga, and a right handed yoga. The poses we glorify (or deride) in the west are a recent addition.
As humans, there is a conservative side within us that clings to what is, and a liberal side that moves us toward what might be. The seed of one dwells within the heart of the other, as the Taoist yin yang symbol reminds us. A black dot in a swirl of white opposite a white dot in a swirl of black. In a balanced system, the dance of the opposites creates harmony and health.
What would Patanjali do?
In the west most yoga teachers earned certification in trainings that emphasize the teachings of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. It is a book of 196 aphorisms that had fallen into obscurity in India for several centuries until colonialist scholars from Great Britain stumbled upon it and translated it into English. A charismatic Indian yogi named Swami Vivekanada created an English commentary on the text and introduced it to the United States at the turn of the 20th century.
The definition of yoga in the Yoga Sutras is, “yoga is the cessation of the whirlings of the mind.” That definition is stated at the beginning of the text, and everything that follows is instructions on how to achieve such a feat. Most of us will find it impossible to quiet the mind, even with an instruction manual. With practice, the thoughts do slow down and we discover much about ourselves.
“To preserve the innate serenity of the mind, a yogin should be happy for those who are happy, be compassionate toward those who are unhappy, be delighted for those who are virtuous, and be indifferent toward the wicked.” ~ Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 1:33
This is the sutra that may be most relevant to this political moment. At first glance it all makes sense, until that last little bit. Indifferent towards the wicked? To understand that, go back to the beginning of the sutra. The goal of Patanjali’s ascetic yoga is to quiet the mind. Watching FOX news or even listening to NPR will not bring serenity. President Trump’s very existence depends on us paying attention, negatively or positively. He is ego writ large, and without the attention I think he would shrivel and fade away. That obviously is not going to happen now.
In other sutras Patanjali gives us instructions on how to treat others, with non-violence being the very first step on the path to yoga. His teachings, when followed, make us kinder and more self-aware people, which makes for a better society. Cultivating indifference to the wicked is useful, in that we make our best choices when our mind is calm. However, I would argue that the Yoga Sutras is not the yogic text to turn to for combatting injustice in government and politics.
Yoga is Skill in Action
The yogic text that gives us the best tools for fighting a corrupt system is the Bhagavad Gita (Song of God). It is the text that guided Mahatma Gandhi in his struggle to defeat British Colonialism.
The Gita imparts its wisdom in the form of a story that takes place on a battlefield. In the story, a warrior prince called Arjuna finds himself in a dilemma, because the army he commands and the army he is about to go to war with are each filled with family and friends. Before the fighting begins, he asks his charioteer, Krishna, to take him to the center of the battlefield. Once there, he admits to Krishna that he is so despaired by the idea of killing people he knows and respects that he can’t fight.
It turns out that Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu, the Hindu god of sustainment. Vishnu is the aspect of the divine that creates balance in the world, in between Brahma the creator and Shiva the destroyer. The stable center between the two extremes.
Four paths of yoga
Throughout the text, Krishna describes four types of yoga.
Raja Yoga - the path of meditation, which is similar to Patanjali’s yoga.
Jnana Yoga - the path of knowledge, which includes self-inquiry and philosophical discrimination.
Bhakti Yoga - the path of loving devotion, which prescribes complete surrender and love for the divine. It is said to be the quickest path to god, but it is not for everyone.
Karma Yoga - the path of selfless action, which is the yoga of warriors and activists and people who want to work to make the world more just.
Because Arjuna has become a hot mess in the beginning of the Gita, Krishna tells him that his dharma, or duty in life, is to be a warrior. To stand up and fight. Arjuna was not born to be a meditator or kirtan wallah, he was born to lead a righteous battle and bring balance to his society. His path is karma yoga.
Many commentators, including Gandhi, say the battlefield in the Gita is a metaphor for the fight that goes on in our minds. Remember, it is dangerous to interpret stories in sacred texts as factual. The Gita is not a text that glorifies war as an answer to life’s problems. The story is a conscious lie told to impart a greater truth.
In the allegorical interpretation of the Gita, Arjuna represents the individual facing difficult choices. Krishna represents higher wisdom/divine guidance/inner conscience. The Kauravas (opposing forces) represent negative tendencies like greed, attachment, ego, and the Pandavas (Arjuna's side) represent positive qualities like dharma, truth, courage. Just as Arjuna hesitates to fight his own family members, we struggle to let go of familiar patterns and attachments.
In the story, the Kauravas are definitely to the right, and the Pandavas to the left. Greed and status quo versus compassion and equity. In the prequel to the Gita (earlier chapters of the epic Mahabarata), Arjuna is given a choice between having Krishna’s entire army join him, or having Krishna as his guide. Arjuna chooses Krishna, heart over power. It turns out to be a wise choice.
The most relevant teaching to our situation now is that of yoga as “skill in action.” Krishna explains to Arjuna that karma yoga involves maintaining equanimity and skillful action while fulfilling one's duties.
Endowed with the wisdom of evenness-of-mind, one casts off in this life both good deeds and evil deeds; therefore, devote yourself to yoga. Skill in action is yoga. ~ Bhagavad Gita chapter 2 verse 50.
Equanimity is the quality we are tasked to cultivate in the Yoga Sutras, in part by being indifferent to the wicked. In the Gita we gain the equanimous mind by performing skillful action and then, importantly, not being attached to the outcome of our actions.
The world is vast and complex, and if there is a divine plan none of us know what it is. The Gita teaches us to use the various paths of yoga to know our true selves, and to determine what our duty in this life is. Then we make skillful choices and take skillful action. We dedicate ourselves and our actions to the greater good.
Remember the heart. Cherish that left-leaning vessel that delivers blood to our bodies and helps bring breath into our lungs. It may lean left, but we need the right. We need to conserve parts of what is while we imagine what can be. The weight of the heart will bend the arc of the moral universe in the direction of justice.
I feel that these times we are in will require a great deal from us to stand up to authorianism, inequality and greed. Posting on social media is not going to be enough. But what we do as individuals will vary. I can not prescribe what will work for you. Demonstrations, phone calls, running for office, donating to organizations, podcasting, placing your body in danger to prevent atrocity. Each of us have our own warrior journey.
What I can tell you is that to prevent burnout or despair, remember that your skillful action is an offering. Like raising a child, you do your best and then let them go out into the world. If you are true to yourself and to the greater good, that is the best you can do. Even if the result seems like a disaster, it may be the cloud that creates the silver lining the world needs.
Maybe the Trump presidency is like that. Right now, the clouds are dark. It will get darker before the dawn. Put on your headlamps and rain gear and get to work.