Where Wisdom Reigns, There is No Conflict Between Thinking and Feeling...

Again, Carl Jung.  I am on a Jungian kick this week.

I am not sure I have read anything that rings so true as the above statement.  Wisdom is the knowledge that there can be no gap between what I think and what I feel.  The two are meant to be in tandem, each affecting and influencing the other.  The biggest mistake of my life was thinking that the two should live separate lives...

The most difficult times in my life have been where I have great conflict between how I feel and what I think.  I immediately go back to my last relationship...my feelings were a mess and so was my thinking, but they were not aligned.  They were in total conflict.  Each tormenting the other.  One would land on a conclusion based on evidence and the other one would immediately seduce me to another conclusion.  There was no congruity between how I felt and what I thought.

And that is just the most recent example I can think of...there are many more, I am sure.  I just know that when I feel and act most wise, it is when I am in harmony with myself.  My thoughts, feelings and then the subsequent actions are in alignment with each other.  They are not at war.  There is no conflict.  I am idle and peaceful internally.

For the most part, my thinking and feeling do a great job of whipping each other into a frenzy.  One starts and then the other one goes off, then it is a downward spiral, mostly.  I have gotten better about releasing the action part, strengthening my ability to pause and reflect BEFORE taking that action that I just know I need to do.  I may feel compelled to action, but I have learned to sit with that feeling and most of the time it passes.

Meditation has helped me a great deal align my thoughts and feelings.  Sitting there in mediation a lot of stuff comes up.  And it is all just there, swimming around in my head, landing in the conscious mind, but then it jets off to whatever places it goes and then another thought or feeling lands and the same thing happens. Over and over and over again.  And sometimes, I am compelled to action from the swirling vortex of thoughts and feelings...but I have learned, that just like the rising thoughts and feelings, this passes also. I need to do nothing but observe the firestorm that is my brain, and it will settle down, eventually.

I feel like wisdom reigns most of the time in my life.  I am not prone to unproductive jags of emotion or thinking.  My brain and heart are congruent most of the time.  And when they aren’t, I have the wisdom to sit still until I can find a more peaceful coexistence.

And I have the past experiences of acute agitation and disturbance when my feelings and thoughts are incongruent and in high conflict to remind me of how much that whole deal sucks.  Which is great motivation for me to calm myself and be the peacemaker to my warring factions.

It isn’t always easy, or a great deal of fun. But I feel like wisdom reigns most of the time these days.  And when wisdom is lost and cannot be accessed, I have the pause to hopefully reign in the conflicting emotions and thoughts, which is a different form of wisdom I guess.

Again, still...