A Whole Different Way of Thinking

As he fell silent, I grew uneasy. What could I add to such an elo­quent dis­course? Besides feel­ing intim­i­dated by his intel­lec­tual acu­men, I was embar­rassed that I had never given such thought to my sit­u­a­tion. How could I? I was too wrapped up in my self, to have time to think about any­thing or any­one else. Could I ever break free from this chain of cir­cu­lar think­ing and instinc­tive behav­ior, which devoured me like a snake its own tail? I cer­tainly was being chal­lenged by this very per­cep­tive young man to do so.

While my feel­ings quickly val­i­dated the truth of his per­cep­tions, I won­dered how he’d acquired such knowl­edge. “Where did you get this infor­ma­tion?“ I asked, won­der­ing if he hadn’t got­ten it from a book that I might also read.

After what seemed like an awfully long time, he finally responded, “Even though I have gone along with their pro­gram, over the past four years, I’ve been haunted by a vague sense that I’m miss­ing some­thing. But I could never put a fin­ger on what it is. While I’ve left no stone unturned, I’ve only man­aged to sift out the lit­tle insight I just shared with you. Though I still have the feel­ing I’m miss­ing something.“

“Indeed, you are!“ I blurted out.

Aston­ished, he asked in reply, “What do ya mean?“

“I mean this,“ I responded, “that you haven’t paid enough atten­tion to your feel­ings. You’ve given your sit­u­a­tion entirely too much thought on a head level. As a result you’ve missed half the equa­tion. You’ve fallen into the same snare I have in the past, namely, cir­cu­lar thinking.

“With the thought processes of the head, you can only develop and orga­nize what you see. With feel­ing, or thoughts from the heart, you’re exposed to what you don’t see, to an entirely new way of look­ing at what you thought you saw.

“As feel­ing helps you grope through the dark­ness of your own igno­rance, she not only raises your level of con­scious­ness, but also grad­u­ally reveals the way you must go, which lies hid­den out there in Nature, as you say. For feeling’s a whole dif­fer­ent way of think­ing. While thinking’s like walk­ing through a room with your eyes open, feeling’s like walk­ing through that same room only with your eyes closed. It’s like putting your trust in the hand of another, as she leads the way.

“To help you find the way, she sep­a­rates the wheat from the chaff, that is, she gives insight into what your senses have gath­ered. For her vision, she demands not only blind faith, the let­ting go of cher­ished con­cepts but also blind obe­di­ence, the embody­ing of insight, for she needs a body in which these seeds can take root and bear fruit.

“So must the head and the heart become as one. For as a body thinks, so does it act. Whereas the head needs the heart to give order to its chaos, the heart needs the head to give direc­tion to its inten­tions. While the thoughts of the heart must even­tu­ally become those of the head, in turn, the head must will­ingly act upon or give body to the thoughts of the heart. Only then, does a body find peace and har­mony with itself.“