Reason Vs Intuition
Are you telling me my mind is a theatre?
Title of the Show: DIÁLOGO CERVANTINO
Scenario where the show takes place: The Human Brain
Genre of the show: Dramatic/curious (as a matter of fact it is more funny than curious and more than funny it is comical brimming on the ridiculous and the absurd)
Date: Everyday, any day
Time: All hours, except when we sleep
The Cast:
• BRAIN’S LEFT HEMISPHERE better known among friends as “REASON” and nicknamed ”the materialist” by its enemies
• BRAIN’S RIGHT HEMISPHERE better known among friends as “INTUITION“ and nicknamed “the idealist” by its detractors
Part One:
Somewhere in ONE (1) brain whose name I don’t want to recall TWO (2) personages lived together in ongoing disagreement and argumentation.
• REASON: you live up in the clouds; come and smell the turf, you believe you are an artist. . . with your painting, your music and your poetry you are never going to accomplish anything in life; you will die pretty much like Van Gogh, without an ear and not a penny in your pocket. Do pay me heed and find a job like a normal person
• INTUITION: (I hate his critique, he believes he knows it all) you are the worse; you think you own truth, you stand to your nickname—an inhuman materialist—you believe that money is everything in life; you are a square; whenever your head hurts you should take an aspirin for each quadrant of your brain. I think it’s best for me to leave …
• REASON: don’t go away; listen to me!
• INTUITION: I do not want to argue! You just want to pick up a fight!
• REASON: you believe that by keeping quiet you solve everything; give me arguments… you are an idealistic loser.
• INTUITION: I am not an idealist, I’m a humanist... you are a pessimist.
• REASON: I am no pessimist, I am realistic; your communism or humanism as you call it sounds wonderful but it is utopia and it does not work; free market is the philosophy that resembles “nature” the most, and nature isn’t paternalistic; it does not provide subsidies to the mediocre nor to lazy bums.
• INTUITION: I am not a communist; I am a socialist; I worry for people; they are not lazy bums, they are persons; you are much worse; you take advantage of them and abuse your poor employees.
• REASON: Nowadays you need money even to be sick or die.
• INTUITION: He who will die is you; you work even over the weekend; at any point you are going to have a heart attack due to lack of exercise; you eat too much red meat and are a chain smoker. What good will your money do if you never see your children.
• REASON: But they attend the best school; you over concern yourself with preventing trees from being fallen or because whales are killed instead of working toward buying your own home.
• INTUITION: But I am loved; you, even you can’t stand yourself, you are such a grouch.
• REASON: You are worse; you put up with everything; your “NO” is out of order; you let everybody abuse you. You have to learn to fight and to defend that which is yours.
• INTUITION: The solution lies not in fighting but in talking.
• REASON: You get nothing out of talking; whoever messes with you, confront him with a lawyer; the road to Peace is war.
• INTUITION: No, Peace is the road.
• REASON: I want to see where such belief leads you…
• INTUITION: You are incredulous; why must you analyze and mince everything? Relax, don’t stress yourself.
• REASON: How can I not be stressed, I first need to SEE in order to BELIEVE; miracles do not happen; you are the only one who believes you live in Disney World.
• INTUITION: Life itself is but a miracle you must BELIEVE in order to be able to SEE.
• REASON: You are so short-sighted.
• INTUITION: You are the bigot.
And so the script goes on and on ... each character defends his/her point or view relentlessly without yielding or reaching a cooperation agreement.
Of course; all of us who have seen the show must leave the theater feeling addressed; and of course all of us who have watched the performance leave the theater feeling a part and are identified with one or another of the personages, and perhaps someone may even identify a character and are asking ourselves: "Can it be that I have a double personality; can I be bipolar"?
The curious, funny, comical ridiculous and absurd thing is that this dialogue takes place in an ongoing manner internally in each one of us; these 2 characters live and are part of one same person.
If we feel more identified with one or another of the personages, it is not because the other one doesn’t exist inside us but rather because one of them prevails in our own inner theater.
It was Einstein—none other, who may be perceived by many as a person whose main characteristic was having a highly developed REASON— who stated the following: "Intuitive intelligence is a great gift, rational intelligence is a loyal servant; however, we have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
The theory of relativity—the older sibling of quantum physics—was not developed based on Einstein’s REASON; it was rather developed by his INTUITION, and neither was it discovered as a result of cooperative work of these two intelligences.
