Welcome to the selves inside series.
This time I would like to talk about a part of us,
A voice we could call the rational mind.
Or when it's in a strong form,
We tend to call it the know-it-all.
The know-it-all.
And to start with the positive,
The intellect is a beautiful thing.
It's incredibly helpful to have a developed intellectual capacity.
We are all benefiting at least to some degree from people's strong rational minds,
Our technological comforts that we enjoy,
For example.
So this part of us loves knowledge.
It loves to know how things work.
It loves to fix things.
It sees solutions.
Wonderful.
These kind of minds tend to get paid pretty well if they have the right circumstances.
Now the problem is,
The rational mind,
The know-it-all,
Sees things in terms of problems that can be fixed.
It sees everything logically.
It needs to make sense.
It wants to make sense of things.
For everything that happens,
Whether it's relational,
Whether it's spiritual,
Whether it's an everyday thing,
There are reasons.
And this part of us insists on there being reasons.
It insists that there must be a logical explanation.
And because of that insistence,
Or because this is the only way of knowing that the rational mind has,
It doesn't relate well to intuitive or emotional truths.
It really can't do emotion or intuition very well.
It's not a poetic voice.
It doesn't have that particular kind of outlook on things.
So,
If you're talking to someone's rational mind to their know-it-all,
And you tell them that you're going through a period of,
You know,
Melancholy,
They'll probably start telling you the biological causes of that.
Or recommend the kind of exercises you could do.
Or whatever they bring forward because they're not resonating with that feeling.
They're not able to empathize.
That's not what they do.
They see a problem,
And as helpful as it may be,
They're trying to change or fix through the rational capacity.
So when the know-it-all or the rational mind is a primary voice,
Tends to be central in somebody,
There can be a disconnection from emotion.
Now,
On one hand,
This part,
It thinks,
Pretty much for sure,
That it's grounded.
That it's clear-minded.
That it's not all caught up in emotions.
Maybe a grain of truth.
But for us looking at it from the outside,
We see that this part thinks it's objective because it's not emotional.
But often it's just disconnected from emotion.
The rational mind when that part is animating us or someone,
It tends to be up in the head.
There tends to be a disembodied quality.
And because it is disembodied,
The modes of knowing that come through the body,
The heart,
The belly,
For example,
It doesn't have access to those.
Now sometimes this arises in a life or in a lifetime,
Or maybe even in a whole culture as a way to distance from emotion.
Right,
The emotional experience is something that is really,
Can be very intense.
And rationality is a way to get some space,
To distance from all of that feeling,
All of that movement of energy.
Again,
This can be a gift.
To have some perspective on things.
To be able to view things with a cause and effect mode of thinking.
But sometimes it's like a bowl in a china shop or a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and that it's just the wrong thing in particular situations.
And particularly if all we have access to is a rational mind,
Or in another person if all we're relating to is their rational mind,
Their know-it-all,
Our interpersonal connection tends to not be very heart-centered.
We may have titillating and really engaging intellectual spark and vibrance when it's a rational mind and a rational mind,
But it tends to remain there if it's just the rational mind that we have access to.
How do we find awareness of the rational mind?
How do we know that's what we're dealing with or what we are caught up in?
The rational mind believes in certainties.
So it often speaks in statements of,
It is,
It is like this,
It is like that.
It can make grand pronouncements in the form of,
Oh yeah,
That is always,
Fill in the blank,
It is always the case that,
Fill in the blank.
The rational mind because it's in the head and because in our culture at least it tends to be very often caffeinated,
The rational mind,
The know-it-all loves caffeine,
Gets amplified by that.
It tends to have a rapid pace and talk very fast and bring ideas towards you and if you're not in that rational mind it can be pretty overwhelming.
So there's a speediness about this voice.
There is a rapid fire profusion of ideas.
Whereas our more embodied voices tend to have a different pace.
There tends to be a more full-bodied way of speaking.
The rational mind is just in the head,
It has all these ideas and did you look up this and did you look up that and so on.
So the good news is that we have the rational mind it can be a beautiful tool but it's only one part of us and as we bring awareness to the parts of us we can recognize the rational mind and through that awareness recognize that we are not the rational mind and neither is our husband or boss.
There's more of them into the picture than the rational mind as well.
And maybe through our not being caught up so exclusively in the rational mind we can help others see that they too are not just this rational know-it-all mind.
So thank you for listening and may we find spaciousness and welcoming of all our inner community.
