Debunking both rationalism and 'intuition'; From the head, to the heart, to the soul.

[Skanzi]

In this essay, I will try my best to use the language of logic to indicate the significance of the illogical for those who are too attached to logic, yet I will also argue against the illogical for those who are too attached to the dimension of the heart. Then, I'm trying to create a holistic perspective in which both are integrated, but neither one of them has become an attachment. This will have its limitations, because the first "illogicality" I was talking about was in a certain sense still logical. That illogicality can still be logically pointed out why it is functional. So there's a certain rationality towards that dimension of being irrational. However, there is a certain point where no matter how strong your logic is, a leap will have to be taken into trust. Trust, genuine trust (not faith or belief), requires you to take a jump into the absurd, the unexplainable, the unknowable: not having the capacity to be understood by the mind. This I call the truest form of absurdity, of illogicality. It's difficult to argue why this has so much significance to take this jump; you will have to experience it, that's the only way.

However, there are still some pointers I can provide, some perspectives that can be utilized. But obviously, only the direct experience can free you and truly make you understand it, and not a intellectual agreement of it, though this can be the first step.

Firstly, let's discuss the matter of why atheism/rationalism, and its loyal brother called "science", is an act of limiting yourself and ultimately an ego strategy for keeping you stuck.

Often times, people ask for "evidence" when a certain statement is made within the realm of religiousity or spirituality, or even just general self-development. The problem is, that such a thing cannot be proven as an absolute truth by its very nature, because everybody is different. Science is good for the development of new technologies and the discoveries of universal truths, such as the realm of physics and mathemathics. However, as far as the matter of humanity is concerned, things really start becoming much more complex. 

The realm of spirituality, religion and even psychology are cluttered with paradoxes and opposites. What is poison for one person, can be the cure for the other one. It all depends on the makeup of someone's system: one's heart, one's beliefs, one's conditioning, one's personality and so forth... For this reason, how can science and psychology provide any evidence for a technique that would work for all? Impossible! We are all unique individuals, and there is no absolute truth that works for everyone all the time. At least, as far as the conventional perspective is concerned. From the perspective of the absolute, of the all, then perhaps there are truths that work for everyone.

Let me give you an example. Take the statement: Love frees you from suffering. Is this true? I would definitely say so. However, what happens when people start taking this statement very seriously? Then people start to act loving, to pretend they are loving, to believe they are loving, when in reality they carry a lot of judgement, resentment, hatred and so forth within them. In reality, the action that is required for them could be to become very assertive, dismiss people out of their lives, start saying "NO!", become angry at someone and defend themselves from hurt that others can inflict upon them. It's not to say that THAT is the absolute truth either for happiness and peace, but it is the relative truth that at that moment works for them, because that is a part they need to develop at that point.

True love is only possible when you know how to defend and assert yourself. True love also doesn't mean to always be soft, kind and gentle towards people. Sometimes it is necessary to be harsh and to deliver uncomfortable truths to people directly. Again, relative truths that they need to embody at that stage of their development.

Do you see the limitations of science here in the fields of psychological development? Humans are incredibly complex, and a particular advice can be poison for one person and medicine for the other. It all depends what part of them they need to develop at that particular stage in their evolution. Sometimes masculine values have to practiced, and sometimes feminine values.

What I just argued for wasn't necessarily against atheistic viewpoints so much; It didn't do much to disprove the notion of a purely materialistic and accidental reality, as atheists believe, but my feeling is that many rationalists turn towards science to explain for them how to live, and my argumentation was to support the dismissal of this notion.

Then, if we understand the complexity of our psychology, and we realize that there are no absolute truths and therefore techniques or methods we can eternally hold onto, we may start to realize that our intellectual systems will eventually be limiting towards progressing further in our evolution. Then, we may start looking for a different center from which to make decisions from. This is where the heart comes into play: The world of feelings and emotions.

However, what usually (if not always) happens is that instead of understanding that an integration between heart and mind needs to take place, which allows the intuition of the soul to truly open up, we start instead becoming identified with our feelings and we dismiss the cold rationality of the mind. It's not that the mind now has completely disappeared, but that it now utilizes the heart for its beliefs and decisions. It's not that at this point that the identification with the mind has been transcended, but that the mind now simply doesn't purely function from itself only. Feelings now have a great significance, and certainly they do have a great existential importance, but the irony is that the mind starts dismissing its own analytical processes; at least on the surface level. In reality, the mind is still running the entire business, but the underlying belief one is now attached to is: "I should go by what feels right". One does now realize the importance of connection, love, communion, empathy and so forth, but fails to understand that the mind has to be used in this physical reality. Mind has its purpose, and needs to be used consciously, instead of being dismissed. If we fail to integrate our heart and mind, we then start becoming too "weak". We become too floaty, too undriven, too undisciplined. We start dismissing rational, logical decisions which would've helped us further or prevented us from getting in trouble because "It doesn't feel right" Ultimately, this will backfire on us.

