K’s intention to be more “Outside of Thinking Mind” resonated with me. I’m one who has acted as though there is always an intellectual resolution to every issue. All I have to do is think hard enough, I tell myself, and the answers will come to  me. Although “thinking about it” works for me in some aspects of my life, I can often end up over-thinking and getting all twisted up in my own thoughts.

Recent brain research “has shown that people do indeed make optimal decisions—but only when their unconscious brain makes the choice.” (via Science Daily)  Similarly, psychological research has  “found that people struggling to make complex decisions did best when they were distracted and were not able to think consciously about the choice at all.” (via New York Times)

We’ve all experienced times when a solution to a problem comes to us in our sleep, we find lost car keys when we stop looking for them, or brilliant creative ideas arrive in the shower. Not thinking about it works.

So why am I so reluctant to get Outside of Thinking Mind?

I’m touched by J’s  post about psychology and religion.

My sister tells me priests (West Coast Jesuits) now teach high school students that since God gave them a brain, it’s okay to think about and question their religious beliefs. That’s not what I learned. When I was a young teenager, I felt deeply spiritual, but lots of things about Catholicism didn’t make sense to me. I had questions. I wanted to ponder and talk it all over. My religious education classes weren’t the place for discussion. They were a place to show how much you had memorized.

When I tried to talk to my mother, she told me I could not pick and choose what to believe. I admired her faith in God and the Church. It seemed to serve her well, and I longed for the kind of peace her faith gave her.  But she told me, flat out, end of discussion: belief was an all or nothing deal. And I just couldn’t accept the whole package. I had to question parts of it. (Okay, I had to question all of it.)  So at age 15 I decided if my questions, if the way my mind worked, was not welcome,  I would have none of it. I gave up on religion and I gave up on God, because at that time I didn’t know the difference between the two.

In or out of the Church, though, I felt there was something wrong with me, because I had this mind, this fritzy mind, cluttered with thoughts and wonderments and it wouldn’t allow me to have the kind of unquestioning faith I had been told God required of me.

It would be a long time before I could connec spirituality with what went on in my mind and understand that they are not separate or at odds, but one.

Principle #2: Compassion is our deepest nature. It arises from our interconnection with all things.

Ever since I read J’s post about the compassionate crabs I’ve had a Shawn Colvin song “Climb On (A Back That’s Strong)” running through my head. Not a bad thought to be carrying around.

But I’ve been reflecting on her post in light of the Wise Heart chapter I read this week,  too. I am always amazed when I hear a story like that about animal kindness. A mother dog nurses an abandoned kitten along with her own puppies. Elephants free an antelope from a pen. A dolphin aids a drowning human. Ants have been seen to pull thorns from other injured ants. Wow, I think, how incredible, how unusual. And I guess I think that because somehow I’ve come to believe that an animal can’t have compassion. That compassion is a complex thing, only humans can express. But this week another possibility occurred to me. Perhaps compassion is an innate part of all living things, a natural instinct. And perhaps we humans are the only living things who choose repress it.