It seems that truth for us is what matters most to us. It's not what is the most logical, rational, and in touch with objective reality that is the truth we are most intrinsically drawn to.
No, it is what fulfills our deepest needs. It's what remains for us as our desire when all else fails. Many would refer to that as "hope". All of us, whether religious or not, need an anchor for the "soul"; an anchor that remains steadfast for us when all else crumbles around us and we feel about to be washed away and powerless...
This seems to be the deepest truth out there.. And I've notice that the more someone trusts in that hope, whatever that hope is for them, the more effective it is in their life.
You can question everything, but you need to put hope in something. Putting your hope in science is not what I am talking about here. Yes, there is an area of the mind that is very much predisposed to scientific thinking, but there is also an area of the mind devoted to conviction and just as important and valid of a reality of the mind..
Certain people say it is unhealthy to compartmentalize these two different ways of thinking in our mind. I think both of these areas; aspects of the mind serve vital functions and it only makes sense that we will move back and forth between the two as we go through our daily lives and experience situations that call for those particular aspects of the mind.
It can't be argued, in my opinion, that this religious, spiritual part of the mind is a vestige of the brain in the same way that a leg bone, which you find in whales, is a vestige of the whale; something that it used early in its evolution but no longer has a use for today... This spiritual, religious aspect of the mind still has a function and aside from the advantages that it contributes to longevity, reduced stress, allowing us to cope with the realities of life that we don't immediately understand, allowing us to be more mindful and in touch with ourselves and our own thoughts.., aside from these advantages, you have the more fundamental advantage, that this reality of the mind is deeply meaningful to us and so many of us need it so much that we truly believe in its spiritual nature and it does not matter to us if we cannot prove this, it has proven itself to us... It has changed how we see the world, it has saved us from ourselves, it has, to the degree that we have given ourselves to it, changed our lives.. It has the deepest validity of anything we have ever known!
--Journal entry, October 30th, 2012:
But on a deeper level, the question that I want to ask is:
Why, in addition to our mind being designed to think logically and rationally, do we also have a mind designed for holding convictions, which may not have rational or logical substance to them, but nevertheless deep, meaningful substance to them?
That's right, just because they may have little or no rational or logical substance to them, doesn't mean they have NO substance. If they had no substance to them whatsoever, I would think our mind would react with little or no sensation/resonance to that idea, like it would to this following idea:
"The white wall is British and a baker, which flies with the birds." So here, my mind recognizes that this sentence is an irrational, illogical idea AND my mind does not personally connect with or resonate with this idea on any level.
Yet there are ideas that challenge our sense of logic and reason AND YET our mind does resonate with them deeply and give them substance....
Now, I'm not asking for an evolutionary psychological approach to this, because WHAT THAT ONLY DOES IS ANALYZE AND REDUCE THIS EXPERIENCE OF OUR MIND INTO IT'S BASIC PARTS BUT YOU REALLY HAVEN'T GRASPED OR DONE JUSTICE TO THE EXPERIENCE. You haven't tackled the most important aspect of the experience: ITS MEANINGFULNESS and the fact that people really do believe it has made a very real and profound impact in their lives...
I think a lot of people react to someone mechanically analyzing their convictions in the following way, "You can't survey the tip of the iceberg of my conviction and say that represents the iceberg! There is so much more lying beneath the surface that you are not surveying that is also just as much an intrinsic part of the iceberg. When you take it upon yourself to ignore this 90% part of the iceberg and then say that the only part of this iceberg that is valid and real is this 10% that is above the surface, how do you think that makes me feel??!!!"
A great many people have very little if no desire to understanding the psychology behind their convictions, yet this is how so many secular individuals approach someone of conviction, when they are not simply dismissing that person's convictions. Why is it so threatening to secularists to step beyond their comfort zone of merely analyzing someone's convictions to also trying to deeply receive from people of conviction, the depth, importance, and therefore the validity of their convictions..? "People don't care what you know, until they know that you care." That was a saying a pastor told me many years ago. It is interesting that most people are much more interested in me demonstrating a caring, listening ear to their thoughts, than they are to what my thoughts are in the conversation. And this makes my point... Do they know that I care enough to truly appreciate their convictions? If not, they will feel that they are throwing their pearls before swine, to quote one of the Bible's scriptures, when talking about those things that are of the utmost sacred importance to them...
People want to experience their convictions and it feels absolutely natural and right to experience their convictions and unnatural and maybe even violating to that person to analyze and dissect their convictions!
This tells me that the mind definitely has 2 natural states that it weaves in and out of:
A rational state of thinking AND an "abstract" state of convictions.....
Both, are just as natural and both are just as necessary to our mental health.
IF YOU DON'T meet the needs of both when that need needs to be met or only do one and deny the other, pretty soon this will become apparent in your mental health, which also directs your behavior and actions..
Am I being a full and complete individual and embracing all that my mind has been created to be....?
