Intellectualization or Experience?

Hello all,

Namaste! All of you, my dear blog readers, know about my website-swaroopa.net. I have started my business, Swaroopa store, which can be accessed from Shop tab on my website, for Souls who are interested in a personal reading. Now to the post.

As I was mentioning, in the last post, I am planning to stop the follow.it, RSS feed. Unfortunately, I didn't find this week, time to do it. Most probably in the next ten days. Many times life creeps up on you and one never realizes that sometimes you just have to let go and go with the flow. So, would do it as soon as time permits me. Nowadays, I write so much, sometimes I have to literally bring myself to the ground to take care of the worldly errands. Trying. Okay, now to the post.

Last week, we discussed how we should behave during this Covid-19 pandemic and what is our own responsibility and accountability towards our own life. It is only when we align our Soul, heart, intuition- voice of the Soul through the heart, mind, intelligence, intellect, body, limbs and finally actions, that our inner power from the Soul manifests in our own life. I have lived totally from a rational mind perspective of a scientist for some thirty years of my life. Now, I live from a deeper perspective. I understand the difference.

So, today, I thought we would discuss the difference between living merely from the mind with intellectualization and living from the heart, experiencing life. It took me almost five years to realize the difference of what I was doing wrong. One is a very surface level living, where we skim through life experiences, only putting in around 20-30% of ourselves in our own life. The other is cent percent. We are all in with our own life. This post is not about another, how they take charge of their life. This post is about oneself. How I the being or you the being take charge of my own/ your own life. So, let us begin.

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The logical mind!
Image credits - Pixabay.com

Intellectualization: According to Wikipedia, "In psychology, intellectualization is a defense mechanism by which reasoning is used to block confrontation with an unconscious conflict and its associated emotional stress – where thinking is used to avoid feeling. It involves removing one's self, emotionally, from a stressful event. Intellectualization may accompany, but is different from, rationalization, the pseudo-rational justification of irrational acts.

When all of us are born as babies, we all are highly sensitive beings. The only faculty as newborns we had to interact was crying, discomfort, coziness and the feeling of touch. That is it. Even our hearing, thought, sight or taste is not that well developed. But the sense of touch or comfort is well developed. When we feel cared for and comfortable we calm down. When we feel wet, hungry, colicky or bored, we let others know our displeasure through crying. At that age, even the adults in our life interact with us through the medium of emotions. We understand what the baby is trying to convey.

When the same baby grows up to be three to five years old, we introduces the magical world of words. We ask them to study, become the very best in their school and education. (Yes, full disclosure, here. I also walk behind my kids asking and even pestering them to study. In today's world, a great education and thought process is an asset to live a wonderful, goal oriented life. I am also culprit to the same viewpoint. I am very much human and I also struggle with my life lessons.) So, as the child or the young adult concentrates more and more on the mind, thought and logic, somewhere along the way we lose touch with our own emotional nature.

Prisoners at Sachsenhausen, 19 December 1938
Image credits- National Archives at College Park / Public domain

I myself, when look back, realize around 16-17 years of age, when I started my college, I set apart my emotional side and started giving more importance to the mind, logic and thought process. Yes, that is needed. Our mind and thought process should expand to the end of our very limits of the mind. But here actually what happened? Because we gave more importance to logic and mind, kept away our emotional nature, the heart slowly stopped to be involved in the picture. Heart and mind are not same.

Heart comes into the picture, when our emotions are deeply involved in any circumstance or situation. But when we just go behind the mind and logic, the mind and intellect starts to develop a whole lot. Intellect is the faculty that decides whether a choice is good for us or not. The outer world is many times not

But the logical mind is just ten to twenty percent of the whole mind. We have discussed this before, the remaining 80-90% is the emotional mind. The emotional mind in other words is the heart and the intuition. When we remove it from the picture, we are living only a shallow, surface level life. The deep emotional experience of life we used to feel as a kid or youth, gets lost. Remember the time when as a kid we used to feel exhilarated playing or interacting with another kid? How did we lose that in between?