This is the hypocrisy that —often cold-hearted— rational people such as atheists can see in people who are too identified with their emotions and feelings, as we are experts in pointing out the flaws of our polar opposites, but fail to see the dysfunctionality within ourselves. So naturally, scientists, atheists, rationalists, and all the types of people who are functioning almost purely from their mind and logical systems, feel a great resistance towards the people who get so caught up in their emotions and feelings, as they can see that they get nothing done, that they lack a "down-to-earth" approach, that they are too much floating around in the skies, that they lack self-control and discipline. And certainly, there is a certain truth to this.

However, if we dismiss our subjective reality entirely, then we set ourselves up for a great amount of suffering. Then we keep in our emotions, then we start to feel disconnected from existence and other human beings, then we repress our desires if they don't correlate to our rationalist perspective, then we start becoming overwhelmed by stress and anxiety... You may become very succesful in the material world, but you'll realize it's all hollow and you're still the same unhappy person as you were before. In fact, you are unhappier now because you now got what you thought you needed to be happy, but you're still not happy. Now, hope also starts slipping out of your hands. The only way out of this is to start realizing the significance of your subjective reality; You start honouring your feelings, your emotions. You allow yourself to cry or to express joy and laughter in a very frivolous, free-flowing manner. This can be a great relief to your system, and you start to realize the significance of feelings and emotions.

However, as I have already explained, the mind tends to swing to the polar opposite. At first we may have honored our rationalism to a great degree, but as we started seeing the pain of our lack of emotional awareness, we now tend to become very antagonistic towards what we first considered to be so valuable. Somehow, we often start to forget all the hypocrisy we saw in people who became very identified with their emotions and feelings. I have already explained what this can result in. Let's get into the next phase.

There comes a point when we start once again see the limitations of this identification with all these feelings and the dismissal of the mind, as we were able to when we were still rationalists. However, if we've lived through this phase of feeling-identification, we now start to realize that both heart and mind has a certain significance. This is the door to wisdom. We start to understand that both the language of the heart and the mind has a certain significance. What we don't immediately understand however, is how to proprely integrate both of them. We now start to try to philosophize and figure out logical systems in which we can somehow apply a technique, a strategy, a method as on how to integrate them. We think and think, and the more we go into the many perspectives on what ground or logic we can make our decisions on, the more we start to realize that there is always an opposite perspective to whatever standpoint we take. We use logic —the mind— to try and integrate mind and heart, but again and again we fail to truly understand how to find this balance, because if we really go deeply into it, we always realize that an opposing argument is just around the corner for whatever standpoint we try to take. This can lead to greats amount of confusion, because we don't know what is left and right anymore, what's up and above, what will help us and what will hinder us, what is forward and what is backward... Life can start becoming really difficult and, as was my personal experience, you can come to a point where you become so confused that it paralyzes you to the point where all you do is lay in bed all day, just thinking —even though you're physically perfectly health— and the confusion and thoughts become so crippling that you lose the motivation to do anything at all, except for perhaps supplying the needs for your physical survival. This is the dark night of doubt and confusion, which I personally probably went into more extremely than 99% of people ever will, granted people will reach this stage in their life in the first place. It got me to the point where I started considering and attempting suicide. And it was not merely because I wanted the pain to stop (as I was very open to the idea of reincarnation, this seemed rather futile anyways), but because all other ideas had failed for me, I now had the idea that perhaps if I push the pain to so far that it reaches a certain limit, then perhaps it will somehow instantly transform me, or at least reverse the direction that my life seemed to be heading in. I'm talking about the pain you experience when you're on the edge of death, but haven't made the last step into it yet. So it wasn't really about actually ending it, but pushing the pain to such an extreme so that perhaps something would crack in me and I would have some sort of transformation. It was a last-resort solution, no other idea seemed to work for me anymore.

Eventually, I started to realize that this wasn't going to work out for me either. Either it was going to be actual suicide, or a complete change in attitude. 

