In medicine, the pulse is a tactile method for determining systolic blood pressure, that is, the tactile palpation of your heartbeat. A normal pulse is steady in rhythm and force.

Your heartbeat is not life itself, but it is an indication that you are alive. Your heart beats roughly 100,000 times in one day and about 35 million times per year. During an average lifetime, your heart will beat more than 2,500,000,000 times.

Sociologically speaking, “pulse” takes on a different meaning. Pulse in this context is defined as “the central point of energy and organization in an area or activity”.

To be sure, life is all about rhythm and pulsation. Life rhythms or “biorhythms” permeate everything we do and in many ways define who we are. Moreover, our function in relation to life’s various rhythms determines how effective we are at living. In this sense, timing is everything.

Were you to stop for a moment and put your fingers on the pulse of your living, what would you find? Is your expression consistent in both rhythm and force? Does the centering of your deepest feeling always move from the same place? Or is the pulse of your living irregular?

Are you, for example, consistently centered in love and do you, as a result, send out a steady stream of blessings to the world around you? Or do you intermittently allow yourself to be centered in hatred, which is nothing more than the absence of love and as a result do you occasionally curse the world around you? Your expression gives evidence of your centering in the moment.

Everyone loves to be regular, not in the sense of being average, but in the sense of begin steady and reliable. Few, however, are willing to look beneath the symptom (i.e. an irregular pulse) to address the underlying centering which gave rise to that symptom, even though this is the only way to have a more even expression on a consistent basis.

As I’ve noted before, what has your heart has you. Where your heart is centered, there your expression will be also. You can make small improvements by tinkering with your expression, but true refinement only comes as the centering of your heart’s concerns are looked at honestly, humbly, and earnestly.

You have control over your life’s pulse, no matter what happens to you, no matter how surprised you are by the events that work out around you, or by how easy or difficult your life may be at the moment. The question is: will you exercise that authority and live your life responsibly or will you live reflectively and continue blaming the world around you for your irregular pulse?