Video from Conversatio Divina
The Heart in the System Of Human Life - Dallas Willard
"Also known as the spirit and the will, the heart is the center of the human self. In this session Dallas talks about this inner dimension—the center—from which our lives spring." from video introduction.
What is our heart? Not the physical heart but the Spiritual Heart?
When someone says follow your heart what do they really mean?
Is it true if we follow our heart apart from Christ we risk sin and suffering? Dallas Willard discusses these realities that we often over look in our day to day life especially within our all consuming culture.
“Follow your heart” is a creed embraced by billions of people. It’s a statement of faith in one of the great pop cultural myths of the Western world, a gospel proclaimed in many of our stories, movies, and songs.
Essentially, it’s a belief that your heart is a compass inside of you that will direct you to your own true north if you just have the courage to follow it. It says that your heart is a true guide that will lead you to true happiness if you just have the courage to listen to it. The creed says that you are lost and your heart will save you.
This creed can sound so simple and beautiful and liberating. For lost people it’s a tempting gospel to believe..." from the article: Don't Follow Your Heart
"Discipline works by indirection, Dallas Willard teaches. A discipline is something we can do that enables us to do what we haven’t yet been able to do by our own direct effort. Trying is not enough. (“Don’t try — train!” is a way to paraphrase 1 Tim. 4:7.) Our training is connecting us with a power much greater than our own — the Spirit of God that raised Jesus Christ from the dead!.." from the article: Spiritual Disciplines List
For further reading: "One of the great oaks among us is fallen. Dallas Willard, who died May 8 (2013), was a professor of philosophy, a teacher par excellence, and a great soul, capable of inspiring deep faith. As a young Southern Baptist pastor in the 1960s, he left the ministry to study philosophy because he was convinced he was “abysmally ignorant” of God and the soul, and had concluded that Jesus and the philosophers were addressing the same questions.[1] Willard pushed deep into the intellectual roots of philosophy and Christian theology, while nourishing the spiritual disciplines of silence and prayer. The result was a quietly luminous relationship with Christ himself, which shone forth through Willard’s books on discipleship. The Divine Conspiracy won awards when it was published in 1998, setting off a series of explosions in the church world by causing people who called themselves Christians to evaluate their actual relationship with Christ, if they had one at all..." from the article: The Divine Conspiracy of Dallas Willard