V. WHILE YOU'RE THINKING DON'T FORGET TO FEEL

So far in our search for the Truth about Reality as outlined in these pages we have sounded pretty much rationalistic in our approach, a matter of thinking. Clear thinking is the biggest part of it, but it's not all of it. If we want to know the whole Truth, we must seek it as whole human beings. Our thinking capacities, our mind, our brain, are only part of who we are and how we function. We are also feeling creatures capable of great emotions.

There are some people, and have been ever since the rise of what is called The Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason, in 18th century Europe, who tend to think that emotion is the natural enemy of reason and who have utter confidence in the human being's reasoning capacity. The Age of Reason wasn't all bad. It challenged superstition and a lot of patterns of belief that just didn't make any "sense" at all.

But this reaction against matters emotional and spiritual went too far. To use a popular image, it "threw the baby out with the bathwater." In challenging the more superstitious elements of religion, it threw out religion and mistrusted all spirituality. Thus it cultivated an increasingly "secular" culture ("secular" meaning pertaining to the temporal or worldly rather than the spiritual. Call it "non-religious.") The Age of Reason was right in asserting that there are universal laws governing the universe, but went too far in assuming that universal laws govern human behavior in the same way.

The Age of Enlightenment was right to celebrate the human reasoning capacity, but wrong to idolize it. It was right to reject superstitious elements in religion, but wrong to reject the vitality of religion altogether. It was right to be wary of human emotions, but wrong to downgrade them entirely.

So when I say "While you're thinking, don't forget to feel," I mean that not only thoughts, but feelings are important. Feelings should sometimes be "CHECKED," but they shouldn't be "REPRESSED"

It's often unwise to simply "act on our feelings" unchecked by reason. Feelings should be "checked", (check "feeling in the name of thinking") I think this is what the French mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal meant when he said, "The heart has reasons which reason does not know." They may not always be expressed in every situation, but to yourself they should be acknowledged.

I'd like to pursue this next time with an examination of why feelings can be either productive or destructive.


APPROACHES- V

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