The Unshuttered Heart: Opening Aliveness/Deadness in the Self

Aliveness and Deadness are processes that cannot be captured, only symbolized within the precincts of psychology and religion. Opening under the shadow of 9/11, our new century must reassess the preciousness of life and what we are living for, what we love, and what we find worth dying for. In the face of loss and absence, we must again ask what makes us feel connected to the source of aliveness. Yet, we must also understand that feeling fully alive means that we must come to fresh insight about the contrary of aliveness, which is deadness. Both aliveness and deadness are part of the same fabric of being. But how do we talk about them? Or do we leave these unnamed? For Ann Belford Ulanov, aliveness is to make something of what we hear, and to hear what we hear makes of us. Working on oneself enlarges; thus, society as psychological work and spiritual practice form a kind of social action. Our heart becomes unshuttered making new depths possible for the self and others.