Finding Coherence — Connecting the Heart, Mind, and Actions

By Winslow Passey · Soul Sister Retreat

Have you ever been in a room where someone is playing an out-of-tune guitar? There's something almost physically uncomfortable about it — a grating, unresolved quality that makes you want to leave or fix it. You don't need a musical education to feel it. Your body just knows.

Now think about what happens when that same guitar is perfectly tuned, and someone who loves it picks it up and plays. The sound moves through you. It resonates. It feels, somehow, right.

That's coherence. And it's not just about music.

The Universe Is Mostly Empty

Here's something that stopped me in my tracks when I first meditated on it through the work of Matias de Stefano, a teacher and thinker whose ideas have deeply shaped how I understand the world:

The universe is 99.99% space.

Not matter. Not energy. Space.

And if you zoom in further — all the way down to the atomic level — you find the same thing. Each atom is almost entirely empty, with tiny protons and electrons moving through vast fields of nothing. The solid, dense material world we think we're living in is, at its foundation, mostly spaciousness.

When I first sat with that idea, I felt something release in me. Because we live in a culture that worships fullness — full calendars, full plates, full minds. We have been taught, subtly and not so subtly, that more is better. That busy means productive. That a quiet mind is an idle one.

But the universe itself tells a different story. It is the space — the emptiness — that allows for coherence, growth, clarity, and expansion.

The Guitar in Your Chest

Matias uses the example of a guitar, and I keep coming back to it because it's so perfectly true.

A guitar is not just strings and wood. It is mostly hollow. That hole in the center of the instrument — that opening, that emptiness — is not a flaw in the design. It is the design. Without it, the strings produce a thin, metallic twang. With it, sound is able to vibrate, to move through space, to become music.

Your heart, mind, and actions work the same way.

When the three are in alignment — when what you feel, what you think, and what you do are moving in the same direction — the result is like a beautiful song. There is a resonance to your life that other people can feel. Things flow with less effort. Decisions become clearer. You feel, in your body, that you are on the right track.

But when the three are out of alignment? When your heart is pulling one way, your mind is arguing another, and your actions are somewhere else entirely? It sounds like a guitar that hasn't been tuned in years. Discordant. Exhausting. Unpleasant even to the person living it — let alone those around them.

Most of us know that feeling intimately.

What Gets in the Way of Coherence

Here is the tender truth: we are not incoherent because we are broken. We are incoherent because we are full.

Full of expectations — our own and other people's. Full of old feelings we never quite processed. Full of patterns inherited from our parents, our childhoods, our wounds. Full of ideas about who we are supposed to be, stories about what we deserve, beliefs about what is possible.

All of that accumulated material sits between the heart and the mind like static on a radio signal. The transmission is still there — your truest self is always broadcasting — but the noise makes it hard to receive clearly.

This is why spiritual practices, meditation, time in nature, and honest self-inquiry are not luxuries. They are the tuning process. They are how we clear the signal.

The Practice of Emptying Out

To find coherence between the heart and the mind, we have to be willing to do something that feels counterintuitive in our culture:

We have to empty out first.

Not forever. Not into blankness. Just enough to create the space that makes resonance possible.

Here's a simple practice I come back to again and again:

1. Pause and arrive. Before any big decision, any important conversation, any creative work — pause. Take three slow breaths. Feel the weight of your body. Let your nervous system register that you are, right now, safe and present.

2. Name what's full. What are you carrying into this moment? Worry about a conversation that hasn't happened yet? Pressure to perform? An old story that says you're not enough? Name it — gently, without judgment — and set it to the side. You're not throwing it away. You're just not letting it run the meeting.

3. Expand into spaciousness. Imagine — or simply feel — that there is more space inside you than you normally allow. The same 99.99% emptiness that holds the universe together lives inside every atom of your body. Let yourself rest in that for a moment. You are not small. You are vast.

4. Ask the heart. From this quieter, roomier place, ask: What do I actually feel about this? What do I actually want? Not what you think you should want. Not what would make other people comfortable. What does the truest part of you know?

5. Let the mind serve the heart. The mind is a magnificent tool. It is not a good master. Once the heart has spoken, let your mind do what it does beautifully — make a plan, solve a problem, find a path forward. But let it follow, not lead.

Your Life as a Song

I believe — deeply, in my bones — that each of us has a song we are here to play. Not a song we choose from a list, but one that arises naturally when we are free enough, spacious enough, aligned enough to let it through.

The work of a lifetime is less about adding more and more to ourselves and more about creating the inner conditions for that music to emerge. Clearing the instrument. Tuning the strings. Learning to love the space as much as the sound.

When you are in coherence — when heart, mind, and action are moving together — people feel it. You feel it. There is a quality to a person living in that place that is unmistakable. Something settles in the room when they enter. Something opens.

That is the invitation of this work. Not perfection. Not constant peace. But the willingness to keep returning to the space, keep tuning the instrument, keep asking the deeper question:

What song am I here to sing?

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If this resonated with you, I'd love for you to take our free Archetype Quiz — it's one of the most powerful ways I know to begin understanding the unique song your soul is here to play.

And if you're ready to go deeper, join us at the Soul Sister Retreat, October 23–26, 2026, in the sacred canyon landscapes of Zion National Park. We'll spend three days doing exactly this work — together.

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