Even though I had very strong doubts and fears that it would actually work, there was just one thing I could think of. And that was this: I simply had to make decisions, not knowing whether they were right or wrong, not knowing whether they were helpful or hindering, not knowing whether it was going to make things better or worse, but making decisions for the sake of learning to make decisions, and committing to them (for that moment), as much as I can. It was completely stepping into the complete unknown, having all my intuitive capacities of feeling what I should be doing overshadowed by doubts and fears, and despite all of that still making decisions, and somehow, for no logical explanation at all, still trusting myself and existence in spite of all the worries, that I was heading in the right direction. 

This is the trust I want to talk about. This is the trust I can not —despite all my clever philosophical capacities— make an argument for as to why to go with it. Except for that it works.

Where one who is identified with feelings only may call his/her decisions based on trust, it is still based on faith and identifying with a mental position, namely: "I should go with what feels right". It seems like you're trying to go with your intuition, but in fact, you're not. You're going with a mental position, where your heart simply facilitates your head. Or perhaps I should say: you're going with feeling-intuition, but not with being-intuition. Being-intuition seems in some ways similair to feeling-intiution, but in fact it is radically different. This is the type of intuition that I can not explain or argue in favour for to any rationalist. With feeling-intuition, I can still show the rationalist the significance of feelings and emotional expression as to unburden himself. With being-intuition, my hands are tied. It is a mystery as to what it is. Sometimes it tells you to go with "what feels right", thus implying heart. Sometimes it tells you to go with "what needs to be done", thus implying mind. And sometimes it is somewhere in between. But of course, it doesn't take up a mental position. It simply decides. And you trust it.

How can you trust it? How do you know it won't deceive you? Well, there's no way to argue it away, but you simply trust it. It is letting the unknown function through you, and the only indication that this is the right thing to do is the sense of tranquility and peace you get from going along with it, which doesn't mean it stays away from discipline and things you really don't feel like doing. Often times, I don't really even know if I'm listening to my being-intuition or if i'm getting identified with either a mental or emotional (feeling-intuition) position. I'm not so acquianted with it just yet. I've only started to become somewhat acquainted with turquoise for less than a year now [reference to spiral dynamics model]. To differentiate being-intuition from and identification with an idea or feeling is very difficult to notice, very subtle. Most characteristic about it, I would say, is that the element of confusion or hesitation has started disappearing from it. Not that you know for sure this is the right decision, at least intellectually, but there's is no need to be sure anymore. You start to understand that the problem all along was not the decisions you were making, but the division within yourself you were creating when you were making your decisions. One part of you said you should do A, another part said you should do B. Perhaps you were identified with the position of A, but still your unconscious desired for B (or vica versa), so you were in conflict. Perhaps you were genuine enough to see both the validity of A and B, but were unsure as to what to choose, thus still in conflict. Now, with this being-intuition, the decision you make is not important anymore. You can choose A, and that's fine. You can choose B, and that's fine. Perhaps you can even choose AB, and that's also fine. Or perhaps today you choose A, and tomorrow you choose B, and eitherway it is still fine. Now, you start to become truly flexible: being able to switch between a feminine, passive modality to a masculine, active modality very quickly, for whatever the situation requires.

You realize that none of this really matters, as long as there is not conflict within you making decisions. Finally, you really start to realize there's no need to worry at all, because you've come to the absolute realization of your own ignorance, so why be worried? You don't know anyways. You can't know! All this worry and striving and contemplating and pondering and disciplining and attempting to accept, trying to not try... All of that was just a complete joke! And you don't even renounce striving, or contemplating or anything like that. If it's a joke, then why avoid it? Jokes are to be played around with. If you start fighting with a joke, it won't be a joke anymore. In realizing all of this, true spirituality and peace starts to become available to you. Finally, you're approaching the promised land, which in reality was never anywhere else but here to begin with.

But... Don't take what I say as a philosophy. You have to apply the specific lessons that are relevant for you right now. Your situation is different than mine. Be genuine with yourself, and see what the specific lesson is that you need to learn right now. Don't try to avoid it, even if it is very painful. The only way to peace is to go through the pain of facing yourself, facing your demons. There is no other way. Avoidance is simply delay. What's the point in delay?

[Dogsbestfriend]

Try to write less convoluted or the message will get lost. Dunno maybe others get what you're trying to convey. 

[Guest Quanty]

Great pointers. 

<3

[Viking]

Great post, I think I had a tiny glimpse of what turquoise might look like for the first time. Thanks.