The child becomes the adult!
Image credits - Pixabay.com

Becoming the adult: So, in reality, a whole lot of people are receiving stimuli that is creating the mental image of life is hard, tough and struggle every day. Everyone is after the same pot of pie. Better become competitive and selfish, so that you manage to get a small piece of it. Can we realize, it is this logical mentality where the heart is removed from the picture that creates this disappointment, pain, stress, struggle and competition of life. A world where the logic and rationality - the 20% has overtaken the heart and emotions- the 80%. Instead shouldn't the 20% align with the 80% and make our life- the total 100%- the cent percent.

Remember, what we discussed before? Here it is again- "It is only when we align our Soul, heart, intuition- voice of the Soul through the heart, mind, intelligence, intellect, body, limbs and finally actions, that our inner power from the Soul manifests in our own life."

In between that list, in the middle solidly placed is the heart. Only through the heart we can access the intuition as well as the Soul. The deeper parts of our own essence that make us fully present in our life. The heart and the emotions associated with it. It is within our heart, our own deepest truth is placed. So, the unfortunate side-effect is, as soon as we ignore our heart, our deepest inner truths also get ignored. So, is there any wonder, people lose meaning for their own life and feel depressed? People have lost their own truths that bring meaning to their lives. The malady that is eating away at people that is much deeper that Covid-19 or the pandemic. We in a rush to create a very progressive and innovative world has lost ourselves, our heart and what gives our life, value.

Experience: As many of you know, I write answers on Quora. Many times people bring Western Philosophy that they have read thoroughly and ask questions. I answer saying I have zero knowledge or information about Western Philosophy, but my knowledge has come from my own life experiences. To make this point clear, let us take an example.

Say we go to an ice-cream shop. We look at all the different varieties of ice-cream- Cookie dough, Butter scotch, Vanilla, Coffee, Cappuccino, even a Motor-oil (An ice-cream almost black in color due to Oreo cookies). We are standing in the shop looking at the Ice-cream. This is what is reading million books on philosophy is like. Intellectually, we are understanding, yes, there is an ice-cream called Motor-oil or Butter scotch. But is looking at an ice-cream same as eating it? The difference between intellectualization and experience.

Ice- cream of Life- Looking or experiencing?
Image credits - Pixabay.com

We can look at any number of Ice-creams. But to have the experience of an ice-cream, we have to go to the shop, order an ice-cream, buy it and then eat it. It is when the sweetness of that ice-cream melt in our mouth and our taste buds captures the taste, we are actually experiencing an ice-cream. Not just looking at the name of it. That is understanding it-intellectualization, not experiencing it.

The same way, it is not enough to understand about life, reading about every philosophy of the world. But the truth of life is deeply embedded in living it and experiencing it. Actually, when we understand the philosophy through experiences, every philosophy becomes crystal clear to us, as every true philosophy points towards the same thing, the same truths- whether it is Upanishads, Socrates, Bible, Quran or Tao Te Ching. Only each mind aligns itself with a philosophy, that feels true to that particular being, so that they feel in-sync with it.

Now, to experience anything very deeply, whether it is love, relationships or even the pure essence of life, heart should be deeply involved in it. Thinking logically is as plain as looking at the picture of the ice-cream. But experiencing is from the heart, as joyful as savoring the ice-cream. Now, we can see, why a whole lot of people are nowadays feeling, life is pointless and meaningless. Everyone is looking at the picture of the ice-cream than savoring it, especially people who are highly educated and trained. I was very much one of them until the spring of 2017. I was. Just looking at the picture of ice-cream and understanding it, never savoring it.

So, to experience life, one has to be all in- from our Soul, heart, intuition- voice of the Soul through the heart, mind, intelligence, intellect, body, limbs and finally actions. All in. The magnificence of experiencing life to the very core of our being. Then, the magic called life unfolds.

So, when people come to point out some philosophy or explain a concept, the first question that comes up in my mind is - "Are you talking from your mind or from your heart?" If I realize, it is from their heart, I am totally happy to hear more and more. If it is just from the 'logical mind', may be the being should go deep into their heart and start living from the heart space. May be then the magic called life would start brushing brilliant colors into their own life. After,40 years of logical mind and just 4 years of heart and then mind, I can confidently say - Nothing trumps our own heart! Nothing!

That is how magnificent it is to live from the deepest heart and our own inner truths. Now, whether to pursue our heart or mind, that is a being's free will and choice!