REASON is smart; INTUITION is wise.
REASON knows what it has learned, read, and seen; what it has estimated and analyzed; INTUITION knows without having learned, read, seen, estimated or analyzed.
In order to analyze a situation and make a decision, REASON has access to our individual hard disc; to our finite library of knowledge where we keep the information we have accumulated throughout the years of study and experience.
Toward this same end, INTUITION has access to a universal hard disc—the infinite library of knowledge (wisdom) having many names according to the religion to which you may belong, or the philosophy you follow; this library maintains the whole acumen of all information past, present and future.
If we are religious, our REASON will dictate: "God can’t be wrong, God knows it all, I wish for Him to tell me what to do in this situation or how to put a solution to this problem".
Well, I have good and bad news.
• The good news is that, in effect, God does exist and we can, therefore, also ask him what we need to do in a given situation.
• The bad news is that God does not think. Thought is the evolvement of language. Then, if God does not think, what does He do? God feels and when He speaks to us, He does so through INTUITION.
REASON shouts; INTUITION whispers.
I have other good and bad news.
• The good news is that we can always listen to our INTUITION; we can always listen to God.
• The bad news is that God only whispers to us.
Another piece of bad news is that we CANNOT raise the volume of our INTUITION.
The good news is that WE CAN, indeed lower the volume of our REASON so that we may listen to INTUITION and the problem for which you have requested help can be solved.
Have you ever exerted yourself until very late trying to unsuccessfully work out a problem? And tired of trying and trying you decide to go to sleep to continue with the chore the morning after.
It is very common that during your sleep, when REASON is not shouting at us, we were able to—in the silence of sleep—listen to the whisper of our INTUITION. It is at that moment that we suddenly wake up in the middle of the night with an answer.
As long as human beings view these 2 personages REASON and INTUITION as 2 separate persons; as long as we persons fail to understand that these 2 personages do not speak 2 different languages but rather 2 different dialects of one same language, and as long as human beings do not make a conscious decision in the sense that these 2 personages must cooperate harmoniously toward one same end, mankind will continue to disagree.
I have another piece of good and bad news:
• The bad news is that our external world; i.e., the circumstances we must experience in our daily life, are only a reflection of our inner world; therefore, we cannot blame anyone for what we experience in our life.
• The good news is that our external world—i.e, circumstances experienced in our daily life—are only a reflection of our inner world; therefore, the change is in our hands and it is up to us entirely.
We have no children; we have no wives/husbands; we have no employees, chiefs, neighbors, friends, enemies; we only have "mirrors".
Every person in our path —whether we like him/her or not— is but a mirror reflecting some aspect of our inner selves.
Alchemy—that compilation of antique doctrines and experiences related to the transmutation of matter—intended to find the philosopher’s stone that was able to turn metals into gold. We human beings, in order to change our surroundings, to improve our own circumstances, must transmute into the alchemists of thought and emotion.
Love is not a feeling; it is rather a decision like the rest of the feelings we harbor in the shelves of our hearts.
Our inner dialogue must be based on inner peace, on our inner theater in order for it to be reflected on our external theater.
Each of these characters has its own strengths, and based on them, a role in our lives. They are 2 personages, 2 characteristics of one whole same thing. One cannot exist without the other, just as woman cannot exist without man and vice-versa; maleness without femininity; light without shadow; day without night.
The challenge for mankind lies in comprehending the fact that life is a Waltz, a flowing, easy-going, simple and beautiful dance; that life is more like a Ballad rather than Rap; that life is not a monologue; life is a dialogue in order to find the harmony needed for 2 to dance arms-in-arms and be complemented.
We are the only living creatures having the privilege of choosing the answer in the face of an agreeable or disagreeable stimulus. Hence, we have the power of free will, that tool which the dog was never granted and which lies forgotten in the attic of our conscience, waiting to be picked up, dusted and used.
INTUITION: is there to be heard
REASON: is there to be used
• INTUITION: Shhhhh, listen to me
• REASON: I’m listening
• INTUITION: Shall we dance?
• REASON: Well yes, indeed